Today’s rant is motivated by the announcement that Google is going to stop censoring in China. This is exactly the kind of things happening in the so-called developing countries, and it is a part of the reason of me leaving Russia.
The life in a developing country is… pretty much possible. A development country is not such a deadly place like Iraq, Nord Korea or Ruanda, mind you. In fact, it is even possible to live the western life quality.
Of course, to do that, you would need to earn enough money. Much more money than the average. But it is not a problem: just find a job for an international company outsourcing their operations into your country.
Of course, as you’re earning much more than others, you start to pay more attention on your appearance, so you will feel discomfort each time you have to contact the sweaty and stinking crowd in the metro. Besides that, they are all pickpockets, aren’t they? But it is not a problem: just stop using public transportation, and buy a car.
Of course, your government is poor, so the roads and rather bad, if existent. But it is not a problem: just buy a jeep, and put a license plate indicating you’re from the government, so that police won’t stop you when you break the rules, agressively overtaking those ancient rusted vehicles of the normal crowd.
Of course, the normal crowd will be jealous of your success and will try to break into your house, rob you on the street, or just urinate on your door. But it is not a problem: move into an elite building complex, with a guarded territory, etc.
Of course, at some point of time you would have to leave the world of guarded complexes, air-conditioned cars, and modern offices. For example, when you have to go to your doctor, to your lawyer, or just go out for shopping and eating. But it is not a problem: there are elite doctors, elite lawyers, elite shopping malls and elite restaurants for you. Just pay in cash and know exactly what is elite and what’s not.
Of course, you will have children at some point. You don’t want to send them into a public school, with all those drug dealers, incompetent teachers still preaching communism and earning less than $100 per month, failing heating, and normal crowd children. And you can’t really lock your children into a guarded territory. But it is not a problem at all: you will send your children to study abroad, into Spain, UK or Germany.
This will also solve the problem with the military service, because you of course don’t want to allow your children to be mobilized into your army, which is more a forced labor and health ruinning organization than anything else.
Of course, to be in the elite, you have to have money. You’ll need bank and saving accounts, and credit cards. And you want to be able to spend that money. But you will have a ton of problems with Visa, and PayPal, because there are so many hacking attacks from your country so that they will block their services. But it is not a problem at all: you register an account on a fake address in the US, and use VPN software to tunnel your IP address. This will also solve the problem of other internet services leaving or not present in your country.
Of course, you can do all of that. But, once being on vacation in Europe, you will walk on a normal street, in the evening. The street will be illuminated, so you don’t have to carry a flashlight with you. The people you meet on your way will not try to urinate on you, so you don’t need to have a bodyguard with you. You can put your wallet into your back pocket and, with a reasonable probability, it will stay there. So you don’t need to think about checking your wallet every other minute. The buildings on the street will not be covered by a nasty aggresive advertisement. So your romantic and relaxed mood won’t be disturbed.
And then, you will suddenly think: why the hell am I spending my precisious life time and energy on all those workarounds, if I can get the high living standard here, gratis, and concentrate on a really important things?