For reasons I do not entirely understand, one of my most popular blog entries deals with some of the reasons why Thailand is a third world nation [1]. Now, having written that blog entry when I still lived in Thailand, I may not be the most tactful or politically correct person on the planet. That said, having talked about why a particular country is (at least in my eyes) a third world country, I would like to give my equally unsolicited opinion, for what it’s worth, about what would make a country in general a first, or second, or third world country. Again, I have no idea how many people or to what extent people care about my opinion, but this is the sort of reason why I write in the first place.

Almost every nation has some parts that would widely be considered first world. In these places, you can buy consumer electronics, eat at the same sort of restaurants with the same sort of food, live in comfort and relative luxury (relative to the world at large and certainly luxurious compared to the way people have lived throughout history), with consistent electricity and water and reliable internet and some sort of freedom of expression and respect in society at large. In most of the world, this first world lifestyle is enjoyed by elites. In many countries, those who are elites, whether by blood or fortune or office, are the ones who enjoy that lifestyle and those privileges, and such people may seldom or never move beyond those privileged places and neighborhoods and company that enjoy a similar lifestyle.

However, a nation is not judged by the standard of living of its elites, or even the average standard of living for a nation. As most people well know, averages (like the per capita GNP or GDP of a nation) are easy to skew by having too great a concentration of wealth in too few hands. A relatively small nation with a few fantastically wealthy people might have a high level of average wealth, and certainly among its elites, but have a modest or low standard of living for the general population at large. A more fair level of economic development for a nation, if one wanted to quantify a level of economic development, would be to look at either the median standard of living or the standard of living that would be available to the poorest of a nation’s citizens. Such measures would be more likely to allow an understanding of the way that a given population of a nation can be expected to live, and to give encouragement for those nations that want to move up in the world to make sure that the blessings of economic development are broadly enjoyed in a society rather than concentrated at the top.

Besides economic development, there are other aspects of life and standard of living that would tend to indicate a high overall standard of living. High levels of education and literacy, low levels of infant mortality (a good measure of the suffering of commonfolk), and a long overall life would also generally be metrics that would help a nation to be considered a well-developed one. Many of these factors tend to coincide with each other as well, as lowering the infant mortality rate is one of the fastest ways to increase the overall life expectancy of a nation, and high levels of literacy and education at least provide the theoretical ability for a nation’s citizenry to be capable of advanced labor.

Let us be plain, though, about the way a nation needs to operate in order to move up in the world, in the eyes of its peers, and that is to seek as wide a development as possible. The broader the base of prosperity and well-being a nation has, the more people have a stake in preserving a status quo that is beneficial to them. While some regimes may not care about having electoral majorities because of their systems of government or their ability to topple or fraudulently install governments at their elites’ will and whim, broadening the basis of support for the legitimacy of a regime generally will reduce its insecurity and improve its behavior, and those matters will also tend to make a nation better off in a wide variety of ways.

Let us therefore examine how Thailand itself might better its standing as world nation, if it truly wishes to be viewed as a first or second world nation. Expanding the existence of a decent standard of living from the elites and their clients would help, as would curbing the tendency to overthrow elected majorities through military coups, expanding literacy and electricity and running water throughout the poorer Northern and Northeastern areas of the nation, and providing better internal development. These changes would require cultural shifts that would include a respect for the legal processes of a supposedly constitutional monarchy, a policy of restraint when facing the wills and wishes of the people as a whole and their own legitimate desires for a better life, and a greater respect for people outside of Central Thais or Europeans or wealthy East Asians (like Chinese or Japanese or South Koreans). Sometimes, oftentimes, a nation has to decide whether it wants to preserve its pettiness and snobbery towards others or improve its station, though.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/why-thailand-is-a-third-world-country/