Where Laissez Faire exists today

[Extropy]

Is that picture real?!

Naturally, notice how poorly maintained the pools are on that spiral-balcony condo with a view.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Matias,

LOL...

No, I did not live in a fancy hotel back then. I generally drove or took the bus to the favela. I never slept overnight, but I did smoke crack cocaine at times inside the clapboard houses. I didn't like to do that though. Crack makes you paranoid as all hell and getting home was always a horror film.

Below is a picture of an actual street in São Paulo where I bought a lot of crack (Avenida Duque de Caxias). Except in my time, there were fewer people sitting on the side of the road during the day on the weekend. I usually went at night, so there were less people on the street in general.

It's hard to believe (maybe not for you down in Argentina), but during weekdays and business hours, this whole thing looks different. Lots of commerce goes on, especially electronics, and it gets cleaned up. It looks like an entirely different street.

Is that picture real?!

Yup.

People live in places like that. But in Brazil, they eat well, at least they did when I lived down there.

This is one reason I am ambivalent about the cry of poverty from people up here in the US who live in real houses and apartments. It's not their fault they don't have anything below them to compare against, but poor overseas is not the same thing as poor in the USA.

Michael