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Comment by yeetawayhn | Hacker News Reader

You missed the "developed countries" dogwhistle, which usually means rich and white nations.

It specifically does mean rich, but includes China and Japan and South Korea, which are not white. The description of economic development was specifically to exclude race and political affiliation from the equation while still capturing the relevant metrics -- poverty causes violent crime.

"Europe, but only the parts I like"

is there a better way of describing the group of countries where it is unlikely to encounter criminals with lmgs mounted to pickup trucks?

>is there a better way of describing the group of countries where it is unlikely to encounter criminals with lmgs mounted to pickup trucks?

The dogwhistle has now turned into a full on bullhorn.

"first and second world" does a pretty good job covering it since there's plenty of nations that are formerly in the USSR's sphere of influence that aren't exactly rich but don't have to worry about cartel type violence.

Pretty much nobody likes to think that way though because the majority of the time "developed nations" are brought up it's in the context of how the US should be more like western Europe and it's usually ideologically convenient to leave Eastern Europe out of those kinds of comparisons.

"first and second world" describes more or less the same set of countries (perhaps modulo some eastern european countries like you said), but doesn't it have most of the same baggage as "developed nations"? as I understand it, the problem with "developed nations" is that it raises the question "developed compared to what?". in other words, it implicitly sets the west as the standard against which "developed" is measured. doesn't first/second/third world center the western perspective in pretty much the same way?

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