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Comment by jajko | Hacker News Reader

If you've ever been to that country, or any similar country, you would notice that real professional competence across whole society is scarce, and most tourism industry is just barely faking it in terms of security and professionalism. Or to put it in different words - don't do extreme sports there, safety net is very thin.

Deadly diving accidents are common there too, mostly due to lack of professionalism of instructors, either locals or for some reason russians.

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I have dived in the red sea dozens of times over decades. There are many solid dive operations. It's probably at least a notch or two above the rest of (edit: Egyptian) society since it's a bit of a bubble that works mostly with foreigners. Still not up to western standards but also not as bad as you make it sound. It's one of the world's most popular diving destinations and incident rates aren't that high. There are many good instructors but you do have to be more careful.

These days there are a lot of Russians due to the war with Ukraine I imagine some of them have found work in the dive industry. The last time I visited was 2 years ago and there were certainly a lot of Russians but I didn't dive with them.

EDIT: I generally dislike Egypt, everyone smokes, an oppressive government. Third world. I'm not sure I'll go diving there again. But my experience with boat diving has been good, that's the only part of Egypt I like ;) I've had dives in Hawaii that felt less safe with instructors chasing people that bolt to the surface and other near misses and generally questionably run operations. I think the key in these third world countries is to chose specific operators.

Generalize much? How many duck boat sinkings took the lives of tourists in the US? Were you also so keen to criticise American society as a whole and "similar countries"?

Not the OP, but his generalization about North Africa is spot on.

It is one of the few regions that regressed civilizationally since Antiquity. Zero advanced exports, lots of tyranny and dysfunction, natives vote with their feet by the millions, and no one in their sane mind moves there.

I don't particularly care about praising the US, a country I have never been to, but if you are trying to put some sort equivalence between Egypt and the US, you are deluding yourself. Quality of institutions in those two places ise mostly incomparable.

(The SF homeless situation may be an exception. Yeah, that could be North Africa, only with much more money burned on futile schemes to alleviate the problem.)

Morocco and Tunisia don’t seem terrible. But you’re also neglecting the effect of climate change since antiquity on agriculture there.

After 1948, the ancient communities of Greeks, Jews and Armenians were driven out of Alexandria by the new Arab nationalist government.

Given that these were the most educated and globally connected people in the country, Egypt shot itself in the foot in a way that is probably impossible to evaluate.

In violent agreement- unfortunately, they were identified with the British occupation/administration.

There are of course professional and competent people in Egypt, and I've worked with many. However, there is very stiff competition in the tourism sector, education in workers is low, regulations that exist are mostly only used to elicit bribes by officials, so all corners that can be cut, are.

Based on this list, it was 34 fatalities from three duck boat sinkings:

https://www.arnolditkin.com/blog/injury/dangerous-waters-a-s...

There were other fatalities but in different circumstances, mainly on land.

A quick Google turns up over a thirteen hundred dead in sinking incidents off Egypt in the last 20 years. Looks like Libya can't be far behind. They're in a completely different league and whilst generalisations can seen unpalatable it does seem tied to a careless approach to safety (as confirmed by all the mentions of safety equipment failure in the various incidents)

Tangent: this article contains the claim regarding DUKWs on D-Day: "Only one boat made it to the beach—the rest sank, taking soldiers and supplies with them." From what I can find this seems to be highly inaccurate and while there were some sinkings, DUKW boats at D-Day seem to be generally considered to be successful. This error is egregious enough to call the author's overall trustworthiness into question for me.

Generalization sucks but you can't say it's not true.

I'm from Eastern Europe and I'll say that in many aspects Western society is better than us, even if it's already way better than after the fall of the Soviet occupation.

It sucks but it is what it is.

Better in what way? And Eastern Europe can range from Czech Republic, to the Balkans, to even include the Caucasus, and of course Russia. I'd wager half of Eastern Europe has better society than majority of the US excluding parts of the East Coast and the West coast.

Are you from Europe or US?

European living in the US :)

Oh okay, thats nice i'm from the UK. Would love to connect over call as I see you are a startup owner right?

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