Jag, if you said "The first world has more stuff when it trades with the third" I would agree in the sense of three TVs instead of one, six pairs of sneakers instead of one, steel at half the price of Inland Steel's product, and so on.
However, I quoted you accurately the first time, and since the context was pretty hard to scramble in a one-liner, here it is again.
Quote:
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F]irst world lifestyles are supported by third world poverty.
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If every person in the third world -disappeared-, or come to that, if it all -sank under the ocean-, therefore, first world lifestyles would ... come on, class ... what?
I assert that very little would happen to first world lifestyles. Markets for commodities would be distorted. Some ores (e.g. tantalum) would become hard to get out of the ground for a while. Spices, coffee - the things sixteenth-century navigation set out to get - would be more or less gone. Clothing - aye, there's the rub. Clothing would be expensive. But as far as the first world's standards of hygiene, life expectancy, production, power consumption and money wasted on corporate amusement are concerned I bet little would change.
Perhaps it is (belatedly) time for us to Define Our Terms. I'll be happy to accept your definition, Jag, of the third world. If you'll define it I think what I say in the fifth graph is defensible, pretty much regardless of where you say the third world begins.
The phrase with which I took exception implies that the first world is somehow -dependent- on the third. I believe that the inverse is true, at least to the extent that a decrease in contact would lead to a decrease in quality of life.