We’re second after Syria at the rate of diaspora increase, so I ask: does population extraction exist as a globalization strategy or effect?
I live in Eastern Europe, a place we like to self promote as CEE, which means Central and Eastern Europe, but don’t be fooled, it is only eastern in everyone’s mind, whatever central part ever was, now it is actually western for at least a decade.
Actually, you know what’s funny? In Europe, the bigger the GDP and the higher the civilization, the more western the country becomes. It is a magic place Europe, from this point of view, no middle ground exists. The Berlin wall collapsed in brick form, but is phoenix like reborn as a sociopolitical mind wall. Your compass doesn’t work in the EU.
In Romania you are in the East. You are in the eastest of the East, because any more east and it is Russia. Unless you still hope or root for Ukraine or count Moldavia as a country. Anyway.
By too much of a good thing I mean that we’re part of the EU, and that is good. But, you see, we’re in that second hand part of the EU, the poor countries part. There is no shame in that. The US has second hand states, not everyone lives in California or Texas or NY. It’s OK. What it isn’t OK is that you can buy your way out of this country, and by doing it you have a zillion odds to be much better off, whatever you do.
We’re no Mexico, we’re no Bangladesh either. It is weird, apparently we’re better off. No cartels, and no 10 dollar a month jobs. But at the same time there is this other thing: people leave. En masse. The problem is we have nobody around left. This place is running on leftovers. As soon as anybody levels up they leave.
In Romania we witness population extraction at its finest.
You see, in Romania it doesn’t matter if you are doing well financially, because we’re in the middle of an authentic twenty first century exodus: we are the runner up country concerning immigration into Germany and Denmark, and second in the overall increase in diaspora size in the World, bested only by Syria. Syria!
Because of the exodus there is no one left to attend to this place. Literally.
No doctors, but also no plumbers. No nurses, but also no construction workers. No programmers, but also no baby sitters.
Entire generations of old and new doctors, women and men, left for salary increases of tenfold. Hard to counter offer. At the uneducated end, about all serious, hardworking and good people work for companies that move them in group contracts all over Europe. Au pair and care taking jobs swept away women like a giant depressurization hole. Infrastructure and real estate pulled men like magnets. Opportunity mesmerized everyone.
It is not only about the money. It is also about overall quality of life. The quality of life in Romania is very, very low. But not because it is as bad as say, … Thailand or Pakistan. It is good in the demagogic sense. You earn your paycheck, the paycheck is good. But the country doesn’t do what you pay your dues for! You vote but you can’t compete with half the population in rural areas, those areas prince Charles adores, manipulated without shame into what to vote.
You cannot trust the police to have the capacity to protect you. We have too little police, that is why all those globe trotters touting the coolness of this land can do undoable things here: there is simply not enough law enforcement for anything petty. Unless you rape or kill or kidnap, you are filed at the bottom of the stack.
In Romania when you call 112 (our version of the 911) you need a script:
- my chest hurts
- I can’t breathe
- I am thirty years old
- I have my children at home
That makes you a red code. Young, heart attack, has kids. Or whatever. Otherwise your ambulance will place you on hold. It doesn’t matter what exactly you are and what you feel, this is your ticket for a slight chance. Because that’s all you get, a slight chance. We had a great artist die this week because the ambulances are staffed with the worst, no one wants those jobs.
This place is ran by people who do nothing to stop population extraction, although it appears to be a very serious issue. You must learn medicine, program your own software, build your own house, fix your own car, change your own pipes … if only we’d be able to fly our own planes.
A couple of years ago we lost a plane. Our national emergency flight recovery service failed to provide any kind of accurate data, it was some local simple people who ventured on the mountains nearby to find the wreck.
We had a pretty draconic school system producing people poached all over the world. For about twenty six years we’ve reformed the shit out of it, that it now produces simpletons who fail national tests, each one in two students. Everyone who makes a decent living by European standards sends their kids to private schools. We sure did copy the US here bit by bit.
Prince Charles is thrilled of this country. It doesn’t help, he is thrilled of exactly what we try to fix.
People right here on Medium love its second world charms, cheap booze and semi legal prostitution. You see, were prostitution legal we’d be too first world to be “exotic”. Were booze as expensive as it should be, darn us savages.
Population extraction makes for an aging population. It is a dangerous thing for a NATO member, home to some fresh US missiles pointing at Kremli … the sky! Population extraction fails the US plans to keep favorable political actors in power, but boy does it benefit the UK (hypocrites), France or Germany.
We Romanians are sick of what westerners like so much, the freedom, the loose regulations, the bad busses and trains that never take you anywhere on time, the “vibrant” nightlife which is actually a big coverup for shady business. We had too much of this “won freedom”, “original democracy”, “balkan capitalism” and we flee.
If you plant, say, strawberries, there is no one to pick them up. You pick them up yourself, with help from family and then whatever is left, let them rot. But the Spanish strawberries and oranges and whatnot are all harvested by Romanians.
A myth: Microsoft’s second most spoken language is Romanian. Romanian tech scene: outsourcing all the way.
The free market over here is completely free. Like in almost libertarian level free: no regulations because of no enforcement. We have had this problem: disinfectant material in all Romanian hospitals had a ten times lower concentration. The key man committed “suicide” in the middle of the investigation. I won’t repeat news headlines but this particular incident is horrific for me. Oh and the one where we couldn’t house and treat in aseptic conditions 146 people who got burned in a club that caught fire, in no hospital in the entire country. In a club that caught fire because no one enforces the laws, the safety laws!
Population extraction is not a strictly Romanian phenomenon. It is common in many places. But hey, we’re second place in a fifteen year span at this. Bragging rights?
Too much globalization too. There is nothing left in our production lines. We output just about nothing significant. That is another reason people leave.
Population extraction works in favor of a state Church. We have one. We’ll have a two hundred million euro cathedral. I don’t care, but it is funny nonetheless. Population extraction makes a perfect colony country, a place where cheap workforce is produced “naturally” and whatever is not extracted is a marketplace for European surplus.
Fact: it is very hard to find stuff which is not especially produced for Romanian and other poor markets. Brands mean nothing here. From cigarettes to chocolate. Fanta tastes worse. The one chance you’ve got is when supermarkets, discount stores and corner shops, which are all international commerce chains, bring in stock surplus. That is when the mockery is even crueler when you buy the same thing from the same brand and it is ten times better suddenly. You look at the label, and you know: no Romanian instructions on the packaging.
My biggest future fear is old age. As I am young, paid well, healthy and hopeful: I manage. This is what we Romanians do best natively, we manage. But when we get to feeble to do this we’re faced with the emptiness of a system that we’re paying to exist, an old age stolen by a global experiment that no one seems to monitor anymore.
Tagged: Ana Frusinoiu, Violet, just Violet