The cold-war divisions of 'first', 'second' and 'third' worlds made some sense on geopolitical grounds, however ethnocentric the order might have been. No question the world can still be roughly divided according to levels of industrial and economic development. There are certainly correlations between levels of income and economic, industrial, and human development. But, I have a problem with uncritical use of the term 'developing' world where it assumes a common trajectory for all nations toward fully industrialized, high-income, advanced economies. The underlying presupposition is that wealth and the capacity to generate it are infinite. Ultimately, all wealth is based in the material world, which for our purposes is most certainly finite. Overall wealth can increase greatly—to a point, and certainly has, human and ecological costs notwithstanding, but it is still finite. Up to now the flow of wealth has been away from those who already have less toward those who already have more. At some point, with more economies 'developing', that flow will have to reverse. Such equalization of wealth should be understood as just as much a part of human social evolution as the increasing of wealth. Can the term 'developing' be used with critical awareness of this big picture?
