Babylon was built by ignorant savages?! The stone age invented civilization as we know it...?
As far as I know, modern facilities are very sparse there? And obviously they have access to steel, motor vehicles, oil, whatever electricity is had from generators and such; but also as far as I know, few if any of these by local production, it's just hard to avoid those sorts of things by import (being so useful, easy to use and relatively available).
The breakdown of government, as I've heard it -- granted, like 3rd hand, and no, I don't have the references handy anyway, so I could be very far off base here -- there's no cultural value for institutions, or even prohibition/shame/stigma about what we call corruption or bribery or thievery -- it's simply day to day survival, "well, someone left this laying around, they practically *meant* someone to come by and pick it up, right?" -- the picture I've heard makes a bleak state of things relative to what we would think. But, cultural relativism -- that's simply how it works over there. At least, again -- so I've heard.
I should add, these reports were likely from rural areas. Most of the country is agrarian, so this doesn't seem an over-the-top assessment of things on average. Overgeneralized, certainly; Kabul alone is bigger than all cities within a 50mi radius of me. Though what NGOs say about e.g. political corruption seems to suggest it's not much different at least at the top levels, so these reports seem plausible. I'm welcome to hear otherwise.
And if you could hold on for one fucking second... why not educate me on what and how I've said is wrong, instead of flying into a rage? It's like this thread hasn't even begun to teach any lessons.
And, yes, I was literally talking in economic terms, because.. that's what that hypothetical aside was about? Did you skip over the parenthesis I put in there for a reason? Evolution and world economy care very little about human misery, unfortunately; yet onward they march.
Tim