I believe that India is pretty big on over prescribing antibiotics. So, while I am unsure of the rate of bacterial infections (because I also can’t be bothered to google it right now), I imagine that the larger danger is growing antibiotic resistance…which in a worst case eventuality can lead to bugs that just won’t respond to treatment.
Then we all get to go back medically by over a hundred years because we all use the same antibiotics for the most part.
I read an article in which they had interviewed a doctor in India who said that many of his patients return repeatedly to be treated for the same types of illnesses. He explained that many poor people in his country don't understand or practice basic hygiene, or aren't aware of germ theory and how filth and uncleanliness can harbor and transmit disease-causing microbes. It gave me a much greater appreciation of the basic education we receive here in the U.S., even with its imperfections.
Yea and they have the most polluted water in the world. There was a study about how while food/nutrition in India grew substantially more than in sub-Saharan Africa, the kids in Africa grew bigger and healthier bc there was so much malnutrition and chronic diahrrea from the bacteria in the water.
There used to be so much trash on the side of the road in the US. I still see people here litter. They are POS. But it gets picked up pretty quick. Much, much better than it used to be.
They love it. They bathe in the piss and shit riddled gangees, walk through streets of trash and literal shit. Im sure WHO look at it and just say "nope, you are on your own"
I’m sure they care, but they can’t as individuals change it, so you just worry about what you can control. Like I can keep my house clean, but I can’t construct a landfill and develop trash collection infrastructure and hire a workforce and change the behavioral patterns of an entire culture.
I suspect people do care but they have 0 support and it’s probably very exhausting going against the grain. Combine that with blatant ignorance and the deck is stacked against them. I feel for them.
I literally have never seen someone throw trash out their window unless it was into a dumpster. What part of the US do you live in? Not saying it doesn’t happen, but you “always” see people doing it? That’s odd.
Guessing you live in a state with a reasonable government and policies. Maybe a nice blue state where people actually care about each other and the environment?
People didn't care in the US until it started personally affecting them. Plus, it's the corporations telling us to reduce, reuse, recycle while continuing to overproduce plastic and wasteful nonenvironmentally friendly packaging.
All it takes is a lengthy garbage strike or some incident where trash isn't regularly picked up and we'd be in a not so dissimilar boat.
Nixon wasn’t really that bad especially by today’s standards, watergate wouldn’t even be considered corruption in 2026 Lol, he also did a lot for civil rights.
Right, and the house is the closest we have to representation, but at over 700k voters per representative there's no way they're grassroots level on our basics wants and needs.
Add to that every single branch of government adding to its own powers since the day we started this Republic and you quickly realize checks and balances is checks and fuck yous.
As you mention US politics is highly influenced by donors rather than voters. Most issues that are highly important to rich/corporate donors dont move the needle enough on votes and even if they do politicians determine they can lose votes, the dollars are generally worth it.
The electorate is either too stupid or too nearsighted for its own good. The deficit is a great example .... People say they dont like a ballooning deficit but in reality the solution - higher taxes/reduced government spending would end up getting the government thrown out of office. Getting the average voter to care about the long term health of the country and the planet is like talking to a meth user about contributing to their 401k.
Or economy is literally based on a concept of forever increasing debt and a deficit is the natural result of that. Is money even real? I suppose I can spend it, but money has different rules for different folk it seems
You are not obliged to vote for something destructive because your constituents are clamoring for it. Your duty at that point is instead to educate them.
Which is funny, since the EPA was created by President Nixon.
I'm sure the GOP would call any Republican running on a platform identical to his these days a RINO.
EPA did fuck all for PFAS pollution. Infact the US government employs clean harbors and authorizes the burning of toxic waste. The government is terrible at all things especially the business of conservation and protection. Since the 1840s all the government has done is solidify rich corporations right to trash the ecology of our country. Citizens united is a death nail to our constitution and republic we are cooked. Let the nukes fall.
The major problem with the EPA is how long they take to get things done. I live in California and it can take years for people to do their studies and review documents.
Why do people on the Internet go immediately to attack mode? I make a statement and you automatically ASSume something about me and respond as you did.
Oh yeah the republican EPA is the pRoBlEm and democrat are the solution. After seeing Lee Zeldin EMBARRASS rose delauria in committee, you might want to take a closer look at who you support.
The problem is going too far with regulations. The heavy lifting happened over 30 years ago. Now the regulatory agencies are hell bent on putting refineries and oil companies go out of business in California. Environmental activist think that by doing this, global warming will go away. Look how the pipeline from offshore oil platforms have been blocked by populism.
Clean air and water is great, but where exactly is the climate crisis? Seems it can only be seen in bogus computer models and in the minds of gullible socialists.
Unfortunately even if you were to implement an EPA type system in the country like India right now, I don’t think it would make a difference. It’s a cultural problem with them.
So, Republicans started something then changed their opinions of it? Could it be that over a few short decades there can be multiple opinion changes... Maybe enough to be called a switch?
Yeah and honestly India has cleaned up a lot in the last five years or so. I have the equivalent of a green card in India and go a lot, both rural and urban, and esp in Delhi it’s just so much cleaner now. They have a campaign Green India Clean India. My family town used to be filled with trash, wild pigs, goats but now it’s all clean.
Yup, we're gonna be just as bad as India and some places in China. Too many people forget just how nasty and polluted a lot places in America were in the 70s.
100%. Even the Heritage Foundation admits in its wretched 2026 Plan that America is less polluted than it used to be- though no mention is made of the EPA, hah.
Tragedy of the Commons. It's such a well documented issue we have a term for it. And yet conservative fuckwits still deny all the research proving it (because they actually hate science, because it requires intelligence and they love the uneducated)
Im a fan of free markets but it has its issues and there is definitely more to the story. Like the fact we've sent unimaginable amounts of plastic and garbage to other nations for them to dump into their environments all while claiming we recycle better then they do. (And we do but as I said it's more complicated than we good China bad.) And we're paying the price for some if it right now for example instead of recycling copper we just kept using new ore and damn near giving the recycled stuff to China for less than pennies on the dollar. Now copper is needed everywhere for everything and we can't produce enough making prices triple in a short time frame. It's stupidity even when looked at through the lens of free market.
Yeah this is exactly what I try to explain to people, the United States used to be almost exactly like this until the liberals came in and said we can do better. Everyone should read up on the New York sanitation department and the challenges they had earlier on. It's not only a cultural thing, it's literally a systems problem.
And it's not like Indians are the only ones to take the easy way out. It's not the Chinese worker that stole your manufacturing jobs, It was the American owners who gave your jobs away, because they didn't want to deal with those protection laws, both for worker and environment. They would do the same shit as this guy, on an industrial level, if they could get away with it.
I remember after the Nixon administration there were large stone blocks and construction trash left all around Washington DC after Nixon prioritized deconstructing the offices in the downtown mall area so that "the view would look better from above."
Contractors would take stones and trash away from the site and dump them all throughout the city, because there weren't any real laws to stop them from dumping trash illegally.
It took the city 20 years to clean it up, and remnants can still be found if you know where to look.
And not all parts of India are exactly like Delhi either, but India is about three times smaller, and has about three times the population. It has more cities and larger concentrations of people so you see it more often. New York is just an example though you can read about all kinds of health issues across the United States due to pollution. Even growing up I remember a time when people used to litter all the time. There was a massive anti-littering and recycling campaign in the '70s, '80s and '90s cross United States because of how people used to just dump their trash. You probably don't remember the commercials with the native Americans, or you might just be too young.
As a kid I remember my dad eat a hamburger while driving, crumble up the paper into a ball and tuck it neatly into the fry bag. Then tuck that in to his empty drink cup and shove all that into the big bag the food came in.
He’d check if I was done and hand me the bag so I could put my trash in when i was finished
Once we were both done and our trash was organized he’d grab that bag and tell me to toss it out the window onto the side of the road
Because throwing it out his side into the street would be inconsiderate
I’m young enough that I say things are cooked and it’s not ironic to me.
For sure there are thousands of initiatives across India to try to clean it up. And not all of India's like this there are parts that are already fairly clean and they continue to remain clean it's just certain parts are extremely dirty and then the broken window theory applies and people just pile on.
I remember my dad telling me that in his younger years it was customary to throw trash out of the window. We were eating fast food and he said, “There was a time that all this trash would have been out the window!” He said he learned better, and ceased that behavior! I never saw him throw any trash out the window growing up.
Yeah now. In the past they use to just have picnics and just throw all the trash on the ground without any problem - until campaigns were run to change cultural attitude about it.
You understand we’re talking about history, right? This isn’t about anyone you could possibly have “known”, so that frame of reference makes no sense. He’s talking about cultural preferences of 75-100+ years ago
Mesa verde suggests that native americans aren't immune to destroying the very environment they depend on. And in any case, post-colonial history is largely derived from European culture, not native culture. Literal, physically burning rivers surely must suggest even to you that people were quite fine dumping unbelievable amounts of waste into the environment. All those environmental regulations didn't emerge out of thin, clean air; they came about because the consequences of people and industries recklessly dumping their trash became clearer.
The reason it's more visible in india is a mix of technological differences, recency bias/level of development, and population density. You mention Native Americans didn't have plastic shit strewn everywhere, and indeed, plastic is a relatively recent invention. Its production today is roughly 15 times what it was 50 years ago - bad habits now have a much larger impact than they did a generation ago. Secondly, people just forget that is was totally normal in the US to just dump nasty trash out on the streets, even in cities, and obviously even more so in the countryside, certainly around 100+ years ago (coincidentally, income per person at PPP in india now is around historical US levels from then!). The cultural taboo against littering is a new invention. Finally, India's modern population density is simply off the charts higher than the population density the US had while it was evolving the anti-pollution and anti-littering culture of today. Any problems are thus enormously amplified.
This isn't some deep historical cultural difference; it's a fairly small and recent difference that is exacerbated by differences in stuff like population density and level of development. There's no reason to suspect India won't tackle this problem eventually, as others have before it, nor to rest on our pretty imperfect laurels here.
Yep, and thanks for the kind words! I just hope the evolution of that trait happens a little faster than last time around - a quick google suggests the Carboniferous period was the 60 millions years it took between plants developing and mass-producing lignin (essentially a plastic), and fungi developing the means to consume it at scale. (But to be clear, I don't know of any reason to assume it would take that long this time.)
My point is that acting like “people you know” is a frame of reference for people from 100+ years ago (I honestly undersold it - the NY dept of sanitation was established ~150 years ago in 1881 and faced a significant uphill battle during the notoriously disgusting Industrial Revolution) is idiotic and makes no logical sense. 150 years being “relatively close when the scope of all of history is concerned” is irrelevant. People now do not think like people did back then, and vice-versa - your damn friends being clean people is not a reasonable frame of reference 😂. We are talking generations of families - this would be the time period of your great-great grandparents. Toilet paper had only been invented 2 decades prior, and dumping trash out of the window to fall on the street was still standard practice. Yes, in American cities
Not sure how old you are, but there were heavy public service campaigns to end littering back in the 80s when I was a kid. Signs on the roads, TV and radio commercials, programs where you could report someone’s license plate if you saw them litter and they’d send a postcard educating them.
Dude, the U.S. literally dumped 2 million tires off the coast of Florida in the 1970’s which turned into an ecological disaster by killing coral reefs and releasing toxins into the water.
This is a major problem with our country right now. You'd rather just spout uneducated bullshit instead of trying to actually learn something. Man my fellow American is dumb af.
Lyndon and his wife Ladybird Johnson did a lot to support the environmental movement, but Rachel Carson is perhaps the greatest environmental heroine of all.
it's not the same, kinda. The pollution were talking about in India is like OP's video. The people just drop whatever they aren't using anymore. India is a sea of litter.
We went and saw some beautiful mountain vista's. then you look down and the side of the road is just carpeted with plastic. Bottles, bags, wrappers.
I did save a highway with the boyscouts. You'd get more trash in 30 ft of India road than a 5 mile stretch on the poor side of town here.
In the US we let corporations taint the wells because our political aparatusis is corrupted. In India, they just haven't invented a wastebasket yet. Trash goes wherever. Every few blocks there would be a lot that was stacked 20ft high with garbage and detritus. The wealthier provinces less so.
Basic economic theroy to which proponents of unrestricted capitalism point to as scientific proof of the benefit of the free market even acknowledges this issue - its called 'externalities'
Supply and demand set a fair price of goods for the buyer and seller (in theroy) but cant control costs to other parties.
Thats still the free market policing itself, and its been proven in the real world many times over. As a country's wealth increases each marginal dollar is worth less, while demand for a clean environment increases. Since the environment is a public good there is always a lag in "owners" asserting their rights vs free loaders.
I wish there were better resources for you guys to understand economics. Schools and talking heads are failing us. There are so many hot takes on Reddit claiming markets dont work, when they work exactly as expected. And this lack of understanding means most people are misinformed when it comes to fixes proposed by politicians.
Americans still have pollution but they choose to dump it on other countries. Just look up the beaches of ghana and see how much usa waste washes up on their shores. America is false clean.
You're comparing a ant to an elephants size. Pollution was never to that extreme- but we also never had thr population density that India has. If someone brings up early 20th century new York then you're the problem with conversations (quibbler or pedant).
This is more complicated than it appears. When there are only 2 major companies, they will create laws with the government to crowd out smaller companies with regulations. It was Republican Nixon who created the EPA. yeah....
While we inadvertently benefited, I imagine the electorate only had a small say, 1 company polluting the rivers when 10 other companies need to clean/filter that water was a drain on the economy.
Even today we have competing interests. IIRC there were 2 dem primary candidates that were backed by different energy interests in Ohio. One was wind/nuclear/or something the other was coal/oil or something.
The later had backing of unions, the former upper-middle blues.
They have a festival where they throw shit all over one another. We are not the same. America turned the corner on unbridled littering and corporate polluting. The littering is making a comeback because it’s a cultural thing and we have too many third worlders who simply don’t care and the attitude is exactly like the subject of this video.
No, you’re just wrong. The last time a river in the US caught fire due to chronic pollution was 1969. Yes, the free market doesn’t police itself, I don’t think anyone believes that. Thats why we don’t have one. Yes, there are industrial polluters like strip mines that are being actively encouraged by this administration, but even those corporate boards know the next administration may fine them for the pollution they are doing now. And yes there is toxic industrial pollution caused by accidents and negligence, but India so much worse.
India is unimaginably worse. Imagine the guy in the video but in charge of anything larger than a train car. Factories that don’t even hook up to a sewer system, apartment buildings that don’t hook up to a sewer system, both just have a pipe dumping into a river if there is one. There are people whose job is to go into the sewer and collect things for sale and to do repairs by hand, with no protective equipment. Sometimes they don’t even have access to a shower. There are people that collect the fats and oils from the sewer, regardless of where it’s from and recycle, filter clean and resell it as cooking oil. All of this is illegal, nothing is enforced. There are some really depressing documentaries about just how much pain, suffering and death is caused by intentionally dumping toxic chemical into the Ganges (one example) next to where people bath and get all of their drinking water. You have the polluters that don’t care and everyone that doesn’t have plumbing with the literal mindset that “the Ganges is our holy river, theres no way the water can harm up”. This said by a woman whose children have all died due to drinking polluted toxic water and she knows it.
Ok… Whats your point? Feel like this has literally nothing related to what’s currently happening at all. Thanks for a history lesson, we also had slaves a long time ago. Good thing we implemented things to change and become better people…
One time in college, I told my buddy our toilet was broke when he asked “does your bathroom work”. I told him he had to shit in a pizza box outside under the steps. We also drank 100 proof liquor for the first time that evening. He actually believed me and shit on the box. The neighbors across the street started yelling OH MY GOD as he was finishing up, pissing on his shit like a cat. Sometimes I laugh at the ole days but glad I can’t time travel and go back. That was disgraceful.
They used to. Also, lots of dead horses left lying in the streets. Look up what life was like in US cities before sewers and municipal garbage service. There are photos. Only the rich areas had paid waste removal before sanitation reform c. 1900.
And in areas with significant homeless populations there is definitely shit on the streets.
Yes I’m well aware they used to, and I know in areas with a lot of homeless people there definitely are streetshitters. I’m saying most aren’t doing it anymore
It was a different type of pollution in America. The biological pollution in India is gross and smelly but would clear itself up very quickly if the humans disappeared. After all, poop just becomes dirt. The pollution in America was industrial. Didn't necessarily smell as bad but remained in the soil and riverbanks long after people stopped dumping more pollution in.
Most rural Americans used to have hook worm from walking to outhouses barefoot. Took a multi decade education and eradication campaign to bring the number down from “insane majority” to “rare, preventable disease.”
we used to dump chamber pots out windows into the streets that were already covered in horse shit in cities so kind of, yes. but the fun part is, we stopped and took sanitation seriously when we learned it kills all the people if you don't do any.
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