The basics of life in Costa Rica
Jan. 7th, 2025 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glowingfishI should probably mention a few things about Costa Rica!
The first thing is that Costa Rica is a "middle income country", at least that is what I would call it.
But what does that mean?
Basically, for me, it means that I don't see a lot of extreme poverty, but that things are a little bit more cracked/jury-rigged than I am usually used to. But also, some of that is cultural.
There are a few "shantytowns" or "precarios" in Costa Rica, places built out of spare lumber and tin, but they are less common than homeless camps are in the United States, from what I have seen. There is also not anything like a problem with obvious malnutrition (and any malnutrition that does occur is probably due to fast food/junk food). There is also probably close to 100% literacy. There are schools and medical clinics everywhere.
The big difference that I've noticed is that a lot of the infrastructure is older. Bus lines, of which there are many, sometimes use old American school buses. Sidewalks disappear. Traffic has to alternative over one lane bridges. San Jose's passenger train network is based on a century year old freight railroad.
Some of the difference is cultural. I especially notice this with transportation: there aren't routes or schedules for the buses. The buses aren't operated by a central transit agency. If you want to figure out where to go, you just have to kind of...know. But this isn't due to a lack of technology or money, at least sometimes. I walked into a small grocery store in a little mountain town, and the cashier had a 30 inch flat panel monitor for her register. But the train stations don't even have a dot matrix display for arrival or departure time of trains. Part of the jury-rigging of infrastructure just seems to be a cultural thing.
The first thing is that Costa Rica is a "middle income country", at least that is what I would call it.
But what does that mean?
Basically, for me, it means that I don't see a lot of extreme poverty, but that things are a little bit more cracked/jury-rigged than I am usually used to. But also, some of that is cultural.
There are a few "shantytowns" or "precarios" in Costa Rica, places built out of spare lumber and tin, but they are less common than homeless camps are in the United States, from what I have seen. There is also not anything like a problem with obvious malnutrition (and any malnutrition that does occur is probably due to fast food/junk food). There is also probably close to 100% literacy. There are schools and medical clinics everywhere.
The big difference that I've noticed is that a lot of the infrastructure is older. Bus lines, of which there are many, sometimes use old American school buses. Sidewalks disappear. Traffic has to alternative over one lane bridges. San Jose's passenger train network is based on a century year old freight railroad.
Some of the difference is cultural. I especially notice this with transportation: there aren't routes or schedules for the buses. The buses aren't operated by a central transit agency. If you want to figure out where to go, you just have to kind of...know. But this isn't due to a lack of technology or money, at least sometimes. I walked into a small grocery store in a little mountain town, and the cashier had a 30 inch flat panel monitor for her register. But the train stations don't even have a dot matrix display for arrival or departure time of trains. Part of the jury-rigging of infrastructure just seems to be a cultural thing.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-08 08:22 pm (UTC)The buses aren't operated by a central transit agency.
I mean, neither (outside London) are ours, thanks to Thatcherite deregulation in the 1980s. My thoughts on that get too political for here, but suffice to say I envy London.
But the train stations don't even have a dot matrix display for arrival or departure time of trains.
That, on the other hand, we do have. Ouch. I remember before those signs existed, and waiting in the snow at a small unstaffed station could be a bit heart-in-mouth until you actually saw the train appear!
no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 10:58 pm (UTC)In most US cities, city buses are run either by the city, or by a local transit agency, and they are usually very stable, good, unionized jobs.
On the negative side, in the US, many transit agencies are run as social services, and not with the idea of mass transit---one reason they aren't privatized, because it is hard to make money off of them.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-11 12:12 am (UTC)But anyway... the situation over here is complicated. In a few large cities and city-regions, you have a central body which co-ordinates bus services but indeed doesn't actually own them. These bodies (eg Transport for West Midlands, TfWM, which covers the greater Birmingham region) are also responsible for administering concessionary fares. It's not just buses: local rail and (where relevant, including for TfWM) tram services are also co-ordinated by these bodies.
A very small number of councils do own bus operators. This is because they did so before deregulation in 1986 and have grandfather rights* to continue doing so. For example, Nottingham City Transport is owned by the city council. As another example, Merseytravel (Liverpool area) owns and operates the Mersey Ferries.
Outside big cities, and also inside some big cities that don't have the co-ordinating bodies I mentioned -- Bristol is a major example -- it's not far off a free-for-all. Any company that meets the basic standards for safety, trained staff and so on can run a bus route as long as it's not doing so in an anti-competitive way. They can also alter or even withdraw routes at relatively short notice.
The distinction between unionised and non-unionised jobs is less clear-cut in the UK than it is in the US. ("Union shops" would be illegal here, for example.) That said, public transport is quite highly unionised. Very strongly so on the railways, where strikes can come close to shutting down entire parts of the network. Less so on the buses, and although bus strikes do happen they're fairly rare.
Things are different again in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but this comment is long enough already!
* The term doesn't have the potentially uncomfortable connotations in the UK that it can in the US.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-12 05:36 am (UTC)One of the reasons that "socialism" isn't popular in the United States is that...socialism is so successful, people don't realize things are socialized. "
In the United States, there are about 500 airports with scheduled passenger flights. Of those, about 1 is privately operated.
But in the US, people don't usually think of government owned airports as "socialism", they just think of it as an obvious fact of life.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-13 12:17 am (UTC)We'd generally draw a distinction here between socialism and socialised, I think, except that we don't use the latter much. One of the most common tell-tales of an American on Twitter pretending to be British is if they start referring to the NHS as "socialised medicine". That term is virtually never used by actual British people.