> The thing I resent most is the terms Global North and Global South ... because white people invaded 200 years ago ... It is completely arbitrary, political and divisive.

There is nothing "arbitrary" about the classification, and it was created by aid groups originally based upon socioeconomic factors, later adopted by the UN and others as the term third-world went out of favour after the Cold War ended. It got the North/South bifurcation purely because most of the one set were Northern countries, and most of the other set were Southern countries, and most people don't have a defensiveness about the words North or South and aren't offended by it.

As an aside, acting as if the colonial countries aren't empirically successful because you want to push some umbrage is just super weird. Australia and New Zealand are both highly developed rich countries, regardless of whatever your rural area's infrastructure is like.

Countries in the Global South desperately want to be classified in that grouping because it means development funds and benefits that aren't available to Global North countries. China has rapidly risen over the past couple of decades and it's getting hard to still call it a developing country (and its foreign aid intake has been rapidly tapering off as it industrializes), though to be fair, it still has a GDP per capita 1/4 Australia or New Zealand. Similarly Russia is mighty close to losing Global North standing.

And for that matter South Korea and Japan are a part of the Global North. I guess they didn't get your memo that it's only for the white countries or some such social justice prattle.

And once I get to your final paragraph I'm firmly convinced you were just trolling, or at least I honestly hope you were. Delineating the world by socioeconomic conditions doesn't denote allies or enemies, and this bizarre take is nonsensical and has zero relevance to anything but some contrived taking of offense. The mere notion that it is "arbitrary" is so fantastically ridiculous that you have to be having a laugh.

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shirro 4 days ago | parent [-]

Can anyone explain to me convincingly why Singapore is in the Global South on development and economic grounds?

I suspect the Global South at least as far as Asia is concerned is almost entirely about global political alignment.

Countries in the US alliance appear to be labelled North. Singapore is highly developed and like the rest of ASEAN is non-aligned. China is a global superpower and people align to them. SK, Japan, Aus and NZ are strongly US aligned for better or worse.

	▲	llm_nerd 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Because it fit when the classification originated and has never asked to be reclassified. South Korea was also considered a developing country and was cast as the global South back in the early days, but diplomatically and through its membership in the OECD became a developed/Global North country. If Singapore is offended it can ask UNCTAD and get reassigned. Ultimately it largely doesn't even matter. It's a casual shorthand that in the overwhelming majority of cases is an accurate split between developed and developing/poorer countries. Some tiny city-state counterpoint isn't really convincing. Orgs like UNCTAD use it to high-level report on progress in lifting up developing nations. As to alliances, ignoring that you're completely backtracking on your original post regarding that (you know the one where Australia is actual pals with all its neighbours and the N/S thing is a big lie), for obvious reasons the world's most prosperous countries tend to have common interests. Not to mention that a number of countries with a shared history (e.g. the commonwealth and the colonies) ended up being some of the richest countries.