The United States and the Philippines are two completely different places, each with their own rich culture. One question has come up a lot recently: which one do I like better. I have really been analyzing my relationship with the Philippines, and I have been relating it to the United States. I have come to the following conclusion: The United States does a few things better than the Philippines, the Philippines does a few things better than the United States. Most things, however, are a simple choice of preference and familiarity. For example, who has the best food system? The Philippines. Who has a better transportation system? The United States. Who has better food, or desserts, or college system, or 90% of the things you can think of? That answer depends of where home is. People naturally enjoy the things they are familiar with. It’s why I will always take a slice of pie over halo-halo, and why every Filipino thinks I’m crazy for saying that. It’s also why everyone considers the scenery in their hometown underrated.
Therefore, I prefer the United States. But, if I were born in the Philippines, I would prefer the Philippines. And if I were born in India, I would prefer India. However, I chose to spend this year outside of my comfort zone, and I chose to live in the Philippines. I choose to stay every day when I don’t fly back to my comfortable life in the United States.
This does lead to a more important issue. The issue is the few things that are actually legitimately better in one country than the other. It hurts my national pride a little to say it, but the way we get food in the United States is overcomplicated and vastly inferior to the Philippines. The US would do very well for itself if we stopped engineering our fruits to look bright and colorful 12 months a year. Rather, we should be selling 90% of our fruit only when it is in season. Our fruits would go back to actually tasting like fruit. Also, if the US government stopped paying everyone to do nothing, people would find jobs for themselves. Jobs like hunting deer and selling the meat at a market, or raising ducks for slaughter. This would greatly increase the availability of meat that has never seen a slaughter house.
Another thing they do better in the Philippines is small scale banking. In the United States many people rely solely on banks and payday advance loans when the need money. In the Philippines, there is another very attractive option: Co-operatives. Basically, co-op is a community bank where you can invest your money or take out a loan. It is only available to a certain group of people, usually just one barangay. (A barangay is a sub-city usually large enough for one small elementary school.) The key to co-ops is that the money stays in the community, rather than go to banks, who will decide what everyone’s interest rate is. Since the co-ops are made for community well-being instead of shear profit, they are able to offer almost similar lending and investing interest rates, with only a small difference to go towards paying one or two employees. Credit unions come close to accomplishing this goal, but they tend to be inclusive and drastically underutilized.
When I return to the United States, I intend on supporting the implementation of some of these ideas. I think both of these ideas have huge possibilities in an economically struggling city like Kingston, NY.
I am encouraged by beer, but not in the way beer usually offers me encouragement. When Americans and Brits visited mainland Europe, they realized that Belgian and German beer was vastly superior to the stuff we had in America. Next, people started brewing craft beef in micro-breweries. Now, American craft beer is on the same level as European beer(Of course, I think it better for the reasons stated in the first paragraph).
The tricky thing for me has been to try to introduce American improvements to the Philippines. Nobody wants to be told by an outsider an aspect of their culture is inferior. However I will, with all due respect to the other 99% of Philippine culture, give one quick example. The addition of more organized physical recreation into Philippine culture could do wonders for community health and camaraderie.
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