I am reminded of Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs and Steel, which opened with Yali, a native from Papua New Guinea, asking Diamond why white people developed so much cargo and Yali's black people had little of their own.

PBS echoes this post, saying that cargo is regarded as evidence of the white man's power.

Diamond spends the whole of GGS answering that question, and it comes down to geography and food production, which led to diversified societies which were able to generate stratified specialization.

There's loads more, of course, but I so loved this post's title.

Cargo cults always make me think of this bit from Transmetropolitan:

When they're not around, I put the TV on. Purely out of curiosity, you understand. Up here, we can snatch some forty thousand channels out of the air. Most of them, of course, are still showing CSI and LAW AND ORDER. There are twelve different channels showing LAW AND ORDER 24 hours a day. In some countries, Jerry Orbach has become a cargo-cult figure. They don't understand the language or much of the situations. They comprehend only that Jerry Orbach is immortal. They watch and divine from the show that he outlives the young gods who are selected to be his assistants. Criminals fall. DAs change. Assistants fade away. Jerry Orbach is forever. Jerry Orbach is, in fact, some kind of avenging God-King who will hunt and incarcerate Scum until the end of time.