The real issue is far more controversial than that. The issue is not even necessarily the corrupt elites but the culture. And specifically that any new elites that might displace the existing one would just do the same.
Think of Afghanistan as an example, where the US really did create a modern tolerant state ... for a while. Locals didn't want to keep it going, or at least, not enough. Because the idea that there aren't very wealthy Afghans is just wrong. There's entire neighborhoods in Kabul full of luxury villas with people going into fancy restaurants constantly. That's effectively what the Taliban are fighting for.
I wonder if there is any difference between the corrupt elites that control impoverished countries and the corrupt elites that control the biggest corporations. If the CEOs had full control over government (which seems to be their aim, and they are succeeding), what would they do with that power I wonder?
There may hope for some AI assisted governance software to improve things? Kind of like how Uber type apps have made if harder for cabbies to rip you off.
Unless you're gonna no-true-Scotsman this, plenty of wealthy Christians are deeply unpleasant and selfish people. Going to church does not make people good.
The “richest country in the world” is already supposedly “Christian”. Interestingly enough, Christian nonprofits in international aid space are reporting historically low contributions (heard on a recent Russell Moore show). It turns out when secular leadership wants to become insular, many of the religious follow suit.
I donate part of my wealth to the poor every year and whatever more I feel is adequate based on a code of law e.g religion. I am just an individual. If I was a multi billion dollar conglomerate that incentive would be much higher. To bring the world out of poverty is to enrich all of humanity and my work would benefit from that as more people would benefit from the technology I built. But if the incentive is to spend everything and borrow more to build data centers to fuel addictive services and exploit people then this is quite a disservice to mankind.
Quite the stretch when you compare a bike to trillions wasted on products that 1) don't generally benefit humanity 2) could actually be used for real research instead of preserving an ad racket.
But, yeah. Keep comparing the egregious billionaires looking to lock out competition and hold on to their billions with all their might! Clearly it has to be the bike or board games the normies own, though. FFS.
Yes also huge problems and many other industries to speak of. Unfortunately as technology dominates and the most valuable company in the world is producing GPUs we know where it's all headed. I think while gambling and narcotics are very addictive and terrible we have overlooked technology and it's crept up on us in a bad way. Screens are horribly addictive. Maybe even worse than those things mentioned because you can be indoctrinated from birth. Because the cost is almost zero and continuous and the advancements are only trying to drive further addiction e.g Meta's heavy investment in AR and VR. AR/VR plus AI is basically the recipe for virtual worlds which people will prefer over real life. So we'll become even more disillusioned to the worlds problems because we'll prefer to escape to some virtual reality where all our desires are serviced.
Population numbers in all areas where this is widespread exploded after the introduction of efficient agriculture from outside. Like if lack of food was the root problem, we would expect population in these places to be decreasing, not increasing, right? Something other than food scarcity is at play here.
That's a logical fallacy. Population growth can outgrow food supply thanks to high fertility and access to better hygiene and medical treatment from outside combined with a lack of birth control. So you would still see population growth, but a growing fraction of this population could be malnourished.
That being said, the most common reason is simply war. If you look at the famine in Sudan right now, it is a direct consequence of the civil war (which also happens to be the biggest and bloodiest war by far in the world right now). Lost crops from weather or diseases can also restrict local food production, but it only ever really turns into a problem when armed groups prevent outside food supplies from moving to affected areas like the military in Sudan does right now.
Last time I commented something very similar thinking it was the least controversial no brainer thing and multiple people reacted as if it was some Leninist ragebait lol
Wow! This has aged really, really badly. 50 years and many billions of dollars later and we're neither on the Moon or Mars or have significantly enhanced the distribution of food to those in need, let alone international cooperation.
Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth.
It didn't age badly at all. This prediction was dead-on accurate. The widespread use of satellite monitoring of the Earth's surface has paid huge dividends for humanity in all sorts of ways including better and cheaper food production. Also the GPS system alone has been hugely important for every human system that involves navigating from one place on the Earth to another, which of course includes food transport as well as many many other things relevant to people's lives and health.
People in other countries starve because the people in charge of them are evil not because the people with resources lack benevolence. If you've ever tried to do charity in a foreign country with a foreign culture and language you would be aware of the issues. No amount of outside money in the world could fix these problems. In fact they will make it worse. People need to grow up.
In the United States, starvation doesn't exist so we've expanded the definition to include more people because we really care to feed people. If you've been to countries where actual starvation is a possibility, you'd understand. So tired of this self hating unaware self flagellation.
This is seen in that starvation is effectively solved in the USa (and now runs the other direction; the poor in the US often tend toward obesity instead of starvation).
The “solution” to countries with starvation today is likely massive full-scale invasion and domination; something the modern world doesn’t have an appetite for.
Sure. As if the massive full-scale invasion and domination of Iraq and Afghanistan worked so well. And throwing in more firepower and loosening the rules of engagement won't fix it either.
It boggles the mind how anybody over the age of 20 can think this way.
Can you give an example of that working? The fact is that the 'modern world' - at least before recent phenomena - created by far the greatest expansion of freedom and prosperity, and greatest reduction in poverty, in human history. Way, way beyond anything else, including colonial eras.
Also, when ideas like yours are tried, it turns out that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and powers - including the US - serve their own interests. How could you imagine otherwise at this point?
And without democracy, they can't help it - self-determination provides better outcomes because the people who are subject to the 'help' have a seat at the table and they have power. The issues that others dismiss or make secondary (or tertiary) are the ones the self-determined people can insist on in a democracy.
> modern world doesn’t have an appetite for
It's not a lack of appetite, it's counter to our goals of freedom and self-determination, and all experience of prosperity.
Yeah America has no ability to colonize other countries. We are not unified enough as a culture to do that. Look at the debacle of Afghanistan.
Like right now there is starvation in Nigeria because Islamofascists from the north are hunting Christians in the south. Exactly how will any amount of American money convince religious zealots to stop being zealots? If anything, a large influx of money from infidels will just make the clerics claim that their victims are foreign operatives. There is nothing we can do other than pray or stage a full scale military invasion. At that point we can either choose to fully administer the place (unsustainable) or we would have to destroy the apparatus that made the situation possible, which is going to look a helluva lot like a genocide. An impossible situation and only one of many across the globe.
Their fancy computer's value is a mote compared to the billions of dollars being poured into AI software and infrastructure. It's a dead horse that shouldn't be beaten anymore. Individual choices are so insignificant as to be effectively meaningless in contexts like this.
Their fancy computer is the tip of a trillion-dollar spear, forged by our precursors who were trying to invent new and innovative ways to blow up half the world while keeping that half from blowing our half up.
There are no clean hands here. Any attempt to claim the moral high ground by dictating how other people should spend their money (or their machine cycles) will meet with the usual degree of success.
That is the cart before the horse. Families, and women specifically, need stability and reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive before they will stop having 4.
No, it is definitely the cart after the horse - kindly check basic facts. The babies are surviving thanks to declining child mortality - population of regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa has grown from 434 million to ~1.3 billion in the last few decades.
Basically your assertion that "reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive" is completely and utterly wrong. Desperate family planning is needed, but religion stands in the way. No amount of international aid will fix this fundamental problem.
Capital misallocation do be like that, but I don't think that capital would be feeding children in the Congo if it wasn't for Facebook's latest folly.
The issue is mostly the corrupt elites that control these impoverished counties, not foreign aid or lack thereof.
The real issue is far more controversial than that. The issue is not even necessarily the corrupt elites but the culture. And specifically that any new elites that might displace the existing one would just do the same.
Think of Afghanistan as an example, where the US really did create a modern tolerant state ... for a while. Locals didn't want to keep it going, or at least, not enough. Because the idea that there aren't very wealthy Afghans is just wrong. There's entire neighborhoods in Kabul full of luxury villas with people going into fancy restaurants constantly. That's effectively what the Taliban are fighting for.
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I wonder if there is any difference between the corrupt elites that control impoverished countries and the corrupt elites that control the biggest corporations. If the CEOs had full control over government (which seems to be their aim, and they are succeeding), what would they do with that power I wonder?
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Are we feeding any impoverished Congo families? The problem isn't just 'the elites', its us.
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There may hope for some AI assisted governance software to improve things? Kind of like how Uber type apps have made if harder for cabbies to rip you off.
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Unless you're gonna no-true-Scotsman this, plenty of wealthy Christians are deeply unpleasant and selfish people. Going to church does not make people good.
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The “richest country in the world” is already supposedly “Christian”. Interestingly enough, Christian nonprofits in international aid space are reporting historically low contributions (heard on a recent Russell Moore show). It turns out when secular leadership wants to become insular, many of the religious follow suit.
You cannot be both a good Christian and a good Capitalist. It is an "or", not an "and".
Christian capitalist is an oxymoron.
No doubt you have a nice bike or computer or you spend money on something often like movies or board games or something.
Do you argue that money should all go to feeding the hungry?
I donate part of my wealth to the poor every year and whatever more I feel is adequate based on a code of law e.g religion. I am just an individual. If I was a multi billion dollar conglomerate that incentive would be much higher. To bring the world out of poverty is to enrich all of humanity and my work would benefit from that as more people would benefit from the technology I built. But if the incentive is to spend everything and borrow more to build data centers to fuel addictive services and exploit people then this is quite a disservice to mankind.
Humanity is enormously rich. Compare to the state of humanity 200y ago. Pretty much everyone was struggling to survive, to get food and some heat.
Nowadays even the poorest countries are not starving, unless there is a war going on.
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Poor argumentation. If I spend 25 billion on movies and still have enough money to never care you should ask me again.
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Quite the stretch when you compare a bike to trillions wasted on products that 1) don't generally benefit humanity 2) could actually be used for real research instead of preserving an ad racket.
But, yeah. Keep comparing the egregious billionaires looking to lock out competition and hold on to their billions with all their might! Clearly it has to be the bike or board games the normies own, though. FFS.
It's always so easy to argue about spending someone else's money, especially if you can present it as a moral crusade, isn't it?
Gambling market in US has $100bn+ revenue. Tobacco sales in US is $70bn+
People starve and (almost) no one cares.
Yes also huge problems and many other industries to speak of. Unfortunately as technology dominates and the most valuable company in the world is producing GPUs we know where it's all headed. I think while gambling and narcotics are very addictive and terrible we have overlooked technology and it's crept up on us in a bad way. Screens are horribly addictive. Maybe even worse than those things mentioned because you can be indoctrinated from birth. Because the cost is almost zero and continuous and the advancements are only trying to drive further addiction e.g Meta's heavy investment in AR and VR. AR/VR plus AI is basically the recipe for virtual worlds which people will prefer over real life. So we'll become even more disillusioned to the worlds problems because we'll prefer to escape to some virtual reality where all our desires are serviced.
Michigan has plenty of water. But California still has droughts sometimes. Amazing (if you're 14).
Population numbers in all areas where this is widespread exploded after the introduction of efficient agriculture from outside. Like if lack of food was the root problem, we would expect population in these places to be decreasing, not increasing, right? Something other than food scarcity is at play here.
That's a logical fallacy. Population growth can outgrow food supply thanks to high fertility and access to better hygiene and medical treatment from outside combined with a lack of birth control. So you would still see population growth, but a growing fraction of this population could be malnourished.
That being said, the most common reason is simply war. If you look at the famine in Sudan right now, it is a direct consequence of the civil war (which also happens to be the biggest and bloodiest war by far in the world right now). Lost crops from weather or diseases can also restrict local food production, but it only ever really turns into a problem when armed groups prevent outside food supplies from moving to affected areas like the military in Sudan does right now.
You are telling me that every infomercial I’ve ever seen about starving children in Africa was from war? How often are these people at war?
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Last time I commented something very similar thinking it was the least controversial no brainer thing and multiple people reacted as if it was some Leninist ragebait lol
Conditioning- America is a capitalist social experiment and I mean that literally
Seems pretty successful then no for being such a young country. America is literally where all the major tech and internet companies are.
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One great thing about America is that we won't shoot you at the border for trying to leave.
It's also one of the countries with the highest percentage of people who give to charity and volunteer, fwiw.
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i think a good counter to this sort of argument is :
https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...
Wow! This has aged really, really badly. 50 years and many billions of dollars later and we're neither on the Moon or Mars or have significantly enhanced the distribution of food to those in need, let alone international cooperation.
Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth.
As good counters go, this underperforms.
I agree the space program was a bit of a flop but food distribution and poverty stuff has improved
Extreme poverty from 45% to less than 10% https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief
Famine deaths about 1/3 https://ourworldindata.org/famines
It didn't age badly at all. This prediction was dead-on accurate. The widespread use of satellite monitoring of the Earth's surface has paid huge dividends for humanity in all sorts of ways including better and cheaper food production. Also the GPS system alone has been hugely important for every human system that involves navigating from one place on the Earth to another, which of course includes food transport as well as many many other things relevant to people's lives and health.
And many spent hundreds of dollars on a dinner when they could feed x poor people. Slipery slope
We need dinners, we don’t need AI
People in other countries starve because the people in charge of them are evil not because the people with resources lack benevolence. If you've ever tried to do charity in a foreign country with a foreign culture and language you would be aware of the issues. No amount of outside money in the world could fix these problems. In fact they will make it worse. People need to grow up.
In the United States, starvation doesn't exist so we've expanded the definition to include more people because we really care to feed people. If you've been to countries where actual starvation is a possibility, you'd understand. So tired of this self hating unaware self flagellation.
This is seen in that starvation is effectively solved in the USa (and now runs the other direction; the poor in the US often tend toward obesity instead of starvation).
The “solution” to countries with starvation today is likely massive full-scale invasion and domination; something the modern world doesn’t have an appetite for.
Sure. As if the massive full-scale invasion and domination of Iraq and Afghanistan worked so well. And throwing in more firepower and loosening the rules of engagement won't fix it either.
It boggles the mind how anybody over the age of 20 can think this way.
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Can you give an example of that working? The fact is that the 'modern world' - at least before recent phenomena - created by far the greatest expansion of freedom and prosperity, and greatest reduction in poverty, in human history. Way, way beyond anything else, including colonial eras.
Also, when ideas like yours are tried, it turns out that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and powers - including the US - serve their own interests. How could you imagine otherwise at this point?
And without democracy, they can't help it - self-determination provides better outcomes because the people who are subject to the 'help' have a seat at the table and they have power. The issues that others dismiss or make secondary (or tertiary) are the ones the self-determined people can insist on in a democracy.
> modern world doesn’t have an appetite for
It's not a lack of appetite, it's counter to our goals of freedom and self-determination, and all experience of prosperity.
Yeah America has no ability to colonize other countries. We are not unified enough as a culture to do that. Look at the debacle of Afghanistan.
Like right now there is starvation in Nigeria because Islamofascists from the north are hunting Christians in the south. Exactly how will any amount of American money convince religious zealots to stop being zealots? If anything, a large influx of money from infidels will just make the clerics claim that their victims are foreign operatives. There is nothing we can do other than pray or stage a full scale military invasion. At that point we can either choose to fully administer the place (unsustainable) or we would have to destroy the apparatus that made the situation possible, which is going to look a helluva lot like a genocide. An impossible situation and only one of many across the globe.
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It won't give them profits
In their own country, even.
Even just to save face, I would have expected one of the billionaires to have started a foundation tackling the problem in some way.
And there you are with your fancy computer! Sell it and feed the poor.
Their fancy computer's value is a mote compared to the billions of dollars being poured into AI software and infrastructure. It's a dead horse that shouldn't be beaten anymore. Individual choices are so insignificant as to be effectively meaningless in contexts like this.
Their fancy computer is the tip of a trillion-dollar spear, forged by our precursors who were trying to invent new and innovative ways to blow up half the world while keeping that half from blowing our half up.
There are no clean hands here. Any attempt to claim the moral high ground by dictating how other people should spend their money (or their machine cycles) will meet with the usual degree of success.
What if what I donate every year is 100x the value of a laptop I've owned for 5 years? Your logic is illogical.
Well, you know, we're all doing what we can.
There is no shortage of food anymore. Unless genocide, no one is starving.
Birth rates are >4 in most of those starving regions. Family planning needed first.
That is the cart before the horse. Families, and women specifically, need stability and reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive before they will stop having 4.
No, it is definitely the cart after the horse - kindly check basic facts. The babies are surviving thanks to declining child mortality - population of regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa has grown from 434 million to ~1.3 billion in the last few decades.
Basically your assertion that "reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive" is completely and utterly wrong. Desperate family planning is needed, but religion stands in the way. No amount of international aid will fix this fundamental problem.
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Technological innovation veils our failed morality. I don’t ever see this resolving without God literally showing up to Earth.