Comment by krona
6 days ago
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.
6 days ago
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.
Maintaining a modern tolerant state is probably harder than it looks. Like in the UK we take it for granted but it's the end result of centuries of sometimes bloody trial and error fixes. People think it's silly we still have a king but look what happened to Russia, France, Germany etc after they got rid of theirs.
Afghanistan might have worked out if the US took a king like role sitting in a fort somewhere and saying ok, you're prime minister to some Afgan after each election. The king role may seem like nothing but if a UK prime minister says sod this I'm ruler for life then the king doesn't endorse them and the king is the head of the armed forces which makes it difficult to do such stuff.
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> Think of Afghanistan as an example, where the US really did create a modern tolerant state
Citation needed.
> Think of Afghanistan as an example,
A country that has been destabilized by foreign invasions again and again. The last one from the USA.
It is not about culture, it is about been ruled by outside powers that do not allow for internal development. Except for a few tax havens, former colonized countries struggle with violence, inequality, and corruption. That was the system that was setup for them and it will take decades to fix if they are left alone, it will never be fixed if other countries intervene to keep the status quo to profit from it.
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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?
"Corrupt" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
Well, we in the US saw what happened when Elon Musk was handed a ridiculous amount of control and it wasn't good.
Are we feeding any impoverished Congo families? The problem isn't just 'the elites', its us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...
$940 million to the Congo.
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.
My favorite (fiction) book on this topic is Ray Nayler's Where The Axe Is Buried. The premise is that most western democracies have voted to "rationalize", which means installing an AI Prime Minister tuned specifically for their country's culture and economic interests.
Zero. Why do you think AI will overcome human nature in impoverished nations? Smartphone and cheap internet already happened in many, it hasn’t made a huge dent in outcomes.
Which corrupt leaders are going to give over their control to a machine?
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Only if you think AI will be god.
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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.
They aren’t good Christians then, and if Christian social shame was still the dominant flavor of social shame we may not see such egregious behavior (not arguing there would be perfection, of course).
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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.