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Comment by loeg

6 days ago

The issue is mostly the corrupt elites that control these impoverished counties, not foreign aid or lack thereof.

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loeg

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spwa4  6 days ago

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.

  • tim333  6 days ago

    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.

    • foogazi  6 days ago

      > and the king is the head of the armed forces which makes it difficult to do such stuff.

      How did that work out for Russia, France or Germany ?

      1 reply →

    • spwa4  6 days ago

      Maybe, in Afghanistan Soviet communists invaded and destroyed Afghanistan's state structures and started a massacre that would last years. That's why the Taliban attacked ... and probably why they won, with overwhelming support by the population of Afghanistan, and even US support.

      But the details of the story expose a great many painpoints for many ideologies and parties so people don't like to talk about it. First it exposes that the US (and Europe, and many others, but of course not the UN or Russia) supported the Taliban ... because they were better than communists. My favorite stats is that the Taliban, as bad as they are, in 2.5 wars and ... still haven't killed as many people as the communists massacres killed in Afghanistan.

      So "capitalist" or more accurately US and UK support for the Taliban did indeed exist (was a lot less than reported though), but yes, that included supporting and training a certain Osama Bin Laden ... Of course what's never mentioned when this is brought up is why people supported the Taliban. It wasn't to destroy socialism ... or at least that wasn't the only reason.

      On the other side of the aisle it exposes that there was a time that socialism tried to eradicate religions ... using genocide (not just in Afghanistan). WITH the support of socialists in the west, the same socialist parties that still exist, were violently against immigration and protested against western states saving even one of those muslim men, women and children.

      Both ideologies, left, center and right, want to believe they're constant, rational, and right. So an extremely large change in policy ... especially leftist parties who supported Soviet/communist genocides against a decent chunk of their current electorate.

      Including famous current politicians like Antonio Guterrez, secretary general of the United Nations, who organised and personally physically attacked and hurt people for trying to give muslims sanctuary 40 years ago (he probably didn't even hate muslims, he just supported communism, including Soviet and Chinese genocides)

      So everybody denies it but that's how Afghanistan got where it is.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Afghanistan

      2 replies →

  • hulitu  5 days ago

    > Think of Afghanistan as an example, where the US really did create a modern tolerant state

    Citation needed.

  • Frieren  5 days ago

    > 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.

    • spwa4  5 days ago

      Why blame outside powers again? There are very large differences where you have very limited differences in outside power rule, a big example being India vs Pakistan. And this is very far from the only example.

      There have always been and always will be outside powers. Hell, the very first stories we have, from the Epic of Gilgamesj, the oldest stories in the Bible and Greek Legends are all about outside powers intervening, and here we are, over 4000 years later, and there's (checks wikipedia) 32 current wars (and none are "the west" doing that at the moment, China is currently the worst offender, there's of course Russia and Ukraine/Europe) where outside powers are trying to dominate someone else. At some point you have to accept outside powers trying to fuck things up as a basic part of life. So other countries will keep intervening, probably for another 4000+ years.

      1 reply →

Eddy_Viscosity2  6 days ago

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?

  • drivingmenuts  6 days ago

    Well, we in the US saw what happened when Elon Musk was handed a ridiculous amount of control and it wasn't good.

tim333  6 days ago

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.

  • nozzlegear  6 days ago

    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.

  • kylehotchkiss  6 days ago

    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.