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If you have occassion to spend time in those places you'll know why Isaac Send a noteboard - 21/08/2011 02:38:44 PM
Again, I'm not even debating how technically feasible it is to do on an effective scale, just pointing out that we've been exporting that kind of logic to the Third World (accompanied by manpower, money and technology) since at least the founding of the Peace Corps and yet to see much of it achieved. It's doing so much good Third World citizens have started learning how to fly airplanes into our skyscrapers to express their gratitude. Telling them how much better "just a few thousand dollars" they don't have could make their lives doesn't seem to help their mood. Like fusion power and so many other things it's started to sound like Annie signing about "tomorrow": It's always a day away, which doesn't help anyone today, or give much reason to expect "tomorrow" will be any better.


Partially it's population explosion, if you're already running near your max and somebody gives you a piece of tech that let's you squeeze out 20% more food from the same land during ten years of upgrades you basically achieve nothing in terms of standard of living, since the pop will swell up 20% during those ten years... though I feel obliged to point out that the standard of living in those places has almost universally risen a lot in the last century. If your culture trends to max out it's pop, because it's all about having lots and lots of kids, you can make a bigger pie only to find out you've got more mouths to feed. That's why a lot of the efforts in those places seem so futile, you upgrade some village and by the time you're done, you've got twice as many people there. Also the Peace Corps isn't exactly the model of effectiveness either.

But you really have to be to those places - and I'm sure they're all different - to appreciate the problems. When I was in Iraq most of the villagers still lived in mud huts... and that's not sneering metaphor... wasn't exactly what I'd call a strong work ethic, feeling of industriousness, or motivation to improve their situation either, but that's different in some areas and other countries are their own stories. Probably more than even the population expansion rates is the actually countries themselves. It's hard to build up your own little farm when the local tribal chieftain might just decide to come take your stuff just because you have it, or your village to work together to build up only to get smashed and looted by jealous, greedy or paranoid neighbors or rulers. It's hard to get a loan from the first world not because they don't think handing someone a few thousand bucks isn't a good investment, our bankers have brains and most actually have hearts too, but they can't cut loans to individuals for small change like that, besides the high risk of default by local pillaging there's no incentive to flying to the middle of nowhere and hiking out miles to loan a farmer $10,000 since you probably spent that just getting there and back, doing a whole village ain't much better, and it's hard to do banking in places where there aren't exactly photo ID's and such. We can loan to countries or big wigs, where it might trickle down, and sometimes genuinely does, assuming they don't get knocked over in the next coup or take the money and run. It's a stability issue, not a western greed thing. China's hardly the lion of economic success a lot of people talk it up as but they've made massive progress almost entirely by being stable. We don't really like doing business with them but we know if we put in an order for 10,000 widgets to a factory there they will probably deliver on time as opposed to having the factory get torched by the rebels and state thugs. It's not complex, and it's nothing to do with inability, just instability. Just talking about it or hearing about it doesn't really paint the picture in its fully depressing glory.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein

King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
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If you have occassion to spend time in those places you'll know why - 21/08/2011 02:38:44 PM 451 Views
How does literal mud huts as the norm respresent living standards rising "a lot". - 22/08/2011 12:29:35 AM 570 Views
You seem to have cherry-picked what you wanted to hear out of my comments - 22/08/2011 01:07:10 AM 342 Views
"It's a stability thing, not a Western greed thing" seemed to encapsulate your comments. - 22/08/2011 03:10:17 PM 479 Views
Only if you really cherry pick them - 23/08/2011 02:48:08 AM 492 Views
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