With this type of fear mongering, more people will die from the fight against climate change than climate change itself. For example, fertilizer is made from fossil fuels, so attempts to raise the price of fossil fuels or prevent companies from obtaining these fuels results in starvation. Similarly raising the price of things like home heating oil or gasoline will devastate poor nations. Madagascar had a famine because it wasn't able to afford fertilizer due to the twin effects of loss of revenue from covid lockdowns and an increase in fertilizer prices.
Trying to move away from fossil fuels is an extremely delicate operation that requires nuance and patience. It also requires having something to replace fossil fuels that is as cheap otherwise poor nations wont be able to afford it. This means purely relying on market solutions to increase prices and let replacements bubble from the market is a recipe for disaster in the developing world.
Nature is not a person that has emotions and will be fine with any amount of carbon -- 200 million years ago there were no icecaps and it was a flourishing time for life, with 2000 ppm carbon in the air as well as huge amounts of other greenhouse gases and it led to an explosion of life.
We are talking about adopting policies that promote human flourishing, and I guarantee you that rising fertilizer prices and fuel prices will kill many more people than rising sea levels. It's just that the people who die of rising fertilizer prices live in Africa and India, not NYC, LA, or Miami.
"200 million years ago there were no icecaps and it was a flourishing time for life, with 2000 ppm carbon in the air as well as huge amounts of other greenhouse gases and it led to an explosion of life"
Yes, but the life was adapted to it. Humans are now causing a mass extinction event, and the warming didn't really started yet. The main threat is to human habitat, not life on Earth. We don't really know how dependent on the biosphere we really are, and perhaps we shouldn't try to find out.
"I guarantee you that rising fertilizer prices and fuel prices will kill many more people than rising sea levels"
I think here's your misconception (and also the reason why this needs to be talked about more) - the rising sea levels are (at least in this century) the least of our worries.
Possible heat and drought conditions are a much bigger problem, both directly (certain populated places on Earth might become unlivable) and indirectly (the agricultural output of major crops is expected to decrease). As someone else stated, yes, global warming won't kill you, a war or a famine will.
In any case, even if we didn't have a big problem with global warming, the fossil fuels would run out this century anyway, so if your society is dependent on them for survival (e.g. for making fertilizer), you better try to make the transition to something else (more sustainable) as soon as possible. However, it should be noted, vast majority of the world is not dependent on fossil fuels for survival, but for convenience, and we could easily make most of the transition away from them without any loss of human life. (And in fact thanks to cheap renewables we won't actually have to give up convenience either.)
One minor but important detail: fertilizers are made with hydrogen that is currently coming from natural gas. But it could be exchanged to some other source, or the superfluous carbon could be stored in solid form etc.
But those options don't exist at the moment due to their cost, so it's pretty foolish to raise the price of something now because in theory, a replacement might become cost effective in the future. A rich nation can take a hit like that but a poor nation can't -- they will just have a famine.
In other words, have that replacement in place and available before you start messing with the price of fossil fuels.
I really want to push against this neoliberal "carbon credit" mentality where we think market solutions will somehow provide replacements as needed. If you want to shut down a coal plant, fine first build the nuclear plant, and then switch over to the coal plant. If you want solar and are convinced batteries will work, then fine, build the batteries first and then switch over. Don't just rely on "the market" to allow you to shut something down and assume replacements will just appear.
Sure, there are effects like you describe. But also, the new alternatives can't compete if the old polluting alternatives don't have to pay anything for their pollution.
The underdeveloped world is intentionally oppressed by the developed world - in order to maintain their way of living. The resulting economic imbalance and class hierarchy are crucial to the developed worlds survival.
So I’m quite surprised that you think that the climate change will only affect the “under”-developed? Maybe the direct temperature change might, but the ripple effects will be global.
I dislike these sweeping and 1-dimensional viewpoints, both because they're bait for extremist thinking and because they're high-bias statements despite reflecting the ghost of a truth.
The reality is that there's not a clean picture to be painted, and like a Rorschach test different narratives (i.e., abstractions) can fit the identical ground truth.
The underdeveloped world has been significantly harmed by the developed world in a number of concrete ways. Colonialism, historically, obviously, with some still dodgy things going on in geopolitical interference that could be considered "neocolonialism".
But the underdeveloped world has also been benefited by the developed world. Trade, aid and openness with the developed world undeniably lifts them up. South Korea is a miracle. You can enter the developed club despite having a long history of brutal actual oppression. If we built a wall around some poor country 500 years ago and made a rule that zero contact was allowed - no colonialism, no nothing - would they be better off now or worse? The answer in most cases is they'd be worse off. They'd have a life expectancy of 40 and die often from violence. So this is reason to think that this oppression viewpoint is correct in a gross sense but false in a net sense and is ignoring some real, tangible benefits that the developed world gives to the underdeveloped.
> But the underdeveloped world has also been benefited by the developed world.
Nobody is arguing that there aren’t potential benefits to the oppressed side. Slaves in the colonial days were also kept alive, housed, and fed.
But, since you’re talking about the knowledge and industrial revolutions, do consider that the former is a mutual exchange of ideas which has benefited all (not purely from the developed to the developing) and for the latter, it’s mostly the developing manufacturing for the developed, to this day!
Asia and Africa both had very advanced medical tools, machine, and philosophical and societal structures, which the West adopted innumerable ideas from. The developing countries have had civilisations that benefited their populace, and have had others that resulted in violence and death (just like the West).
I think the main problem with your viewpoint, like the other commenter said, is the false dichotomy you present between colonial oppression and no-contact outcomes.
Moreover, your understanding of world history reeks of “white saviour” principle. Hope you educate yourself one day!
> I'm talking about net benefit, not gross benefits.
What is the net benefit? How are you measuring the relative +/- to the colonised? You can imagine that the colonised would disagree with your colonising assessment.
> you should go and read about comparative advantage.
How is the ability to provide poverty wage manufacturing to the developed countries, a comparative advantage for the colonised people? I’m dumbfounded. You can feel happy that they’re being paid something more than enslavement, but they don’t feel the same way. They are forced to participate in a global extractive economy designed to ensure they are never richer than the developed countries.
> I didn't say otherwise.
But, you keep claiming that the oppression has led to a net benefit, and I fail to see any measured examples in your replies that prove this upliftment that the West has so generously provided as a “benefit”.
> hypothetical is categorically and definitionally different.
What is your hypothetical, exactly? “Imagine the (guaranteed) horrific future for the colonies, had they not been colonised and uplifted by the West”? That’s your opinion, not a hypothesis.
I realise that you are trying to present this as 'balanced' 'two sided' debate, but I really hate this sort of apologist approach. You create a false dichotomy between a star trek prime directive no contact world and then say in a net sense it was of benefit. Using the likes of Singapore or South Korea as a counter example is also typical.
Take a look here at life expectancy and when exactly it started to rise above 40.
I'm not trying to present a 'two sides' story in the sense that it's exactly 50/50, since I think the viewpoint I was countering is quite a bit more false than it is true, which is why I flatly asserted that developed countries provided a net benefit to underdeveloped countries. My opinion here doesn't stop me from admitting that there's facts that underlie the narrative that are true, even if I believe the subsequent conclusions to be false.
An underdeveloped country can be suffering from the consequences of colonialism, while still benefiting significantly on net from technology, trade, and so forth, with the ratio between the former and the latter expected to decline over time. This can all be true simultaneously.
> You create a false dichotomy between a star trek prime directive no contact world and then say in a net sense it was of benefit.
That's not an example of a false dichotomy. It's a hypothetical, or a thought experiment.
> Using the likes of Singapore or South Korea as a counter example is also typical.
Typical != incorrect.
> Take a look here at life expectancy and when exactly it started to rise above 40.
Having the boot of colonialism being lifted is one of many reasons for this graph.
> Take a look at the correlation between post colonialism and death from violence.
Which is confounded by poverty/education/etc, the main drivers of death from violence.
Then I would encourage you to think of all the infinite options in between hundreds of years of colonialism being a 'net benefit' and the 'prime directive, no contact'/South Korea/Singapore extremes as a thought experiment.
> Having the boot of colonialism being lifted is one of many reasons for this graph.
I never said that colonialism was a net benefit. I said that developed countries have been a net benefit for underdeveloped countries. That's an important difference, and it's a claim that my thought experiment supports.
On South Korea; it was valid to bring that up, not only because it shows the positive benefits that the developed world brings to underdeveloped countries, but because it's the counterexample that exposes the incorrectness of the claim that the underdeveloped world is intentionally oppressed in order to maintain our way of living. We in the rich world have benefited from South Korea's, and China's, rise. They make us richer, as we them. This is basic comparative advantage. It's absurd to think that we benefit from Africa's poverty. To put it bluntly, Africa of all places is where we obtain the least benefit. We make more money from Europe and Asia. If they could raise up to $15,000 GDP/annum, we in the rich world would be more rich as a result.
They could maybe argue that underdeveloped countries have been oppressed intentionally for the benefit of the military industrial complex, but that's very distinct to arguing that that happened in order to maintain our lifestyle. As it stands, their statement is factually incorrect, and South Korea shows why.
I believe the truth of that statement may have been different 100-200 years ago, where colonialism was done to pillage resources. No longer so in the modern globalized world.
Your argument here is again premised on the benefits of colonialism & post colonialism outweighing the costs of colonialism, but exceptions like South Korea and e.g. Singapore do not prove the rule. It's completely unrealistic to compare these success stories, and the idea of 'no contact'. The reality is far grimmer. The comparison is to be made between what could have happened, and what did. The 'net' benefit then becomes very clear.
South Korea & Co are no longer intentionally oppressed. There are many other countries besides them that continue to be.
It's absurd to argue that because the developed countries could benefit more from Africa than they already do, that Africa is not oppressed. South America also.
> They could maybe argue that underdeveloped countries have been oppressed intentionally for the benefit of the military industrial complex, but that's very distinct to arguing that that happened in order to maintain our lifestyle
Every industrial complex besides that too. Raw materials are vitally important. Every act of Foreign Policy is done in order to maintain a lifestyle, to protect national interests. I don't know how you can argue that it is not.
> I believe the truth of that statement may have been different 100-200 years ago, where colonialism was done to pillage resources. No longer so in the modern globalized world.
I think you should really look at what resources are being exracted from Africa and South America, by whom and for what level of profit.
"The comparison is to be made between what could have happened, and what did."
Disagree. If the question we are asking is whether developed countries have provided a net benefit, the hypothetical has to be with them never having interacted with the country in question at all.
"South Korea & Co are no longer intentionally oppressed."
This is the No True Scotsman fallacy.
"Every act of Foreign Policy is done in order to maintain a lifestyle, to protect national interests. I don't know how you can argue that it is not."
I already provided my argument. In the modern world we are richer when they are richer due to comparative advantage. Afghanistan made us much poorer, not richer, besides one or two special interests. More countries like SK means more wealth for us.
The hypothetical does not have any such restriction on it, your star-trek hypothetical is as valid as mine, even if it is less realistic.
You are the one generalizing South Korea to say that intentional oppression does not occur, there is a 'net benefit'. Intentional oppression does not have to be universal to be true, it is selective and opportunistic in nature. The short years of benefit in South Korea do not undo the horrors elsewhere.
The argument that you stand to benefit even more does not invalidate any facts of their intentional oppression, past or present. Don't be absurd.
Minor addition: I don't believe you can say it's a 'No True Scotsman' situation unless you also consider South Korea to be 'underdeveloped' currently.
There's a very subtle insidiousness in saying that the efforts of the developed world "helped" others into becoming the same as them. Yes, South Korea is a miracle to many Westerners as an advanced capitalist nation, probably it's doing capitalism even ruthlessly better than what the US is doing. But if you've lived inside this nation for some time you will notice that people aren't happy, with overheated competitions for education and jobs, exploitation of factory and service workers, widespread alienation, depression, and suicide. It's one of the unhappiest advanced capitalist nations in the world, and you should wonder why works like Parasite and Squid Game are being created here.
Colonialism covers a wide array of things, but it also includes robbing the people of its narrative. And that is precisely what happened to the two Koreas. Our country was occupied by fascist Imperial Japan in the first half of the 20th century, Korean culture and political participation were severely oppressed, and economic exploitation of the people (to fuel their war economy) was rampant. In this oppressive atmosphere an strange thing happened: Marxists (the far left) and the nationalists (the liberals), finding their common enemy, were able to resolve their differences and cooperate with each other to fight for independence. And after Japan's loss and subsequent independence, most of these two were willing to reconcile their positions through democratic means, and people were generally excited for a new independent democratic nation to be established. Instead, the Soviet influence from the North deliberately gave support to Kim Il-sung and its constituents to push Soviet-style dictator communism in the North, while the US from the South gave overwhelming political and military support for Syngman Ryee and his followers (who was "voted" to become president via manipulated elections) to create an equivalent capitalist dictatorship. After that the rest is history, communist dictatorship hellhole in the North, capitalist dictatorship hellhole in the South. It's only been about 30 years since our country was regarded as a liberal democracy, but even then I question if the country is really a democracy now when the whole system blocks ordinary people from actually participating and having a stake in political issues.
So our history is a fable of crushed potential narratives, the inevitability of both Western authoritarian communism and Western authoritarian capitalism imposed on us with guns and bombs. Maybe without foreign intervention, our place could have been an experimental testbed for a new kind of Asian democratic socialism? Maybe we would have succeeded in creating a more enriching egalitarian nation, or maybe we would have failed, who knows? But regardless of what the outcome would have hypothetically been, this was all robbed of its possibility by Western superpower interests. And being robbed from the people of their self-organization is a dehumanizing experience that I'm sure many colonized countries will empathize with.
Actually this is true, I live in Brazil and European countries really try to dictate what we can and cannot do with our Amazon, nobody should interfere in our internal affairs, that region is the most underdeveloped region of Brazil because nobody has courage to face European lobbies.
Also, is clear that the anti-petro propaganda will slow down the growth of poor/developing countries.
Man, the money they sent is not possible to preserve 1% of Amazon, they sent some millions expecting we would preserve a forest with the size of Europe.
If the world pays $100 per hectare it would be $50 billion/year sent to Brazil. This would make some difference, not the pennies sent here eventually.
You guys really don't know the reality of Amazon, nor the politicians there, and many here as well.
Yes, they said is to conserve it, but everybody knows that very poor people is not thinking about environment, but thinking how they can survive the next day, they will cut centenary trees to sell wood, they will extract precious metals using poisonous substancies, etc.
Apart from the fact that they should care about their forests or what's left there(if any), they developed theirselves using their resources and lobby to Brazil not use his own resources because it will "hurt the entire world".
I'm not saying that is just because of poor people, but big part is, another way they destroy it is due to fire, when they clean the terrain to plant next year, and the fire go out of control.
"They must find it hard to afford the tools to do so"
With the centenary woods in Amazon and the abundance of gold is not very hard to make money there.
There are the criminals as well, people who go to Amazon just to make money..and those should be hunt, but, since there are very big extensions of land is really hard to get those. Amazon is really huge, it's a Europe.
And since we don't extract the resources and use it to preserve the forest, there is no money to preserve it all. Wealthy countries love to complain but don't give the money necessary to preserve it ($50b/year is the needed).
A solution would be give the right of exploration to companies extract the resources in certain areas of land, get the taxes and invest in protection and require these companies to monitor a part of Amazon in exchange for the right of exploration.
But since no one can touch there, is really a no mans land.
This is utter marxist bullshit in its finest form. The "under"-developed world has been given trillions in aid and almost every statistic shows that they are doing better than ever before [1]. This is due to capitalism and billions of aid every year [2] that is paid from the taxes from OUR WORK. And again with covid we see the developed world spending massive amounts of money and recources to help the rest of the world get the vaccines.
You know what the world was like when the developed world acutally intentinoally supressed the under developed world? Slavery and the slaugther of millions, colonizers forcing people to work on their land and not get the benefits of their People getting their hands cut off if they didn't work enough in the slavers mines.
This spiteful pseudo interlectual left wing bullshit is helping no one. Sure we COULD do better but we are FAR from enslaving lesser developed countries. And it's not like there aren't humanitarian catastrophies SOLELY due to the utter incompetence of these countries and THEIR elected leaders and i'm sick of the double standard we have. Are people from under developed countries to stupid for democracy? To incompetent to elect good leaders? To deficient in their intellect to see an unfair deal when it's offered to them? That's the soft bigotry of low expectations in it's purest form and i'm sick and tired of it.
> You know what the world was like when the developed world acutally intentinoally supressed the under developed world? Slavery and the slaugther of millions, colonizers forcing people to work on their land and not get the benefits of their People getting their hands cut off if they didn't work enough in the slavers mines.
You really ought to look at what France is currently doing in Africa. If you want to disagree with the parent that Africans or those in the developing world are intentionally oppressed, just because millions are no longer slaughtered is no mitigation of their point.
I'm proposing you read the article I linked to, and notice that the actual link and title of the article itself literally has the word "dissuasion" in it.
>In his book La paix nucléaire (1975), French Navy Admiral Marc de Joybert explained deterrence:
>Sir, I have no quarrel with you, but I warn you in advance and with all possible clarity that if you invade me, I shall answer at the only credible level for my scale, which is the nuclear level. Whatever your defenses, you shan't prevent at least some of my missiles from reaching your home and causing the devastation that you are familiar with. So, renounce your endeavour and let us remain good friends.
So did the british in india, yet somehow india isn't a british colony anymore. What an impossible thing to have happened, almost as if peaceful revolution is not the same as all out total war against a superior power. But then again, the americans won against the well trained and superiorly armed nuclear super power afghanistan too and now it's just another american colony forever. Oh wait...
You don't need to defeat them in open war, as if France would mount an all out war to "save" their colonies from a peaceful revolution. Worked for India but that was impossible too I guess? But thats not what those poor oppressed people want. They get really annoyed when France doesn't help them with their problems [1] but that's just France opressing them by NOT sending enough military. Either way it's always Frances fault
Not just Mali. Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin and Niger.
I would encourage you to read more about Divide and Conquer, the territories mentioned above, French activities there, and resist the temptation to use a single article to generalize what millions of people want.
I think you are hopelessly naive about military affairs, revolt does not work like you think it does and comparing India vs post war Britian and the Boston Tea Party to a much more nuanced contemporary corporatist form of colonialism is ignorant.
>He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities is simply, a goatfucker.
>He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies.
Your work is enabled by the innumerable underdeveloped countrymen that slave away producing everything for you. This is quite obvious if you think hard enough, just actively ignored by most.
> Are people from under developed countries to stupid for democracy? To incompetent to elect good leaders?
Please read more (1)(2) and learn to have some empathy for the developing people that you indirectly exploit everyday, before making such strong accusations.
Glad im not american. But I guess we should just stop "exploiting" them. Let's just stop all trade and aid for under developed countries and let them catch up a century or two, maybe then they are civilised enough to join us on fair terms. I mean they are where they are just because of us, it's all oir fault. Look at China, whenever I'm buying something I'm oppressing them I suppose. Oh, wait before they became an export nation that governs themselves terribly they were starving end masse because they followed their idiot leader Mao? No that can't be true it must have been the white man oppressing them that killed all those birds.
The developing world is supported by the American hegemony’s control over the global market. And like the other commenter showed, Europe has its own share of colonial control. Wherever you’re from, your lifestyle is still enabled by developing countries.
> maybe then they are civilised enough to join us on fair terms
Honestly, your talking points are from 1900s colonial racism. Not sure what you’re doing in 2021. Please educate yourself ASAP.
maybe then they are civilised enough to join us on fair terms
I should have marked that as sarcasm I suppose. But it doesn't really matter because the original point stands, if we are suppressing them so badly how come basically every metric for human development had gone up for 20 years straight. How are billions in aid suppressing them? What about the plethora of human rights interventions, international education programs etc. What a sneaky way of supressing people by education and access to clean water. But that idea clashes with leftist dogma therefore it musnt be true.
> What a sneaky way of supressing people by education and access to clean water.
Upliftment is not providing bare essentials to the enslaved. We’ve already seen this happen with British colonies, where they aimed to “tame the savages”, but just enough to make sure they stay enslaved.
This is what is happening now by the developed elites, as well.
Ironically, despite this whole thread focusing on developing countries - we see the same even within developed countries. Whatever labor/tasks/services cannot be outsourced/imported, need to be performed by the “lowest classes” of the developed nation too. They are mistreated, exploited, and prevented from real upliftment. In fact, even moreso to your point, they have “access” to the best education and resources in that developed country - and yet are “lower class”?
Think about that for a while, and why it happens in the modern world.
> Upliftment is not providing bare essentials to the enslaved. We’ve already seen this happen with British colonies, where they aimed to “tame the savages”, but just enough to make sure they stay enslaved.
Yup thats why africa only gets food, water and shelter and no one there gets internet, access to loans, secondary education or else the slaves would revolt i suppose?
What an insane idea, helping them with development aid and causing measurable increases in human developement is somehow opression. What could we possibly have done that's not somehow opression then? Leaving them alone? Opression. Helping them? Opression. Perhaps we should have nuked afrika, the middle east and most of asia when we had the chance, can't opress dead people.
I think you should revisit the history of US (and Western more generally, but the US is the ringleader) NGO and development activity in Africa. I think a case can be made that it has done more harm than good, and I say this knowing full well all the hospitals and schools founded and staffed by various Christian organizations in the 19th and 20th Centuries as well as the activities of the high powered organizations such as the Ford foundation trying to spread liberal values and western-authored constitutions and legal systems throughout Africa, starting in the post-war period until the present.
IMO we should pull the NGOs out and let African nations find their own path forward. The reason why I think this is to look a little more closely at what aid means and how it works.
There are two types of aid:
1. Direct resources. This is the old model of sending in missionaries to start a hospital or university. This can be helpful in some sense but also the aid workers bring their own values with them and evangelize those values, which is something that may not be suitable for Africa. They end up being local power centers on the ground and start managing and administering African governments instead of letting Africans do that. That was one approach used by the Ford foundation to control african governments and guide them into adopting inappopriate governmental structures.
2. Financial aid. Sending dollars to Africa results in those dollars in Swiss bank accounts of local warlords together with an increase in imports which can displace local production.
Trade with Africa is great, but the moment you start giving them aid, that aid comes with strings and we start pressuring Africa to adopt western european standards and structures, which end up creating fragile governments, they stoke ethnic conflict, and they may well impede letting Africa take its own development path and forming its governments according to its own values.
While I disagree with your conclusion due to the measurable increases in human development through our aid, i am somewhat sympathetic to your argument on a philosophical level. That being said, most of the HN Crowd would still cry over the opression from our trade with africa in that scenario because its always the evil capitalist west thats at fault and any disagreement on that point and you are considered a goat fucker (see comments above)
So yes, there has been some measurable human development. But Africa continues to fall farther behind the rest of the world -- e.g. the difference in global development between the rest of the world and Africa in 1960 was much lower than the difference today. We see divergence, not convergence.
That's a very low bar in exchange for Africa continuing to fall farther behind the rest of the world - e.g. during the same period child mortality in the EU fell be a factor of three and in the entire world it declined by a factor of 2.5
I don’t think that’s correct either. The undeveloped world is improving well and it’s way better now than 50 years ago with projections for continued improved standard of living.
Climate change is making this harder, but most of the undeveloped world today is going to be much better off in 100 years in terms of disease, war, and opportunity.
So making catastrophic statements like this are as credible as saying that vaping is going to kill kids.
We are in 2021. Unless tabloids claim, scientific models have error intervals, so you should be aware that what Al-Gore claimed still can happen.
And failing in a single prediction does not invalidate magically all the other models. Ecological problems are complex and chaotic problems by nature. Much more complex that building an app. Being wrong is totally normal, and even necessary to understand and improve the model.
So this would be like discarding an entire program of millions of lines because, gasp, one bug was found. Bugs are expected and even welcomed. They are tests that allow us to improve much faster
If the problem is what was said by <"politician"> from <"random color"> that you dislike, you are attacking the problem in all the wrong ways.
Absolutely. The recent epidemic and how the vaccines were distributed have shown that the wealthy countries generally don't care about the rest of the world. Humanity is very fragmented and can't act as a whole on important global issues, that's what the epidemic revealed.
Ironically, this discriminatory policy is also a reason for the supply shortages - underdeveloped countries are the suppliers for the whole developed world.
> The recent epidemic and how the vaccines were distributed have shown that the wealthy countries generally don't care about the rest of the world.
Yeah, apart of saving countless human lives in all countries spending tons of their money and talent to bring us in a time record with the only real solution to this global emergency with a, not one vaccine, a handful of vaccines that in fact work... what they did to help the humanity in this emergency? uh?
No, the point is that even newcomers can learn to do better than the team at godaddy did. They aren’t trying to brag, they’re pointing out that the team behind this compromise was negligent in their practices.
Yeah that’ll do (and there and the owners lack of respectful for animal life) I didn’t even know I only use them to hold a few domains I’ve never even looked at or thought about using anyone else. Weird how out of the loop I am on this for being a web developer, but that’s why I asked here.
Another half billion or more in Africa have been happily using mobile payment systems such as M-Pesa for years now as well, sending more money than the Bitcoin "market cap" each year.
> "I belive smart people want to work on ideas that are net positive"
Do you have any basis for that belief or is that just wishful thinking? Or is that the way how you choose to define "smart", so it becomes true by definition?
I would say that a persons goals, purposes and values is an important aspect that's pretty much orthogonal to their intellectual ability to figure out how to best achieve their long-term goals and further their values, whatever they happen to be. Perhaps there's some correlation there, but IMHO it's not necessary nor very strong, all kinds of counterexamples come to mind; there certainly are people who are very intelligent and effective while literally being sociopaths.
Smart people also realize the world isn't perfect, and it wasn't before we were here either. In a world where long term outcomes have infinite factors taking actions with short term benefits is rational because there is no control or impact over the long term effects.
That is obviously not totally true, but I think probabilistically speaking, it's _somewhat_ true.
Close. Smart people are _willing_ to take actions with short term benefits at the cost of long term detriments.
Smart people understand that there are multiple correct answers to the same problem depending on what timeframe you are operating under, and that the long timeframe is less controllable.
Google has similarly bad business practices and beyond AWS and GCP there's Microsoft's Azure, which I don't think a lot of companies are keen on switching to.
Plus, most large companies care about profits. Not feelings or the death of a lowly worker. If you boycott the source you'll have to boycott the whole chain of things, and it'll have to be widespread and immediate for them to care.
I just don't see it happening. We're stuck with this timeline it seems :/
I'd say consumer boycott makes you feel better and you should partake in it if you want to keep your integrity.
Still it is not the way to change things:
"All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what
democracy was invented for!" -- Richard Stallman
I agree with stallman's spirit but it's just as nebulous as boycotting - the average person cannot form their own democracy in a way that would effect change.
Can you give some examples? Google don't run an online marketplace and they don't have huge warehouses or a a distribution network so I can't see how their business practices can be "similarly bad". I'm sure they do have bad business practices but I doubt they're in the realm of the inhumane conditions Amazon workers have to endure.
FYI: In Germany, a lot of Amazon workers are unionized already. There are nation-wide unions that are not workplace-specific, and if I remember correctly, Amazon workers in Germany were on strike at least once.
In Poland however, unions are often frowned upon because of Poland's past, although there are one or two small workers union that have been helping the warehouse employees.
Amazon is certainly worse than the average company domiciled in the US, but it is quantitatively and not qualitatively different. Capitalism requires employers to extract as much work out of employees as possible, lest competition overtake them.
No that is fatalistic. In the same way as Google and Facebook are leading the charge on Spyware-aaS, Amazon is leading the charge on crappy workplace conditions for warehouse and delivery workers.
does Walmart have similar problems with employees being forced to work to death? I thought it was mainly because Amazon leadership are your inhumane rationalist optimiser types.
