6 ms·

Lagos: Hope and Warning

41 points by johnny313 8y ago

bumholio 8y ago
A great article, but maybe too much emphasis on "the impending catastrophe". Short of epidemics, fire and the like, the city is in permanent stasis: the conditions devolve to the point where there is an equilibrium with the arrivals from the country side. It's unclear why or how could a disequilibrium form and stand in a free to travel country: as long as the metropolis offers even a modicum of economic opportunity, such as being a water seller at the intersection, that is already much better then being a subsistence farmer in an overcrowded country that experienced famine as recently as last year. There is no catastrophe looming, just the slow grip of poverty following people around and slowly suffocating their lives, absent coordinated social organization and coherent politics to end it.
- modells 8y ago
  Boiling frog is the better analogy. Rome wasn’t built in a day and didn’t decline in a day either. It’s the slow death-march, “water drops to the forehead” of civilization that so weakens it such that criminal mobs and/or religious lunatics can takeover. The pattern throughout history has been roughly the same story every time, except now there is an abundance of technology, population cresting/declining and absurd inequality.
- dnomad 8y ago
  > It's unclear why or how could a disequilibrium form and stand in a free to travel country: as long as the metropolis offers even a modicum of economic opportunity, such as being a water seller at the intersection, that is already much better then being a subsistence farmer in an overcrowded country that experienced famine as recently as last year. Lagos and all of Nigeria suffers from the same plague that is consuming the West: extreme inequality. There's economic growth but when the rich capture the overwhelming majority of the new wealth then, combined with population growth, you can get a population where many people are actually worse off as time goes on. This is why even as the economy grows the number of people living in poverty is actually increasing [1][2]. It's highly unlikely the government will/can/wants to address the inequality [3]. At some point the only "fix" to this problem will be, as it has been in the past, war. The growing regional and ethnic divisions just need another decade or so (by that time we'll probably see as many as 120m living in poverty) and then, suddenly, the water reaches a boil. Ironically, if you speak to many Nigerians they'll tell you that inequality isn't a problem at all. If you work hard and smart enough you can make it. Sound familiar? [1] https://www.stearsng.com/article/inequality-in-nigeria-is-worse-than-it-looks https://www.stearsng.com/article/inequality-in-nigeria-is-wo... [2] https://qz.com/963465/some-of-the-worlds-biggest-countries-have-managed-to-wrangle-extreme-poverty-except-nigeria/ https://qz.com/963465/some-of-the-worlds-biggest-countries-h... [3] https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-ine...
  - hardlianotion 8y ago
    I am a little confused - why is this downvoted?
    - whb07 8y ago
      Because a simple thought experiment disproves his point and criticisms of the West. If the “troubles” of a society are really the disparity between the richest and poorest, then a country like Somalia would be a glorious example of liberty and prosperity. Yet everyone there is poor and with extremely limited options in anything you might want to measure. Clearly this isn’t it. Maybe in order to get a healthy thing going you must have some extreme outliers as a result of the freedom/ability to let people do their thing.
      - hardlianotion 8y ago
        If that is a reason, I think the downvote wrong. I think this is a place for exhange of views and debate, not an exam in which "wrongly" argued points are downvoted.
        whb07 8y ago
        Because those points he’s trying to make are extremist and violent it seems. “The only fix is war” seems like the typical extremist sound bite by someone with those views. Proposing violence to fix an issue with which appears your friend is not well versed on seems just like the mass mob lynching of a “suspected” person doing X. The mob feels righteous at the time, only to learn the person killed didn’t do anything at all.
        nnnnnande 8y ago
        That seems somewhat disingenuous, unless I've somehow completely misinterpreted OP's point. OP was not proposing violence as the fix, but merely stating the fact that historically only wars or other kinds of catastrophic events have reversed trends of increased wealth inequality [1]. Stating that as the basis for a debate is not the same as endorsing violence as the fix. It seems to be a tragic fact that different societies have not found a political way of solving this issue and that alone is worth discussing. [1] https://voxeu.org/article/europe-s-rich-1300 https://voxeu.org/article/europe-s-rich-1300
modells 8y ago
More Vanagons (T3) than Burning Man, Oregon, Santa Rosa and Turo app combined. Just let it sink in that those go for $8k USD each in the US and parts are scarce. Also, flattening of the world, resurgence of populist pedagogues, crises of the majority of countries slowly/quickly becoming perpetual failed states. Corruption, manufactured consent and disengagement have led nearly every civilization to this same conclusion at around 10 generations or 250 years. It’s not inevitable, it’s just the doom of repeating history by being ignorant and passive.
peter_retief 8y ago
I have never been to Lagos but I do live in Cape Town South Africa, and there are lessons to be learnt here as well. Infrastructure in South Africa has declined dramatically in the last 20 years since the first inclusive elections in 1994. If you look at all state run institutions, like health, education, police, water, sanitation, conservation and everything else people take for granted in well run countries, you find a dramatic decline. What this translates to in people on the ground is a widening gap between rich and poor, civil unrest, growth in private healthcare and security, unreliable and expensive power supply and high crime rate, often violent. Sub Saharan Africa is a difficult place to invest in with corruption and the threat of expropriation of property a possibility. Will it ever change? I am not sure, it doesn't seem likely
- grecy 8y ago
  I have driven though 25+ countries in West Africa from Morocco to Cape Town and now on my up to Cairo in the last ~2 years [1]. While I understand what you're saying, I have some things to add: 1. Cape Town and Lagos (Nigeria in General) have virtually nothing in common. Cape Town is essentially Zürich compared to Nigerian cities. 2. state run institutions, like health, education, police, water, sanitation, conservation and everything else people take for granted in well run countries, you find a dramatic decline. ... a widening gap between rich and poor, civil unrest, growth in private healthcare and security, unreliable and expensive power supply and high crime rate, often violent. You have just described the exact challenges faced by the United States. 3. There are millions of stories about how bleak "Africa" is and how many challenges it faces. I have been constantly shocked by how developed many places are, and how fast they are not only catching up to, but in some cases surpassing "Developed" places. For example: have you been to Brazzaville? very nice and modern city, fantastic roads all over the Rep. Congo now - Pointe Noire too. Lomé in Togo is another great example. 4. In my experience Africans are positive and optimistic about the future. That means they're working hard to make stuff better, as apposed to those who sit around in the developed world and complain about how everything is getting worse. I wonder where we'll be in ~20 more years. [1] http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme/ http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme/
  - 8y ago

41 points by johnny313 8y ago

A great article, but maybe too much emphasis on "the impending catastrophe". Short of epidemics, fire and the like, the city is in permanent stasis: the conditions devolve to the point where there is an equilibrium with the arrivals from the country side. It's unclear why or how could a disequilibrium form and stand in a free to travel country: as long as the metropolis offers even a modicum of economic opportunity, such as being a water seller at the intersection, that is already much better then being a subsistence farmer in an overcrowded country that experienced famine as recently as last year. There is no catastrophe looming, just the slow grip of poverty following people around and slowly suffocating their lives, absent coordinated social organization and coherent politics to end it.

modells 8y ago
Boiling frog is the better analogy. Rome wasn’t built in a day and didn’t decline in a day either. It’s the slow death-march, “water drops to the forehead” of civilization that so weakens it such that criminal mobs and/or religious lunatics can takeover. The pattern throughout history has been roughly the same story every time, except now there is an abundance of technology, population cresting/declining and absurd inequality.
dnomad 8y ago
> It's unclear why or how could a disequilibrium form and stand in a free to travel country: as long as the metropolis offers even a modicum of economic opportunity, such as being a water seller at the intersection, that is already much better then being a subsistence farmer in an overcrowded country that experienced famine as recently as last year. Lagos and all of Nigeria suffers from the same plague that is consuming the West: extreme inequality. There's economic growth but when the rich capture the overwhelming majority of the new wealth then, combined with population growth, you can get a population where many people are actually worse off as time goes on. This is why even as the economy grows the number of people living in poverty is actually increasing [1][2]. It's highly unlikely the government will/can/wants to address the inequality [3]. At some point the only "fix" to this problem will be, as it has been in the past, war. The growing regional and ethnic divisions just need another decade or so (by that time we'll probably see as many as 120m living in poverty) and then, suddenly, the water reaches a boil. Ironically, if you speak to many Nigerians they'll tell you that inequality isn't a problem at all. If you work hard and smart enough you can make it. Sound familiar? [1] https://www.stearsng.com/article/inequality-in-nigeria-is-worse-than-it-looks https://www.stearsng.com/article/inequality-in-nigeria-is-wo... [2] https://qz.com/963465/some-of-the-worlds-biggest-countries-have-managed-to-wrangle-extreme-poverty-except-nigeria/ https://qz.com/963465/some-of-the-worlds-biggest-countries-h... [3] https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-ine...
- hardlianotion 8y ago
  I am a little confused - why is this downvoted?
  - whb07 8y ago
    Because a simple thought experiment disproves his point and criticisms of the West. If the “troubles” of a society are really the disparity between the richest and poorest, then a country like Somalia would be a glorious example of liberty and prosperity. Yet everyone there is poor and with extremely limited options in anything you might want to measure. Clearly this isn’t it. Maybe in order to get a healthy thing going you must have some extreme outliers as a result of the freedom/ability to let people do their thing.
    - hardlianotion 8y ago
      If that is a reason, I think the downvote wrong. I think this is a place for exhange of views and debate, not an exam in which "wrongly" argued points are downvoted.
      - whb07 8y ago
        Because those points he’s trying to make are extremist and violent it seems. “The only fix is war” seems like the typical extremist sound bite by someone with those views. Proposing violence to fix an issue with which appears your friend is not well versed on seems just like the mass mob lynching of a “suspected” person doing X. The mob feels righteous at the time, only to learn the person killed didn’t do anything at all.
        nnnnnande 8y ago
        That seems somewhat disingenuous, unless I've somehow completely misinterpreted OP's point. OP was not proposing violence as the fix, but merely stating the fact that historically only wars or other kinds of catastrophic events have reversed trends of increased wealth inequality [1]. Stating that as the basis for a debate is not the same as endorsing violence as the fix. It seems to be a tragic fact that different societies have not found a political way of solving this issue and that alone is worth discussing. [1] https://voxeu.org/article/europe-s-rich-1300 https://voxeu.org/article/europe-s-rich-1300

modells 8y ago

More Vanagons (T3) than Burning Man, Oregon, Santa Rosa and Turo app combined. Just let it sink in that those go for $8k USD each in the US and parts are scarce. Also, flattening of the world, resurgence of populist pedagogues, crises of the majority of countries slowly/quickly becoming perpetual failed states. Corruption, manufactured consent and disengagement have led nearly every civilization to this same conclusion at around 10 generations or 250 years. It’s not inevitable, it’s just the doom of repeating history by being ignorant and passive.

peter_retief 8y ago

I have never been to Lagos but I do live in Cape Town South Africa, and there are lessons to be learnt here as well. Infrastructure in South Africa has declined dramatically in the last 20 years since the first inclusive elections in 1994. If you look at all state run institutions, like health, education, police, water, sanitation, conservation and everything else people take for granted in well run countries, you find a dramatic decline. What this translates to in people on the ground is a widening gap between rich and poor, civil unrest, growth in private healthcare and security, unreliable and expensive power supply and high crime rate, often violent. Sub Saharan Africa is a difficult place to invest in with corruption and the threat of expropriation of property a possibility. Will it ever change? I am not sure, it doesn't seem likely

grecy 8y ago
I have driven though 25+ countries in West Africa from Morocco to Cape Town and now on my up to Cairo in the last ~2 years [1]. While I understand what you're saying, I have some things to add: 1. Cape Town and Lagos (Nigeria in General) have virtually nothing in common. Cape Town is essentially Zürich compared to Nigerian cities. 2. state run institutions, like health, education, police, water, sanitation, conservation and everything else people take for granted in well run countries, you find a dramatic decline. ... a widening gap between rich and poor, civil unrest, growth in private healthcare and security, unreliable and expensive power supply and high crime rate, often violent. You have just described the exact challenges faced by the United States. 3. There are millions of stories about how bleak "Africa" is and how many challenges it faces. I have been constantly shocked by how developed many places are, and how fast they are not only catching up to, but in some cases surpassing "Developed" places. For example: have you been to Brazzaville? very nice and modern city, fantastic roads all over the Rep. Congo now - Pointe Noire too. Lomé in Togo is another great example. 4. In my experience Africans are positive and optimistic about the future. That means they're working hard to make stuff better, as apposed to those who sit around in the developed world and complain about how everything is getting worse. I wonder where we'll be in ~20 more years. [1] http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme/ http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme/
- 8y ago