5 ms·

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 conditi

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

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