7 ms·

Africa is a mess because of relentless Western imperialism, not because of "too much democracy". It's rather elitist to say that more educated (AKA richer) cit

• virmundi 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is just foolish. It's like saying, "It's elitist to say that more educated engineers make better products than less educated one." One of the reasons the US wanted to have people read, why we made it part of public school, is to have an informed, i.e. educated, citizenry.
  • myrryr 8y ago
    I'm glad that your political system is working well, not full of corruption, and that you have bright leaders who have a deep understanding of matters of education.
  • door5 8y ago
    Here you assume that both engineering and politics are purely objective sciences, where one's cultural background is irrelevant, but that is true in neither case. The fact that silicon valley is mostly white men of a certain age and economic status has a big effect on what gets built, and what doesn't get built -- think about elon musk's obsession with tunnels and car transportation and disdain for public transit. Regardless how you feel, tht isn't just an objective rational problem, the fact that Elon isn't someone who has ever taken or relied upon public transit matters. The same is true if social policy -- it's easy to look at the voting decisions of people without college degrees as "stupid" and "uninformed", but I would challenge you to think about how their actions are just as informed and reasoned as people in your demographic, they just come to a different conclusion because of their economic and cultural background. "Education" is often a proxy for race or class in political discussions. I would argue that policy (and engineering) is much more about values than knowledge -- is housing a human right? Is healthcare a human right? Should the United States acknowledge and repair the damages of slavery and systemic racism? Should we accept asylum seekers? Everyone may have compelling, reasoned arguments to these questions, but it is naive to say only college educated specialists have the correct ones.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• kpil 8y ago
  Are you a Russian troll? The second statement you made is just plain stupid. Yes, educated citizens make better decisions than uneducated citizens. The real class war is making people like me - descendants of dirt poor landless farmhands, have access to free universities, like I had. In this country 250 years ago, we enforced laws that stated that all kids had the right to learn to read. 150 years ago we got free and mandatory education. 100 years ago we got access to birth control and free universities. That's the real class war. Not the shit you are doing. Edit: The first statement you make is actually also if not wrong too simplistic, but I don't want to muddle the important arguments.
  • dang 8y ago
    Attacking another user like that will get you banned here, so please don't do it again. Insinuations of astroturfing and nationalistic flamewar are particularly bad. Ideological battle (which the GP comment was also practicing) is also unwelcome. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • virmundi 8y ago
      I have a technical question: how is it that you can ban accounts, but not delete them?
    • kpil 8y ago
      Please delete my account.
• int_19h 8y ago
  Democracy leading to tyranny of the majority in form of a popularly approved authoritarian leader is unfortunately common, and not just in Africa - I'm from a country that walked that path as well. I don't know if it's because Western liberal democracies are more educated, or because their political culture evolved certain safeguards over time, but there clearly is a difference, and it's not elitist to point it out.
• eloff 8y ago
  It's not elitist, it's reality. Do you really think uneducated people can make decisions requiring deep knowledge across many complex domains as well as well-educated people? That's tautologically false. Even well-educated people are pretty lost outside their own domain. The kind of everybody is equal mentality that must underlie such a statement boggles my mind. It's an attitude that is shockingly disconnected from the real world. We may as well be talking about Santa Claus.
  • door5 8y ago
    "Education" isn't just "knowing more things", it spending time at specific institutions -- institutions which some people have more access to than others, and institutions that impart a specific worldview. Going to a Chinese university vs an American University, or even an Ivy League vs a state school is a very different experience. And people can be educated about politics in a non-institutional context, ie through news media, local activism, friends and co-workers, unions, etc. What is shockingly disconnected from the real world is the idea that elite American educational institutions are somehow totally disconnected from social realities and study politics in a field of pure, unbiased reason
    • Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      Yes, actual knowledge can come in many forms. But are you actually saying that, on average across populations, people who go to school/college aren't more knowledgable than people who do not? If that is in fact the case, we should completely abolish the entire education system, because it's clearly not effective.
      • door5 8y ago
        No, I'm saying they are equally equipped to make decisions in a democracy.
      • repolfx 8y ago
        That depends a lot on how you define knowledge. If you take two 25 year olds, and one spent 7 years in the university system learning 'book knowledge', and one spent 7 years in industry learning via an apprenticeship (this sort of situation is common in Switzerland), then who is really more knowledgeable? What even is knowledge? Is knowledge obtained only from professors, or from managers and supervisors on the job, or practical experience, or a blend of all of these? There's a reason the most famous successful tech CEOs in the USA seem to be college dropouts.
• im3w1l 8y ago
  > Africa is a mess because of relentless Western imperialism That's one hypothesis but there are many things it can't explain. We could compare African countries that were colonized to African countries that were not colonized. The hypothesis predicts a big difference but is there? We could compare non-African countries that were colonized to African countries that were colonized. Hypothesis predicts a small difference, is there?
  • door5 8y ago
    Imperialism continued after the end of formal colonization, and takes place even in countries that weren't formally colonized. Capitalism and imperialism are global systems that affect every nation on Earth, there is no unaffected country to compare to.
    • toasterlovin 8y ago
      But there was a time before colonialism. And the comparisons for sub-Saharan Africa don't look that great that way either.
      • jyounker 8y ago
        Sub-Saharan Africa had some pretty advanced and successful civilizations before colonialism.
        • toasterlovin 8y ago
          Such as? All that I'm aware of is Ethiopia and you could make a pretty good case that that's primarily because of Ethiopia's proximity to the Dar al-Islam.
  • solidsnack9000 8y ago
    This is explored by Francis Fukuyama in "The Origins of Political Order" and "Political Order and Political Decay". He presents compelling arguments for why we have failed states but more interestingly, he works through how we got successful ones. Non-failed states are far more rare in history, and they are the goal, after all.
• solidsnack9000 8y ago
  If it's education in a technical sense you're probably right; it's more about having some kind of institution where people learn to think politically and historically. Democracy by itself is not necessarily a stable institution. In the absence of a strong social commitment to rule of law and an effective and disciplined state, it doesn't work. The path that some societies took to get to this state did involve education, and in particular literacy, to a fair degree. Africa is a mess due to western imperialism but failed democracy is a different topic than that: because most societies started off in some kind of mess, either in disarray, or in a state of tyranny. We don't have any examples of states going directly from tribal societies to functioning democracies with rule of law in one, peaceable step. Looking only at the west, it took centuries of violent conflict.
• namlem 8y ago
  Africa is a mess for a number of reasons. Western imperialism is probably the biggest, but there are plenty of other. Tons of deadly parasites and diseases and a general lack of good arable land in most places are also significant factors.
• lewisinc 8y ago
  Point number one: agreed, Western Imperialism. However (ignoring the ad hominem), I don't agree with your second point that a more education citizen will not necessarily make better decisions than less educated ones. Obviously everyone will make decisions that benefit themselves, but only with Education can someone understand the ramifications of their decisions in a broader context. Many political situations have little-to-no effect on an individual in the short-term, so making a decision (since it's not based on personal gain) must be based on something else. I would argue that something would be an individual's understanding of the impact on society in general - an understanding that a "good education" is supposed to cultivate.
  • door5 8y ago
    Apologies if that was read as ad hominem, I meant that the argument is in my view elitist not that you personally are. My point is that formal education is not the only way to develop informed political consciousness. And in fact formal education may in many cases overlook the struggles of marginalized groups.