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> America runs on money and thus tries to solve problems with money. Thought experiment: What if you just accepted this and went all-in on it, with a dash of
by FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
> America runs on money and thus tries to solve problems with money.
Thought experiment:
What if you just accepted this and went all-in on it, with a dash of MMT and tech, as follows...
Give every Afghan a smartphone.
Lock it way down. Provide a social networking platform that you can monitor. Include a "Fed.ly" banking app. You can control account balances.
Also build stores that accept Fedbucks, to ensure they have value. Basically, Fedbucks would be backed by food, and stuff from China.
Next, require some time consuming activity of Afghans, which is not too obnoxious, but which can't be faked. It needs to produce trustworthy proof-of-work.
For example, it could be like Pokemon Go, with GPS trajectories being proof of work. Or CAPTCHAs. Or taking photographs or videos of different places. Or any combination of these activities. Actually, if you do the GPS waypoint thing, you could have them carry passengers while they're at it.
(You could also imagine using Jira tickets for this, but the interface is a little too clunky.)
Then, on receipt of proof-of-work, deposit money into the accounts.
People will be too busy with these activities to fight you. That activity -- which provides them with food and flip-flops -- will be much easier than fighting. And it will also be easier than whatever they had done before to earn a living. So they will do it.
And if ever you start to see resistance, just increase the wages. Eventually people will comply.
In a way, this was the model behind the Afghan Army. It was UBI in exchange for bullshit. But it kept those men out of trouble, so long as the US was paying.
My proposal is that this model be rolled out, indefinitely, across the entire country, and made attractive enough that even members of the Taliban will do it.
If you insist that this system actually produce economic output, you could organize activities in support of mining or other sectors.
The key is that it has to be much more profitable for an individual to play along, than either to grow poppies, or to fight back.
If you hype it properly, you might even be able to fund it with Softbank money.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoWe could have just poured in more aid instead of arms. Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world. We should have been offering a helping hand before it got so bad.
- inglor_cz 5y agoThis sort of expects that the population is literate.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agoIn the short term, I'm sure UX designers could provide cross-cultural hieroglyphs. That's basically what they do already. Pre-literate toddlers use iPads. Phones also do have speakers and pretty good text-to-speech. Tap cow icon. ... Robot lady: "The cow says: MOOO". In the medium to long term, this would only make education more important, especially for women and girls. Maybe the FedApp could incorporate something like DuoLingo, again incentivized with Fedbucks. People have a way of learning quickly, when they have an incentive. This would all be a lot more defensible than the Xinjiang method. It's like this: When the Ottoman sultan wanted to neutralize a nephew, he wouldn't throw him in prison; he'd put him in the harem. Instead of a vast open-air prison, this would be a vast open-air harem. (Or work camp? Unclear which.) ... It is interesting though, this idea that illiteracy can actually be a defense against state coercion/seduction. It's like playing the Chicken game with no brakes: "You have to let me win, because I can't stop."
- rendall 5y agoSssh, pumpkin. The ship has sailed, the bus has left the station, and the evacuation copter has flown the country. The US had a long chance to bring Afghanistan within the fold of the world market and did not. Let it go. No culture / regime change there. Hopefully it will not blow up in our faces. Again.
- powerslacker 5y agoInteresting idea. I think you're underestimating the commitment of the people of Afghanistan to Islam. Their culture and religious values are more important to them than flip flops and food. Certainly there are some Afghans who would rather eat well and live comfortably, but I wouldn't call it a majority. Violent Islamists aren't just fighting the West because it is a profitable endeavor, they have an entirely different set of values about what is right and what is wrong. Even those who are not violent have a fundamentally different viewpoint about moral, spiritual, and political values than what is typical in the USA and Europe. Your thought experiment is remarkably similar to the politicians in the US who thought they could bribe people to take the COVID vaccines. People do respond to incentives, but only to a certain extent — there are huge numbers of people in this world who have a value system that takes 'profit' out of the equation.
- rodp 5y agoYou have basically described most economies.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- anm89 5y agoProposing to destroy your own currency in a misguided attempt to redistribute wealth to your own citizens is understandable. Proposing to destroy your currency to redistibute wealth from your citizens to another country's citizens is a profound failure to understand the incentives that policy makers face