3 ms·

> > Lucky for a start that he was born in the US not, say, the Congo. > The US was created by its citizens. Any country can do that. That's a very strong clai

> > Lucky for a start that he was born in the US not, say, the Congo. > The US was created by its citizens. Any country can do that. That's a very strong claim. Are you saying that Congo just doesn't want to be prosperous? That every country that isn't currently the richest in the world just... didn't decide to be become the richest in the world?

WalterBright 4y ago
The path they chose is one that does not lead to prosperity. There's nothing inherently wrong with Congo or the Congo people. What I find most sad is how few people want to emulate the United States, and how many want to emulate disasters like the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.
- robbiep 4y ago
  Have you looked at the United States recently?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Yes, and I see millions that are walking thousands of miles for a chance at getting in the US. What do you think they are seeing?
    - robbiep 4y ago
      I see a borderline failed state. The fact people are rushing there from other failed states is no signifier of confidence as far as I’m concerned. Generally I see it as a warning sign for western ideals, and a great tragedy waiting to unfold if the shit hits the fan. When pressed, I’ll express my concern that a population of people who have had it so good for so long have done so little to agree about what it means to be human and autonomous and as a result have completely failed their founding fathers.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The US is turning away from being a market economy, and if that's your point I tend to agree.
- Banana699 4y ago
  >The path they chose is one that does not lead to prosperity. You're playing games here with 'chose', the US didn't choose to be a super power, they were an irrelevant sugar colony who lucked upon the stupidity and self-destructiveness of Europe (from Napoleon to Hitler) and a continent-worth of land whose inhabitants are easily devastated by old world diseases. I don't think you can attribute this to any choice or planning on part of anyone, at every single point in history the actions and incentives of people are fully explained by a simple distributed greedy algorithms, choosing to maximize things that turn out to be wildly wrong in retrospect and not what the children of the next generation want (which is also wildly wrong and not what the children of the next generation want, which....). Even in a perfect information game like chess a single mistake can doom you, even in perfectly mutable, free, abundant and error-correctible computers a single bad state can (and often does) cascade into a failure that requires nothing short of full restart. Life is orders of magnitude worse than those 2 (perfect!) systems. Life is multi-way chess where the descendents of the players continue the game for them. You don't choose paths, they choose you. People hundreds of years removed and thousands of kilometers apart doom and bless you into fates beyond your comprehension.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    What happened in South America? Compare the US to South America over the last 400 years in the light of your statements. Also compare with Japan and Germany, both of which turned to free markets after WW2 and became quite wealthy. Japan in particular has no natural resources to speak of.
- teh64 4y ago
  "The path they chose", i.e. they deserved it? Also the Democratic Republic of the Congo (in comparison to "Republic of the Congo") was fiercely anti-communist [0] and backed by the US, so I guess that didn't help them with their prosperity either. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo#Mobutu_dictatorship_and_Zaire_(1965%E2%80%931997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Con...

WalterBright 4y ago

The path they chose is one that does not lead to prosperity. There's nothing inherently wrong with Congo or the Congo people. What I find most sad is how few people want to emulate the United States, and how many want to emulate disasters like the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

robbiep 4y ago
Have you looked at the United States recently?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Yes, and I see millions that are walking thousands of miles for a chance at getting in the US. What do you think they are seeing?
  - robbiep 4y ago
    I see a borderline failed state. The fact people are rushing there from other failed states is no signifier of confidence as far as I’m concerned. Generally I see it as a warning sign for western ideals, and a great tragedy waiting to unfold if the shit hits the fan. When pressed, I’ll express my concern that a population of people who have had it so good for so long have done so little to agree about what it means to be human and autonomous and as a result have completely failed their founding fathers.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The US is turning away from being a market economy, and if that's your point I tend to agree.
Banana699 4y ago
>The path they chose is one that does not lead to prosperity. You're playing games here with 'chose', the US didn't choose to be a super power, they were an irrelevant sugar colony who lucked upon the stupidity and self-destructiveness of Europe (from Napoleon to Hitler) and a continent-worth of land whose inhabitants are easily devastated by old world diseases. I don't think you can attribute this to any choice or planning on part of anyone, at every single point in history the actions and incentives of people are fully explained by a simple distributed greedy algorithms, choosing to maximize things that turn out to be wildly wrong in retrospect and not what the children of the next generation want (which is also wildly wrong and not what the children of the next generation want, which....). Even in a perfect information game like chess a single mistake can doom you, even in perfectly mutable, free, abundant and error-correctible computers a single bad state can (and often does) cascade into a failure that requires nothing short of full restart. Life is orders of magnitude worse than those 2 (perfect!) systems. Life is multi-way chess where the descendents of the players continue the game for them. You don't choose paths, they choose you. People hundreds of years removed and thousands of kilometers apart doom and bless you into fates beyond your comprehension.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  What happened in South America? Compare the US to South America over the last 400 years in the light of your statements. Also compare with Japan and Germany, both of which turned to free markets after WW2 and became quite wealthy. Japan in particular has no natural resources to speak of.
teh64 4y ago
"The path they chose", i.e. they deserved it? Also the Democratic Republic of the Congo (in comparison to "Republic of the Congo") was fiercely anti-communist [0] and backed by the US, so I guess that didn't help them with their prosperity either. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo#Mobutu_dictatorship_and_Zaire_(1965%E2%80%931997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Con...