4 ms·

Well because it's the money and globalization talking. In the middle of all the conspiracy shit you find online, there is also a ton of subtle and well-document

Well because it's the money and globalization talking. In the middle of all the conspiracy shit you find online, there is also a ton of subtle and well-documented journalistic work explaining how sure they've helped poor kids in africa (who's against that?), but at the same time they're really bad at making the people they help self-sufficient and independent from global powers (which are the reason for their problems in the first place). They are giving stuff, but they are never really giving away the real thing. Why would they actually? They were cynical and capitalistic enough to actually make a shitton of money by exploiting people in the first place for a big part of their career (Bill Gates). By now we understand pretty much how they think about society and about what's good and bad. They are still somehow advancing the agenda of globalization. If you don't understand this, you ought to read about leftist critics of western humanitarian orgs. edit: see eg https://mondediplo.com/2022/07/11africa https://mondediplo.com/2022/07/11africa (sorry it's paywalled i'm looking into capturing it somewhere)

darawk 4y ago
What is the "real thing" and how would one give it away?
- lapinot 4y ago
  The real thing is materialistic independence and you give it away by educating skilled workers giving away IP and financing locally operated factories and other infrastructures. But global power have institutional safeguards against this because then they'll push themselves into a bad corner negotiating for resources they need themselves.
  - lbrito 4y ago
    I don't think its that simple. Not even close. Yes, IP protectionism is a problem, and breaking IP sometimes is extremely beneficial (e.g. generic drugs). But that doesn't account for the underdevelopment of most countries. There are many factors involved -- geographical, historical, social, political and so on. Its a long discussion that is ill fitted to a comment box, but suffice to say B&M Gates isn't _the_ reason underdeveloped countries are that way.
  - mordae 4y ago
    This. US - for example - might solve most of it's expensive drugs problem by simply licensing all relevant IP to India for a guarantee that they would be able to buy the drugs with up to 20% profit for the Indian seller after shipping, close an international deal, establish arbitrage and watch drug prices fall to <10% over a decade while Indians build up. If they established a mutual research fund (possibly with EU and British ex-colonies), they would exceed the current rate of research at 70% of current funding (if the research is kept in the west, basically guaranteed saving - 30% feeds profits and marketing), but if they were to exploit lower Indian wages... But this will never happen, because US is literally a business-interest device nowadays.
    - lapinot 4y ago
      Yeah, i agree, but still, i believe we should even aim for higher standards than what you propose: actually licensing current relevant IP is not enough. At least in the sense that we actually have to develop IP that is small-scale operable, easily shareable, etc. Current techniques are mainly geared toward large scale, investment heavy and resource exploitative applications. It's a start to at least be open about these techniques and share them, but like the article i shared above explained, if you're sharing monoculture technology, you're actually not giving away resilience and robustness. Tons of our current technology has to be reevaluated because it optimized the wrong things.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    In other words, you help them to the point where they can become viable competition. Can't have that.
  - darawk 4y ago
    You mean like this? https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-growth-and-opportunity/global-education-program https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-gro...
    - lapinot 4y ago
      No, i mean like this https://archive.org/details/AK47AKMTechnicalDrawingsRussian/page/n11/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/AK47AKMTechnicalDrawingsRussian/... ;) I'm joking a bit, but really, i'm not talking about teaching arithmetic and giving away pencils (which again, is something which is progressive, but at the same time it's not hard), i'm talking about giving strategic knowledge that gives you negotiation power (not weapons particularly btw). Building up strategic independence for these territories.
      - darawk 4y ago
        Don't you have to teach people arithmetic before you can teach them to do complex manufacturing? It doesn't seem to me like most of Africa has the level of education necessary to sustain operations like these.
        lapinot 4y ago
        Yeah right, they barely have enough braincells to not basically do group sucide and have so much trouble behaving rationally, like you know posting cats on instagram. Dude. Everywhere in the world you can find people to organize elementary school, they have local intellectuals too. They have artisans, musicians, mechanics, farmers and markets, philosophers. It's disrespectful to consider that they have other problems for these kinds of job than financial and materialistic ones. No society is this dumb. And it's even also kind of dangerous, or at least not very culturally consensual, to come there grab small kids and with our best intentions teach them the western way. Maybe this won't be very well received. Maybe it really shouldn't be well received given all the mixup with evangelism (religious and cultural) that has taken place. Educating kids is a local matter and no one should be allowed to do more than help local people teach their kids. This is how you build trust and bidirectional/balanced relationships. Additionally, if you micro-manage people like that, they will still be vulnerable to another entity like you taking your place. So i maintain my position: what matters is the actually hard stuff, all the manuals we have, annotated maps, high-quality data sources and costly laboratory machines. High level information about what's going on and basic means to act on that. They'll find out what to do and you will actually build a strong ally, not a puppet you have to take care of.
lbrito 4y ago
Thanks for the Le Monde link, its an interesting read. Monoculture is a well known problem and hardly the invention of Gates' though. "But they finance it" -- and that is bad. There are probably lobbies involved. To short-circuit the discussion, the explanation is almost always money, and almost never some deep, sinister evil.
zwirbl 4y ago
Awesome, first time I see a lmd link here on HN. I guess I'll read that article in my paper version today
chmod600 4y ago
"[global powers] are the reason for [poor kids in Africa] problems in the first place" Why do you think that? Poverty existed before globalization.
- lapinot 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being falsely naive or not, but i'll assume the best and try to sum it up in a couple lines. But don't quote me on it, it's obviously gonna be butchered, this is a field of study and i'm very much not an expert at all. So first, we're not talking about poverty here, we're talking about relationships. "the problem" i'm talking about is the fact that most resources in say, african territories, are being exploited (in the technical sense) by foreign companies (oil, minerals, wood), which obviously pay some "local market price", but are inherently tied and beneficial to third-parties. This schema can be historically linked back to the classic european colonies. The states and institutions likewise. This link is done by studying the history of these institutions, the political forces and philosophical schools behind them (in this case liberal philosophy: supremacy of rationality, private property, kant, smith, the lumières). In this sense "the (global) economy" is not a somehow "natural" concept, it's only hegemonic. It has roots, was developed over some time period and acknowledging that you can then start to look into the lesser visible phenomenon (since it's hegemonic): who was doing something else, who adopted it late, what were the oppositions or where it has been externally forced upon (somewhat as a weapon, but i don't want a negative meaning, i'd rather call it "a tool of power"). In this sense, yes, tons of the big historical problems in the global south can be linked to a historically dominating relationship with the liberal school of thought (which has its epicenter/brain in the western world and which is thus inherently tied with their interests). You can also try to map it out not only geographically but also sociologically, but i'm gonna stop here because i'm mostly writing for myself rn i guess. I mean we're not gonna have the debate on globalization here. At least acknowledge the pov. It is a coherent political view that you ought to know well the architecture of, if you're serious about thinking politics: it's the basis of all debate to have some level of understanding of the opposing positions and what kind of structures have been defending it (and what kind have not).
- yomkippur 4y ago
  Africa can catapult itself out of poverty but the goods it sells on the international marketplace is automatically fixed by powerful Western countries. ex) Cotton. The African farmers cannot compete against US farmers which receive a generous subsidy. We teach our kids that colonialism is over but its still going strong in Africa. France and Mali for instance.

darawk 4y ago

What is the "real thing" and how would one give it away?

lapinot 4y ago
The real thing is materialistic independence and you give it away by educating skilled workers giving away IP and financing locally operated factories and other infrastructures. But global power have institutional safeguards against this because then they'll push themselves into a bad corner negotiating for resources they need themselves.
- lbrito 4y ago
  I don't think its that simple. Not even close. Yes, IP protectionism is a problem, and breaking IP sometimes is extremely beneficial (e.g. generic drugs). But that doesn't account for the underdevelopment of most countries. There are many factors involved -- geographical, historical, social, political and so on. Its a long discussion that is ill fitted to a comment box, but suffice to say B&M Gates isn't _the_ reason underdeveloped countries are that way.
- mordae 4y ago
  This. US - for example - might solve most of it's expensive drugs problem by simply licensing all relevant IP to India for a guarantee that they would be able to buy the drugs with up to 20% profit for the Indian seller after shipping, close an international deal, establish arbitrage and watch drug prices fall to <10% over a decade while Indians build up. If they established a mutual research fund (possibly with EU and British ex-colonies), they would exceed the current rate of research at 70% of current funding (if the research is kept in the west, basically guaranteed saving - 30% feeds profits and marketing), but if they were to exploit lower Indian wages... But this will never happen, because US is literally a business-interest device nowadays.
  - lapinot 4y ago
    Yeah, i agree, but still, i believe we should even aim for higher standards than what you propose: actually licensing current relevant IP is not enough. At least in the sense that we actually have to develop IP that is small-scale operable, easily shareable, etc. Current techniques are mainly geared toward large scale, investment heavy and resource exploitative applications. It's a start to at least be open about these techniques and share them, but like the article i shared above explained, if you're sharing monoculture technology, you're actually not giving away resilience and robustness. Tons of our current technology has to be reevaluated because it optimized the wrong things.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  In other words, you help them to the point where they can become viable competition. Can't have that.
- darawk 4y ago
  You mean like this? https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-growth-and-opportunity/global-education-program https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-gro...
  - lapinot 4y ago
    No, i mean like this https://archive.org/details/AK47AKMTechnicalDrawingsRussian/page/n11/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/AK47AKMTechnicalDrawingsRussian/... ;) I'm joking a bit, but really, i'm not talking about teaching arithmetic and giving away pencils (which again, is something which is progressive, but at the same time it's not hard), i'm talking about giving strategic knowledge that gives you negotiation power (not weapons particularly btw). Building up strategic independence for these territories.
    - darawk 4y ago
      Don't you have to teach people arithmetic before you can teach them to do complex manufacturing? It doesn't seem to me like most of Africa has the level of education necessary to sustain operations like these.
      - lapinot 4y ago
        Yeah right, they barely have enough braincells to not basically do group sucide and have so much trouble behaving rationally, like you know posting cats on instagram. Dude. Everywhere in the world you can find people to organize elementary school, they have local intellectuals too. They have artisans, musicians, mechanics, farmers and markets, philosophers. It's disrespectful to consider that they have other problems for these kinds of job than financial and materialistic ones. No society is this dumb. And it's even also kind of dangerous, or at least not very culturally consensual, to come there grab small kids and with our best intentions teach them the western way. Maybe this won't be very well received. Maybe it really shouldn't be well received given all the mixup with evangelism (religious and cultural) that has taken place. Educating kids is a local matter and no one should be allowed to do more than help local people teach their kids. This is how you build trust and bidirectional/balanced relationships. Additionally, if you micro-manage people like that, they will still be vulnerable to another entity like you taking your place. So i maintain my position: what matters is the actually hard stuff, all the manuals we have, annotated maps, high-quality data sources and costly laboratory machines. High level information about what's going on and basic means to act on that. They'll find out what to do and you will actually build a strong ally, not a puppet you have to take care of.

lbrito 4y ago

Thanks for the Le Monde link, its an interesting read. Monoculture is a well known problem and hardly the invention of Gates' though. "But they finance it" -- and that is bad. There are probably lobbies involved. To short-circuit the discussion, the explanation is almost always money, and almost never some deep, sinister evil.

zwirbl 4y ago

Awesome, first time I see a lmd link here on HN. I guess I'll read that article in my paper version today

chmod600 4y ago

"[global powers] are the reason for [poor kids in Africa] problems in the first place" Why do you think that? Poverty existed before globalization.

lapinot 4y ago
I'm not sure if you're being falsely naive or not, but i'll assume the best and try to sum it up in a couple lines. But don't quote me on it, it's obviously gonna be butchered, this is a field of study and i'm very much not an expert at all. So first, we're not talking about poverty here, we're talking about relationships. "the problem" i'm talking about is the fact that most resources in say, african territories, are being exploited (in the technical sense) by foreign companies (oil, minerals, wood), which obviously pay some "local market price", but are inherently tied and beneficial to third-parties. This schema can be historically linked back to the classic european colonies. The states and institutions likewise. This link is done by studying the history of these institutions, the political forces and philosophical schools behind them (in this case liberal philosophy: supremacy of rationality, private property, kant, smith, the lumières). In this sense "the (global) economy" is not a somehow "natural" concept, it's only hegemonic. It has roots, was developed over some time period and acknowledging that you can then start to look into the lesser visible phenomenon (since it's hegemonic): who was doing something else, who adopted it late, what were the oppositions or where it has been externally forced upon (somewhat as a weapon, but i don't want a negative meaning, i'd rather call it "a tool of power"). In this sense, yes, tons of the big historical problems in the global south can be linked to a historically dominating relationship with the liberal school of thought (which has its epicenter/brain in the western world and which is thus inherently tied with their interests). You can also try to map it out not only geographically but also sociologically, but i'm gonna stop here because i'm mostly writing for myself rn i guess. I mean we're not gonna have the debate on globalization here. At least acknowledge the pov. It is a coherent political view that you ought to know well the architecture of, if you're serious about thinking politics: it's the basis of all debate to have some level of understanding of the opposing positions and what kind of structures have been defending it (and what kind have not).
yomkippur 4y ago
Africa can catapult itself out of poverty but the goods it sells on the international marketplace is automatically fixed by powerful Western countries. ex) Cotton. The African farmers cannot compete against US farmers which receive a generous subsidy. We teach our kids that colonialism is over but its still going strong in Africa. France and Mali for instance.