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How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of

• crop_rotation 2y ago
  Central planning has a very good record in countries like China/South Korea. Non central social changes are just very very slow.
  • jajko 2y ago
    Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Main reason why EU won't ever compete with US economically, while being also very rich and actually more populous. You should also compare it to situation where those countries wouldn't be centrally planned. Not so possible without time machine, so let's leave out measuring of efficiency of such systems. Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central planning failed and fell down overnight, literally all those economies experienced massive boosts. I know I've lived through such transition there, hard to describe with words.
    • crop_rotation 2y ago
      > Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central planning failed I am not saying central planning is a cure all. Trying a bad economic system with any kind of planning will fail. > Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Correct, in the absence of strong top down rule (whether democracy or not), social changes are just going to be very slow (this doesn't mean strong top down rule will result in good changes, just that otherwise it is slow). The US needed a civil war to abolish slavery and two world wars for many other social changes (similar to most of western Europe). I am not saying A or B is better. But without central planning the chances of any big cultural changes in Sudan type countries happening in the next 50 or even 100 years is very remote.
    • joker99 2y ago
      That is not the main reason. Not even close. Here’s a list of main reasons, in no particular order: - 8 different currencies across EU member states - 24 languages - 27 sovereign countries with wildly different economic, social, foreign, military … policies - laws and regulations are only slowly harmonised across the board - deep seating historic prejudices (which lead to major wars in the past) - unfriendly and downright hostile neighbours - a smaller amount of natural resources to exploit - etc etc
      • walthamstow 2y ago
        The EU has existed for less than a lifetime. Before that we were competing against each other, with bloody consequences. How many wars were fought on European soil between 1776 and today? I couldn't even begin to answer that.
    • feedforward 2y ago
      With regards to central planning, neither China nor the US is fully in or out of it. China still has Five Year Plans and some central planning, but Deng Xioping took steps away from it in the 1980s. There's a mythology the US has no central planning, but it has had a lot of central planning since 1932 and certainly since 1941. Market makers watch for the presidentially nominated Powell to come out and announce the fed funds rate for our fiat currency, and the economy either speeds up or slows down in response. We are typing on a network the government paid BBN and other companies to create, on chips descended from the Fairchild chips that Air Force contracts funded. For various historical reasons, much of the central planning in the US is done via its very well funded military (then well funded military contractors pay think tanks and politicians to go out and say they're not so well funded)
  • giantg2 2y ago
    I'm not sure China is a good example of it working, unless you limit it to the past couple decades and ignore the human rights issues. South Korea may be a decent example, but also has some possible indirect negative effects, given all the protests, urban/rural divide, and social/birthrate issues. Sure they have the whole not starving thing handled, but so do the majority of countries regardless of central planning or not.
    • crop_rotation 2y ago
      Do you realise you are commenting in the context of a massive famine and millions of lives lost? All the countries in Africa and almost any non developed country will gladly take post Mao Chinese leadership and there current status quo over their current lives. Human rights don't come before people have a certain dignity to live. Trying to preach human rights to a starving population is just .....
      • giantg2 2y ago
        Do you realize we're talking about approaches that work? What stages did China and South Korea go through to get to today? The 40s and 50s were pretty bad in either country. Show me a prosperous centralized government that didn't have some ethnic or political cleansing at it's roots. Or you could not red herring me and supply a proposed solution that could work instead of painting my opposition to central planning as an opposition to fixing famine in an emotional appeal.
  • logicchains 2y ago
    >Central planning has a very good record in countries like China It's got a very terrible track record in China; the government caused tens of millions of its own people to starve to death, and set the economic development back decades. The GDP per capita in Taiwan is more than double that of China currently, but both started at a similar position. If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much better.
    • crop_rotation 2y ago
      > If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much better. This is just absurd. Taiwan's entire economy is TSMC + some small things. Copying political systems doesn't get you per capita standard of living. Yes Mao's China did stupid things but post Mao China has done well economically atleast. They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and have done well.
      • Ray20 2y ago
        >They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and have done well. Literally zero work is required for this. You just need to stop keeping people in extreme poverty - and that's it.
  • albertopv 2y ago
    China had an empire lasting about 2000 years, truly something different
  • yorwba 2y ago
    Central planning has an extremely bad record in China, especially when it comes to famine. During the Great Leap forward, the central planners demanded the implementation of new Lysenkoist farming practices that were reportedly a great success and on track to deliver a record harvest. The central planners then dispensed generous daily rations from the granaries, so that everyone could eat their fill, causing farmers to spend less effort on the side crops they had been growing in addition to working on the state farms. The central planners decided that they didn't need quite so many agricultural workers, so they redirected the labor surplus to increasing steel production in order to catch up with the British Empire and overtake the United States. And they also increased food exports to other countries. Then it all came crashing down: the reports of huge productivity increases were made up, the record harvest was a record low, the surplus was a deficit, tens of millions of people starved. (Steel production did not meaningfully increase either.) You could argue that it was just a very expensive beginner's mistake because they'd only been doing the central planning thing for about a decade at that point, but then after Mao's death less than two decades later, the first big economic reform was the Household Responsibility System where farmers would decide for themselves what to grow, and the state would just buy it from them. So I think the verdict from the world's greatest experts in agricultural central planning is clear: don't do it.
    • crop_rotation 2y ago
      I have mentioned this elsewhere as well, no kind of planning saves one from bad economic policy. Post Deng China has a very very good record of bringing prosperity (and China still central planning).
      • Jensson 2y ago
        > and China still central planning Every country has some central planning, China doesn't have much more central planning today than your average European country. Or do you believe some CCP central planner decided to put in scantily clad anime girls in games from China? China today is very capitalist, they lack democracy, not capitalism.
        • 2y ago
• shadowgovt 2y ago
  That's what the world tried with Germany after World War I. There's a reason we stopped believing "just let sovereign nations sort themselves out" is the best approach. It's a pretty selfish reason.
  • 1oooqooq 2y ago
    that's too wrong to even behind to address.
  • ericd 2y ago
    Other countries didn’t exactly stay out of their business - the WW1 allies were demanding unsustainably large war reparations paid in gold, rather than a currency they had control over the supply of. My understanding is that this directly led to their hyperinflation, massive amounts of resentment, and the eventual fall of the Weimar Republic. And everyone knows the rest.
    • shadowgovt 2y ago
      Correct. But that's my point. "Here's the obligations, sort out how to meet them yourselves" was the old model. It doesn't work out. And no obligations is impossible in an increasingly interconnected world.
      • ericd 2y ago
        Ah I see, you meant that the other governments weren't being considerate of the consequences of selfish demands and it ended badly.
        • shadowgovt 2y ago
          Right. *let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own" is an opportunity that strongmen have exploited over and over again.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• urduntupu 2y ago
  [dead]
• AdrianB1 2y ago
  This is an excellent option if you are willing to accept hundreds of millions of people will die in the process and that it will take a hundred years or more for that to happen. Development does not happen overnight and it takes a toll. That being said, my impression is that the people leaning left in politics are strongly against non-interventionism. This means it will become a political issue in the countries that can help (or intervene), especially because most of these countries have a very strong left leaning. Sudan will become ammunition in electoral fights in elections, politics will win and interventions will happen just because of that, not because the interventionists care in any way about people of Sudan, they are just simple pawns on their chess board.
  • marxisttemp 2y ago
    I think you’ll find it is the right wing who find themselves invariably attracted to war. Unless you’re using “the left” to mean “neoliberals”, as seems to be common among the American right, in which case let me refer you to the first paragraph (since the American Democratic Party is by all measures a right wing party).
    • Jensson 2y ago
      > since the American Democratic Party is by all measures a right wing party Only fiscally, if you look at social issues they are very left.
    • AdrianB1 2y ago
      I find the left wing in general (not just US) to be etatist. That makes it interventionist in everyone's life by definition.
      • marxisttemp 2y ago
        Interventionism refers to foreign policy. The right wing is also statist, they’d just prefer to use the power of the state to hammer others down rather than lift them up.
• cen4 2y ago
  "Security" as provided by the Pentagon/MIL complex is an evolution of what the Brits used to do to maintain order across the Empire. After the Empire fell, the Americans basically cut and paste that policy, where the goal is mainly about protecting the flows of capital and trade. Colonial legacy and thinking needs a total reboot. Will die out naturally as boomers trained in that kind of thinking pre-globalization die out.
  • bawolff 2y ago
    > Will die out naturally as boomers trained in that kind of thinking pre-globalization die out. I don't think it will. There will always be powerful people who want to maintain that power, and wannabe powerful people who want to get that power. So long as that way of thinking leads to power, there will be people who will follow it. The problem is not that people are tainted by colonial thinking - its that humans are tainted by ambition.
    • BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
      Cultures that were colonized may have other ways of conceptualizing power, for example as multigenerational stewardship. Because I am unable to think outside colonial ways doesn't mean other ways don't exist.
    • cen4 2y ago
      Look at the Brits. The current gen can't play the same games their grand parents did even if they are well programmed and super ambitious. They have to invent new games. And agree mindless ambition is a big issue.
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• yunohn 2y ago
  > Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? This simply never happens. The developed world is constantly putting its nose into everyone else’s business, and through globalization and industrialization, there’s nothing on this world that the Western economy doesn’t touch.
  • csomar 2y ago
    > This simply never happens. China did well after their cultural revolution. Took time but the page has been turned on that episode.
    • golergka 2y ago
      It did well because of Kissinger and relationship with US.
    • carapace 2y ago
      "episode"? You're casually dismissing the Cultural Revolution to argue for non-interference. I don't think you're making the point you hope to make. Absolutely somebody should have intervened if possible to halt that madness. Things got so bad that people actually ate human flesh, not because they were starving, but to demonstrate unquestionable loyalty to the party. Students literally ate their teachers.
  • EasyMark 2y ago
    Or China or Russia or …..?
    • yunohn 2y ago
      I’m not actually sure which universe you’re referring to, in which the West does not constantly try to interfere with China/Russia and their activities.
      • Jensson 2y ago
        He meant China and Russia are meddling with the world as well.
• EasyMark 2y ago
  Because humans feel compassion for their fellow human beings and if we don’t then what’s the point? It doesn’t cost that much to feed a famine to be honest, much less than blowing up the same country when it’s starts hosting a terrorist org that makes you the next great Satan to blow up because you exist?
  • asdf6969 2y ago
    Have they asked you for help? Mind your own business
    • px43 2y ago
      Maybe that's something. Maybe goodwill would be more effective when laundered through existing family connections. Surely someone in the midst of the famine has family in the US. Maybe support groups should be working directly with family members in wealthier countries, and then resources hand delivered to family members living in impoverished areas who can then distribute the resources through their local networks. Rather than just drop shipping a bunch of boxes full of food or whatever. Let the heroes be local heroes, not just some abstract alien organization that no one has any social connection to.
      • lazyasciiart 2y ago
        https://mutualaidsudan.org/ https://mutualaidsudan.org/
    • lazyasciiart 2y ago
      Yes. https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/08/02/food-kitchen-sudan-war https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/08/02/food-k... https://mutualaidsudan.org/ https://mutualaidsudan.org/
      • asdf6969 2y ago
        This has a diagram showing the funding structure with 5 layers of bureaucracy between donors and the recipients of aid. This organization reduces that to 3 (The “coalition” that owns the website -> financial service providers -> mutual aid societies -> actual people in need). So I ask again, have these people actually requested your help? How do you know what they actually need? Maybe the best solution is a way to gtfo of Sudan and let it collapse. Maybe they want weapons or chickens. I don’t know!
• keiferski 2y ago
  Not to excuse the various bad decisions and bungled coups supported by the US during the Cold War, but – had they just "completely stayed out of their business" then the Soviets merely would have intervened (as they actually did in many, many places). In real life, geopolitics is a complex game theory problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_S...
  • jksflkjl3jk3 2y ago
    I suppose the status quo is an inevitable consequence of technology expanding the practical spheres of influence of world powers. It sure would be nice though to have a world without globalization, still full of cultural diversity.
    • nradov 2y ago
      But only the good and inoffensive parts of cultural diversity, right? Not the parts that involve misogyny or patriarchy or homophobia or beheading apostates? When people advocate against globalization and for cultural diversity they're usually only in favor of the most shallow aspects: food, clothes, entertainment, architecture, etc. Not the stuff that actually matters for safety and quality of life in other countries. And to be clear I'm not advocating for forcibly imposing our cultural values on those other countries. But let's not have an overly romanticized view of cultural diversity.
• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Works for natural ecosystems because we accept that mass casualties is "normal" in the natural world; if some species doesn't survive a mass fire/drought/etc, welp, that's nature. When millions of people starve to death, we don't accept that. (lol, well, we do accept it, as history has shown us time and time again, but we tend to not want to do nothing)
  • ethbr1 2y ago
    Agreed. Parent is ignoring the positive effects of intervention while highlighting the negative. USAID funds USD$50b / year, and the US funds UNICEF to the tune of USD$1.4b / year. Which, among other things, supports the polio vaccination campaign being rolled out in Gaza, to prevent a public health catastrophe and possible resurgence of polio in the Middle East. It's easy to say "Let them eat cake" when one is sitting in the palace and opining about CIA boondoggles. In the real world, that means people are starving and children are crippled. We can (and should) strive for better than nasty, brutish, and short lives, regardless of a person's nationality.
    • ein0p 2y ago
      And do remind us, who is funding the bombing of Gaza?
      • shadowgovt 2y ago
        https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies Kind of an international effort.
        • ein0p 2y ago
          It’s an “international effort” in the same way the second Iraq war was. The US is funding the lion’s share of this genocide
      • ethbr1 2y ago
        The right-wing Israeli government? Seeing as that's who their military reports to. The US may not be restraining them sufficiently, inasmuch as any country can another, but it's kind of a weird question. Israeli is more than capable of bombing Gaza into the stone age even absent US military aid. The broader finger pointing should be that, as always, nobody actually cares about the Palestinians. The West doesn't care, because Israel. The East doesn't care, because why would they? And the Middle East doesn't care, because as much as they trumpet the Palestinian cause to boost domestic popularity, none of them are actually willing to suffer consequences for the benefit of Palestinians. Which leaves... the Houthis and Iran, neither of which are very linked to the global economic network at this point, and so have little to lose.
• doikor 2y ago
  The current chaos is a result of UAE and Saudi having a proxy war there. Basically the developed world stepping out to let these countries figure shit out for themselves just led to another group of countries stepping in.
• pfdietz 2y ago
  In practice that becomes, "they are genociding themselves, how convenient".
• oezi 2y ago
  If we look at the havoc of any conflict region (Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia,...) we can see that both engaging in the conflict and staying out of it is tremendously expensive. Paying Turkey to hold the Syrian refugees back and housing those that passed through costs Europe tens of billions each year. Engagement would have been hard, but one is left to wonder if we shouldn't try harder for own benefit.
• arp242 2y ago
  Other countries such as some middle-eastern states and Russia are already intervening in the conflict, often not entirely with the more purest of intentions, or with the interests of the Sudanese people at heart. So "let the chaos develop on its own" reasons from a situation that simply does not exist.