8 ms·

I wonder what the long term solutions to these kinds of problems are in East Africa and similar contexts. The remnants of colonialism continue to produce winne

I wonder what the long term solutions to these kinds of problems are in East Africa and similar contexts. The remnants of colonialism continue to produce winners and losers economically, with the winners stuck in local maxima where they extract value from the people, but the people themselves see only marginal benefit, and development is stuck at a snail's pace. As with seemingly everything in life, the incentives for the different players really don't line up. Consumers lose, producers lose, and only a select few middlemen win anything at all.

fsckboy 2y ago
"the remnants of colonialism" include the ability to participate in world markets which create markets for local products. If Kenyans grew coffee (ignoring the fact that Kenyans growing coffee was itself a remnant of colonialism) just for the Kenyan market, the coffee sector in Kenya would be a tiny part of the local economy. The reason New York City is the biggest city in the US is because when the Erie Canal was built, the agricultural riches of the Midwest had a route to world markets. Where you have a major seaport, you also need major banks and major insurance companies to smooth out the financial needs of traders and shippers, providing the funds right away back to the farmers, instead of them waiting till the voyages were complete. (without the Erie Canal, New Orleans would have become the largest city in the US) Yes, there is a lot of money in trading, banking, etc. At every step of the transaction pyramid, a %age is added to the price, and the %age fees charged on that go up accordingly. But that measures the true value of the product at each stage; if you have a cheaper way of getting the same product to the same stage cheaper, the (supposed) riches will be yours. The socialist instinct ("anybody getting rich must be cheating") unfortunately obscures the real problem ("monopolists and cartels controlling supply and setting prices are the true enemies of the people") which hinders solving it; by putting capitalism in your gunsights, you make enemies out of natural allies.
- busterarm 2y ago
  It's painful having to remind people of this. Also the fact that everyone alive today is so as a result of either being on the winning side of colonialism or from their ancestors otherwise clubbing somebody else over the head.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > Also the fact that everyone alive today is so as a result of either being on the winning side of colonialism or from their ancestors otherwise clubbing somebody else over the head. That's a poor justification for it, though, and I don't want to live in a society that goes out of its way to view itself as Hobbesian.
    - busterarm 2y ago
      Violent conflict between human beings is inevitable. It stems from our conflict with nature. We're all winners here and that's far better than the alternative.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      You have to work with the world as it is, not as you'd wish it to work (especially that it likely couldn't possibly work that way anyway). "State of nature" sucks, because nature sucks. All the nice and good things come from building systems, social or otherwise, on top of the natural state of things - systems that work with our natural inclinations, instead of pretending they don't exist.
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        Right but nature doesn't suck. You make humans sound incapable of cooperation when this evidently isn't true. In this world uncooperative behavior is mostly a choice. Particularly in the west.
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        To the extent humans fail at cooperation, that's nature at work. When we cooperate, we defy nature.
        PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > To the extent humans fail at cooperation, that's nature at work. When we cooperate, we defy nature. Well that seems a little silly, no? Humans are social creatures; cooperation is just as natural as any other human behavior (including fallibility). It seems almost a little christian in its doomful profession that humans are only our worst attributes.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Sure, but when the uber-wealthy capitalists make the laws, avoid paying the taxes that support the entire system, and then greedily take as much as possible for their own selves without regard to the well-being of the workers or the Earth, the parasite is overwhelming the host. As always, compassion is the answer to all our problems, even the thorny one of finding out how to fairly reward those who innovate, while preventing them from devastating the Earth and her peoples while they do so. And, above all, we must not let the wealthy and their attorneys make the effing laws or elect our leaders. That's always a nightmare receipe for a bad system, and here we are.
- vundercind 2y ago
  > The socialist instinct ("anybody getting rich must be cheating") unfortunately obscures the real problem ("monopolists and cartels controlling supply and setting prices are the true enemies of the people") which hinders solving it; by putting capitalism in your gunsights, you make enemies out of natural allies. I think this gets a little muddied in The Discourse, because tons of pro-market anti-monopolist and anti-cartel[1] policies (like, you know, any preference for more trust-busting than the post-late-'70s neutered version) get painted as socialism in, especially, the US, simply because it's regulation and since the rise of Chicago-school jurisprudence and legislative influence, the fall of anti-capture and money-influence-mitigating regulation of media over several decades, and generally the ascendance of the Reagan-associated neoliberal outlook across all of mainstream American economic politics until very recently, regulation is the enemy of capitalism in many folks' minds, even when it's (god this is frustrating) laser-focused on making markets freer in the sense of their function, not the sense of "less-regulated". The result is that people who simply think "barely-regulated markets" aren't fix-everything magic fairy dust that can't possibly be improved by a couple more laws and enforcement mechanisms, or even in a some cases by flat out replacement by a government program, find themselves rhetorically connected to nationalize-much-of-the-means-of-production Marxism-curious socialists (besides not being so removed from Nordic-style democratic-socialists to begin with) [1] frankly, I find it convenient in certain company to shorthand "shitty tending-toward-captured markets, sacrificing efficiency and human decency for the comfort of a few" as "capitalism" given the actual outcomes and evident tendencies of systems the leaders of which emphasize and tout how capitalist they are, and the frequent expressed and revealed preferences of folks who like to promote themselves as particularly capitalistic, for the same reason it's kinda fair to regard communism as authoritarian and anti-democratic in practice, but I'll gladly entertain other usage for the sake of conversation.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    These days anti-trust measures tend to be framed in terms of increasing competition rather than market freeness. Which does make some sense. Hard to argue with increasing competition unless you're Peter Thiel.
    - 2y ago
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Do you think by "remnants of colonialism" the OP meant "capitalism"? It's plain to me that he did not. I read it as him meaning an extensive bureaucracy designed to control the subject population is still in place and causing the price of the good to rise while the actual people who produce and innovate the product are left out of sharing in the windfall. You say colonialism opened up Kenya to the global market. But nearly every country in the world, the colonized and the uncolonized, is now part of the global market, so it is not true that Kenya would not be part of the global market today without it.
  - solidsnack9000 2y ago
    The global market we have today is the result of an ordering of things that is a remnant of colonialism -- I think that is what fsckboy is referring to. It could have happened another way; but the particular one we have happened this way. The argument goes -- and I think there is a lot to this argument -- that using "remnants of colonialism" to refer only to, for example, an extensive bureaucracy that excludes people who produce much of its proceeds is misleading, because other extensive institutions that are also remnants of colonialism are an important part of commerce, law and order, and public welfare all over the world.
    - aprilthird2021 2y ago
      Why do you think there's a lot to this argument? Genuinely curious. Who said police, courts, etc. are not remnants of colonialism? Also, what is the relevance of that to this discussion about coffee selling and the problems in the Kenyan coffee market?
      - solidsnack9000 2y ago
        It is hard to see how there would even be a Kenyan coffee market without colonialism.
        aprilthird2021 2y ago
- noodlesUK 2y ago
  I agree in general, however when you actually interact with these places you soon realise that the markets are completely skewed by corrupt practices of various kinds (not just cash bribery). I don’t know whether you’ve ever been to Kenya or anywhere else in East Africa but it’s obvious how things work after just a short time there. What’s described in the article is a situation where the government has introduced export licensing and endorsed a coop system that effectively cements organizations in their current positions in the market. It’s not just governments that do this, commercial interests do too by acting as gatekeepers. I am by no means “putting capitalism in my gunsights” here - however it’s clear that one of the issues is corrupt and poor regulation. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be regulation, but that it should aim at stimulating a fair market where honest traders are able to transact freely and dishonesty is punished.
- thrance 2y ago
  You'd have to be foolish or blind to not see how the ditribution of wealth in our current world closely follows what it was under colonialism. Sorry, but colonialism was a net negative for Kenyans and many other. Kenyans can't fight the "monopolies" and "cartels", indirectly funded by western actors to keep exploiting their cheap labor to cultivate coffee. The large coffee market you speak of is not elevating the average man, stuck in a lobor-intensive and severly underpaid activity, benefiting a global system of exploitation.
  - astrange 2y ago
    > You'd have to be foolish or blind to not see how the ditribution of wealth in our current world closely follows what it was under colonialism Who did Ireland, Finland, South Korea and Botswana colonize? Second question: how did it work out for Spain, Scotland, and Russia?
- potamic 2y ago
  Except the middlemen in this case have continued through from the colonial period, with seemingly little competition since. And it's also mandated that you can sell only through the middlemen and not independently, and you start to wonder if they're just bribing politicians to keep the system rigged in their favour.
  - asdff 2y ago
    They do bribe the system, its called lobbying and is legal in most all countries.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      It may be surprising for you, but it's very rare for it to be legal. It's also almost never persecuted either, for obvious reasons. But totalitarian governments are usually not confident enough to officialize their money-movements. They usually claim to fight corruption with all their might.
- solidsnack9000 2y ago
  The hard truth is that the combination of institutions that are the remnants of colonialism have a lot to do with unprecedented improvement in material well-being all over the world, over the last 400 years or so. It is not pleasant to think about it in these terms; but it does seem like some of the greatest improvements in general human welfare have their roots in relatively ungenerous undertakings by methodical, reasonable, self-interested actors. The Romans roads and the Pax Romana, and the profound legacy of Roman law, were not the result of a benevolent desire to help everyone in the world and save them from evil.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    Yay - I can't wait for Pax Sinica to do away with the inefficiencies of democracy if it means more suffering humans will be uplifted. A brief period of reeducation is worth the amazing infrastructure and getting things done. The end will justify the means, right? /s There's something unsettling about the might makes right amd post-hoc justifications dor colonialism. Especially considering the colonialists did not have those "noble" goals in mind. No one lauds Google the way they laud the British empire, yet the same exploitation vs. public benefit arguments apply.
    - solidsnack9000 2y ago
      No one is saying it is right; but we shouldn't draw the wrong lessons from the Roman Empire or many other cases of institutional development. Being brutal and taking from others is not something that distinguished the Romans from other people (nor did it distinguish the colonial Europeans). To dismiss the Romans, the colonials, &c, as of no benefit, however, is to deny reality. The Roman roads were genuinely of value to peoples besides the Romans. Perhaps the Chinese, to, will create institutions and a scope of activity that is of value to peoples outside of China. Probably not in Asia...
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        > To dismiss the Romans, the colonials, &c, as of no benefit, however, is to deny reality. At no point did I dismiss the knowledge-transfer as being of no benefit. The point I was making is that it is very easy to be on a high horse and say "It was worth it" when you were not on the sharp end of the stick. By reframing the set-up with China as the imperial power, I hope to show the readers that the cost of "upliftment" might be something the unwilling subjects may consider culturally valuable (like democracy)[1]. Such one-dimensional analysis is intellectually lazy. 1. Imperialism has been dissected many times over the centuries, in fiction and otherwise, but it bears repeating.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
MrMcCall 2y ago
All of our problems are caused by our not prioritizing compassion in our systems' designs and implementations, including how our economic transactions are structured and performed. Compassion is the root of all virtue, and the balm for all vice. With a greater attention to compassion, every member of the chain of persons that grow, pick, process, market, sell, and even own Kenya coffee will help contribute to a better, fairer, and less deleterious to the Earth, system of farm-to-table. Being compassionate includes being honest in one's business dealings, as well as not being greedy for exhorbitant profit. It also endures that everyone in the pipeline is actually performing a useful service, not just being an unnecessary middleman adding needless cost and other encumbrances. And, of course, the Kenyan system was set up by the English Empire, so its parasitic pattern of worming its way into the fabric of all economic transactions is baked into their system. Yes, it's going to be difficult to extricate that selfishness from their system, but it's difficult for every culture to rid itself of the parasitism of selfishness in our societal systems. Note that ALL our current systems have that oft-dominant component present in them, causing waste and grief for all but the callous owners. In our every endeavor, compassion is the only guaranteed path forward that has no intrinsic negative elements or effects, only difficulties due to our idioticly selfish inertias -- selfishly callous disregard being the opposite of compassionate service to the whole's well-being.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  The problem is capitalism cannot function without an underclass, and while each capitalist country itself harbors an underclass that is brutally exploited, the countries themselves also become effectively an underclass too on the global stage, specifically the global south or the "developing world." Many of these countries are being exploited in one way or another, either by way of shady finance dealings that saddle them with untenable debt, which they must satisfy by selling their resources to western corpos at rock bottom prices, or via trade deals that inherently favor the western nations. The only countries I'm aware of that managed to avoid this trap in a big way were South Korea, which effectively created incubators for their home industries to grow in without needing to contend with the world market until they were in a fit state to do so, and China, which effectively is one giant state-run corporation. The rest get fed to global capitalism in one way or another, the ways varying, but the outcome being pretty consistent: they're broke, they're in debt, and despite oftentimes being quite rich in resources, remain both of those things.
greentxt 2y ago
The solution to amoral familialism?
returningfory2 2y ago
While it's true that these systems are a holdover from colonialism, it's also true that Kenya has been an independent country for over 50 years with sovereignty and agency over internal affairs like how the coffee market works. I feel at some point the blame needs to be shifted accordingly.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > with sovereignty and agency over internal affairs like how the coffee market works Kenya had sovereignty in production, but not in capital - which is what was needed to climb up the value chain. Historically, Kenya's largest capital market has been the UK, and as such Kenya's administration was unable to break the oligopoly of coffee purchasers who were British-Kenyan dual nationals and descendants of British settlers. The same kind of land reforms that former colonies like Indonesia, Vietnam, India, etc were able to drive did not happen in Kenya. Now corporations from those former colonies are gobbling up land and production in Kenya and other African nations, but domestic African (excluding South Africa) continue to remain on the back foot.
  - returningfory2 2y ago
    The article (if I'm reading it right) is placing the blame on how the government of Kenya restricts its coffee market (e.g. only allowing a small number of export licenses). It's about internal laws. The government of Kenya has the agency to change these.
- jujube3 2y ago
  Over 60 years, actually. The coffee industry is regulated the way it is in Kenya because the current government wants it to work that way, not because of "colonialism."
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  You are arguing against people's religious beliefs about why the world looks like it does. Logic or reason will not be of any use. No matter what bad things happens in the coming one hundred or one thousand years, it will never be the fault of the people that the religion has designated as holy victims, and it will always be the fault of the people that the religion has designated as evil oppressors.
stevenwoo 2y ago
There’s an episode of Omnivore about coffee, going from farm in Rwanda to coffee shop in the USA and addresses these challenges.
levocardia 2y ago
Some countries in Africa are certainly "stuck" but Kenya is actually doing pretty well overall [1]. Per capita GDP is about where South Korea was in 1969, or India in 2018, and Kenya's economy has been growing pretty steadily since one-party rule ended circa 2002. Economic reforms and cutting down bureaucracy are certainly part of the solution, but "just wait a bit longer" is too. If things continue progressing as they currently are, Nairobi will look a lot more like Seoul by mid-century. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDKEN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDKEN
Nasrudith 2y ago
Perversely enough, consolidation of production into 'big agra' and mechanized might be the best play to disrupt the existing system for something more efficient and less stagnant. There are myriad paths to get to said endpoint however, not all of them equal. I don't expect said path to go well for smallholders by definition, though even though the survivors would no longer qualify as smallholders for one reason or the other. Winners and losers I must note are the result of any system, even in ones of very high equity or even or especially a 'null system'.
Hilift 2y ago
The solution is economic diversification. "...sources suggest that 6 million Kenyans are employed directly or indirectly in the coffee industry." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Kenya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Kenya Also: "Over half a million Kenyan smallholder farmers are farming coffee. But they only produce 2 to 3 kilograms of cherry per tree on average, while there is a potential of over 30 kilograms per tree. This low productivity, coupled with low prices and high costs for labour and fertilizer, make it extremely difficult for smallholder farmers to mitigate or adapt to climate change, invest in good practices, access markets and attract competitive prices. And in the end, the whole coffee value chain in Kenya is at risk." https://www.solidaridadnetwork.org/news/coffee-sustainability-kenyas-looming-crisis-amidst-the-soaring-cost-of-production/ https://www.solidaridadnetwork.org/news/coffee-sustainabilit...

fsckboy 2y ago

"the remnants of colonialism" include the ability to participate in world markets which create markets for local products. If Kenyans grew coffee (ignoring the fact that Kenyans growing coffee was itself a remnant of colonialism) just for the Kenyan market, the coffee sector in Kenya would be a tiny part of the local economy. The reason New York City is the biggest city in the US is because when the Erie Canal was built, the agricultural riches of the Midwest had a route to world markets. Where you have a major seaport, you also need major banks and major insurance companies to smooth out the financial needs of traders and shippers, providing the funds right away back to the farmers, instead of them waiting till the voyages were complete. (without the Erie Canal, New Orleans would have become the largest city in the US) Yes, there is a lot of money in trading, banking, etc. At every step of the transaction pyramid, a %age is added to the price, and the %age fees charged on that go up accordingly. But that measures the true value of the product at each stage; if you have a cheaper way of getting the same product to the same stage cheaper, the (supposed) riches will be yours. The socialist instinct ("anybody getting rich must be cheating") unfortunately obscures the real problem ("monopolists and cartels controlling supply and setting prices are the true enemies of the people") which hinders solving it; by putting capitalism in your gunsights, you make enemies out of natural allies.

busterarm 2y ago
It's painful having to remind people of this. Also the fact that everyone alive today is so as a result of either being on the winning side of colonialism or from their ancestors otherwise clubbing somebody else over the head.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > Also the fact that everyone alive today is so as a result of either being on the winning side of colonialism or from their ancestors otherwise clubbing somebody else over the head. That's a poor justification for it, though, and I don't want to live in a society that goes out of its way to view itself as Hobbesian.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    Violent conflict between human beings is inevitable. It stems from our conflict with nature. We're all winners here and that's far better than the alternative.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    You have to work with the world as it is, not as you'd wish it to work (especially that it likely couldn't possibly work that way anyway). "State of nature" sucks, because nature sucks. All the nice and good things come from building systems, social or otherwise, on top of the natural state of things - systems that work with our natural inclinations, instead of pretending they don't exist.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      Right but nature doesn't suck. You make humans sound incapable of cooperation when this evidently isn't true. In this world uncooperative behavior is mostly a choice. Particularly in the west.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        To the extent humans fail at cooperation, that's nature at work. When we cooperate, we defy nature.
        PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > To the extent humans fail at cooperation, that's nature at work. When we cooperate, we defy nature. Well that seems a little silly, no? Humans are social creatures; cooperation is just as natural as any other human behavior (including fallibility). It seems almost a little christian in its doomful profession that humans are only our worst attributes.
MrMcCall 2y ago
Sure, but when the uber-wealthy capitalists make the laws, avoid paying the taxes that support the entire system, and then greedily take as much as possible for their own selves without regard to the well-being of the workers or the Earth, the parasite is overwhelming the host. As always, compassion is the answer to all our problems, even the thorny one of finding out how to fairly reward those who innovate, while preventing them from devastating the Earth and her peoples while they do so. And, above all, we must not let the wealthy and their attorneys make the effing laws or elect our leaders. That's always a nightmare receipe for a bad system, and here we are.
vundercind 2y ago
> The socialist instinct ("anybody getting rich must be cheating") unfortunately obscures the real problem ("monopolists and cartels controlling supply and setting prices are the true enemies of the people") which hinders solving it; by putting capitalism in your gunsights, you make enemies out of natural allies. I think this gets a little muddied in The Discourse, because tons of pro-market anti-monopolist and anti-cartel[1] policies (like, you know, any preference for more trust-busting than the post-late-'70s neutered version) get painted as socialism in, especially, the US, simply because it's regulation and since the rise of Chicago-school jurisprudence and legislative influence, the fall of anti-capture and money-influence-mitigating regulation of media over several decades, and generally the ascendance of the Reagan-associated neoliberal outlook across all of mainstream American economic politics until very recently, regulation is the enemy of capitalism in many folks' minds, even when it's (god this is frustrating) laser-focused on making markets freer in the sense of their function, not the sense of "less-regulated". The result is that people who simply think "barely-regulated markets" aren't fix-everything magic fairy dust that can't possibly be improved by a couple more laws and enforcement mechanisms, or even in a some cases by flat out replacement by a government program, find themselves rhetorically connected to nationalize-much-of-the-means-of-production Marxism-curious socialists (besides not being so removed from Nordic-style democratic-socialists to begin with) [1] frankly, I find it convenient in certain company to shorthand "shitty tending-toward-captured markets, sacrificing efficiency and human decency for the comfort of a few" as "capitalism" given the actual outcomes and evident tendencies of systems the leaders of which emphasize and tout how capitalist they are, and the frequent expressed and revealed preferences of folks who like to promote themselves as particularly capitalistic, for the same reason it's kinda fair to regard communism as authoritarian and anti-democratic in practice, but I'll gladly entertain other usage for the sake of conversation.
- n4r9 2y ago
  These days anti-trust measures tend to be framed in terms of increasing competition rather than market freeness. Which does make some sense. Hard to argue with increasing competition unless you're Peter Thiel.
  - 2y ago
aprilthird2021 2y ago
Do you think by "remnants of colonialism" the OP meant "capitalism"? It's plain to me that he did not. I read it as him meaning an extensive bureaucracy designed to control the subject population is still in place and causing the price of the good to rise while the actual people who produce and innovate the product are left out of sharing in the windfall. You say colonialism opened up Kenya to the global market. But nearly every country in the world, the colonized and the uncolonized, is now part of the global market, so it is not true that Kenya would not be part of the global market today without it.
- solidsnack9000 2y ago
  The global market we have today is the result of an ordering of things that is a remnant of colonialism -- I think that is what fsckboy is referring to. It could have happened another way; but the particular one we have happened this way. The argument goes -- and I think there is a lot to this argument -- that using "remnants of colonialism" to refer only to, for example, an extensive bureaucracy that excludes people who produce much of its proceeds is misleading, because other extensive institutions that are also remnants of colonialism are an important part of commerce, law and order, and public welfare all over the world.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Why do you think there's a lot to this argument? Genuinely curious. Who said police, courts, etc. are not remnants of colonialism? Also, what is the relevance of that to this discussion about coffee selling and the problems in the Kenyan coffee market?
    - solidsnack9000 2y ago
      It is hard to see how there would even be a Kenyan coffee market without colonialism.
      - aprilthird2021 2y ago
noodlesUK 2y ago
I agree in general, however when you actually interact with these places you soon realise that the markets are completely skewed by corrupt practices of various kinds (not just cash bribery). I don’t know whether you’ve ever been to Kenya or anywhere else in East Africa but it’s obvious how things work after just a short time there. What’s described in the article is a situation where the government has introduced export licensing and endorsed a coop system that effectively cements organizations in their current positions in the market. It’s not just governments that do this, commercial interests do too by acting as gatekeepers. I am by no means “putting capitalism in my gunsights” here - however it’s clear that one of the issues is corrupt and poor regulation. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be regulation, but that it should aim at stimulating a fair market where honest traders are able to transact freely and dishonesty is punished.
thrance 2y ago
You'd have to be foolish or blind to not see how the ditribution of wealth in our current world closely follows what it was under colonialism. Sorry, but colonialism was a net negative for Kenyans and many other. Kenyans can't fight the "monopolies" and "cartels", indirectly funded by western actors to keep exploiting their cheap labor to cultivate coffee. The large coffee market you speak of is not elevating the average man, stuck in a lobor-intensive and severly underpaid activity, benefiting a global system of exploitation.
- astrange 2y ago
  > You'd have to be foolish or blind to not see how the ditribution of wealth in our current world closely follows what it was under colonialism Who did Ireland, Finland, South Korea and Botswana colonize? Second question: how did it work out for Spain, Scotland, and Russia?
potamic 2y ago
Except the middlemen in this case have continued through from the colonial period, with seemingly little competition since. And it's also mandated that you can sell only through the middlemen and not independently, and you start to wonder if they're just bribing politicians to keep the system rigged in their favour.
- asdff 2y ago
  They do bribe the system, its called lobbying and is legal in most all countries.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    It may be surprising for you, but it's very rare for it to be legal. It's also almost never persecuted either, for obvious reasons. But totalitarian governments are usually not confident enough to officialize their money-movements. They usually claim to fight corruption with all their might.
solidsnack9000 2y ago
The hard truth is that the combination of institutions that are the remnants of colonialism have a lot to do with unprecedented improvement in material well-being all over the world, over the last 400 years or so. It is not pleasant to think about it in these terms; but it does seem like some of the greatest improvements in general human welfare have their roots in relatively ungenerous undertakings by methodical, reasonable, self-interested actors. The Romans roads and the Pax Romana, and the profound legacy of Roman law, were not the result of a benevolent desire to help everyone in the world and save them from evil.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  Yay - I can't wait for Pax Sinica to do away with the inefficiencies of democracy if it means more suffering humans will be uplifted. A brief period of reeducation is worth the amazing infrastructure and getting things done. The end will justify the means, right? /s There's something unsettling about the might makes right amd post-hoc justifications dor colonialism. Especially considering the colonialists did not have those "noble" goals in mind. No one lauds Google the way they laud the British empire, yet the same exploitation vs. public benefit arguments apply.
  - solidsnack9000 2y ago
    No one is saying it is right; but we shouldn't draw the wrong lessons from the Roman Empire or many other cases of institutional development. Being brutal and taking from others is not something that distinguished the Romans from other people (nor did it distinguish the colonial Europeans). To dismiss the Romans, the colonials, &c, as of no benefit, however, is to deny reality. The Roman roads were genuinely of value to peoples besides the Romans. Perhaps the Chinese, to, will create institutions and a scope of activity that is of value to peoples outside of China. Probably not in Asia...
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > To dismiss the Romans, the colonials, &c, as of no benefit, however, is to deny reality. At no point did I dismiss the knowledge-transfer as being of no benefit. The point I was making is that it is very easy to be on a high horse and say "It was worth it" when you were not on the sharp end of the stick. By reframing the set-up with China as the imperial power, I hope to show the readers that the cost of "upliftment" might be something the unwilling subjects may consider culturally valuable (like democracy)[1]. Such one-dimensional analysis is intellectually lazy. 1. Imperialism has been dissected many times over the centuries, in fiction and otherwise, but it bears repeating.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

MrMcCall 2y ago

All of our problems are caused by our not prioritizing compassion in our systems' designs and implementations, including how our economic transactions are structured and performed. Compassion is the root of all virtue, and the balm for all vice. With a greater attention to compassion, every member of the chain of persons that grow, pick, process, market, sell, and even own Kenya coffee will help contribute to a better, fairer, and less deleterious to the Earth, system of farm-to-table. Being compassionate includes being honest in one's business dealings, as well as not being greedy for exhorbitant profit. It also endures that everyone in the pipeline is actually performing a useful service, not just being an unnecessary middleman adding needless cost and other encumbrances. And, of course, the Kenyan system was set up by the English Empire, so its parasitic pattern of worming its way into the fabric of all economic transactions is baked into their system. Yes, it's going to be difficult to extricate that selfishness from their system, but it's difficult for every culture to rid itself of the parasitism of selfishness in our societal systems. Note that ALL our current systems have that oft-dominant component present in them, causing waste and grief for all but the callous owners. In our every endeavor, compassion is the only guaranteed path forward that has no intrinsic negative elements or effects, only difficulties due to our idioticly selfish inertias -- selfishly callous disregard being the opposite of compassionate service to the whole's well-being.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
The problem is capitalism cannot function without an underclass, and while each capitalist country itself harbors an underclass that is brutally exploited, the countries themselves also become effectively an underclass too on the global stage, specifically the global south or the "developing world." Many of these countries are being exploited in one way or another, either by way of shady finance dealings that saddle them with untenable debt, which they must satisfy by selling their resources to western corpos at rock bottom prices, or via trade deals that inherently favor the western nations. The only countries I'm aware of that managed to avoid this trap in a big way were South Korea, which effectively created incubators for their home industries to grow in without needing to contend with the world market until they were in a fit state to do so, and China, which effectively is one giant state-run corporation. The rest get fed to global capitalism in one way or another, the ways varying, but the outcome being pretty consistent: they're broke, they're in debt, and despite oftentimes being quite rich in resources, remain both of those things.

greentxt 2y ago

The solution to amoral familialism?

returningfory2 2y ago

While it's true that these systems are a holdover from colonialism, it's also true that Kenya has been an independent country for over 50 years with sovereignty and agency over internal affairs like how the coffee market works. I feel at some point the blame needs to be shifted accordingly.

alephnerd 2y ago
> with sovereignty and agency over internal affairs like how the coffee market works Kenya had sovereignty in production, but not in capital - which is what was needed to climb up the value chain. Historically, Kenya's largest capital market has been the UK, and as such Kenya's administration was unable to break the oligopoly of coffee purchasers who were British-Kenyan dual nationals and descendants of British settlers. The same kind of land reforms that former colonies like Indonesia, Vietnam, India, etc were able to drive did not happen in Kenya. Now corporations from those former colonies are gobbling up land and production in Kenya and other African nations, but domestic African (excluding South Africa) continue to remain on the back foot.
- returningfory2 2y ago
  The article (if I'm reading it right) is placing the blame on how the government of Kenya restricts its coffee market (e.g. only allowing a small number of export licenses). It's about internal laws. The government of Kenya has the agency to change these.
jujube3 2y ago
Over 60 years, actually. The coffee industry is regulated the way it is in Kenya because the current government wants it to work that way, not because of "colonialism."
carlosjobim 2y ago
You are arguing against people's religious beliefs about why the world looks like it does. Logic or reason will not be of any use. No matter what bad things happens in the coming one hundred or one thousand years, it will never be the fault of the people that the religion has designated as holy victims, and it will always be the fault of the people that the religion has designated as evil oppressors.

stevenwoo 2y ago

There’s an episode of Omnivore about coffee, going from farm in Rwanda to coffee shop in the USA and addresses these challenges.

levocardia 2y ago

Some countries in Africa are certainly "stuck" but Kenya is actually doing pretty well overall [1]. Per capita GDP is about where South Korea was in 1969, or India in 2018, and Kenya's economy has been growing pretty steadily since one-party rule ended circa 2002. Economic reforms and cutting down bureaucracy are certainly part of the solution, but "just wait a bit longer" is too. If things continue progressing as they currently are, Nairobi will look a lot more like Seoul by mid-century. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDKEN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDKEN

Nasrudith 2y ago

Perversely enough, consolidation of production into 'big agra' and mechanized might be the best play to disrupt the existing system for something more efficient and less stagnant. There are myriad paths to get to said endpoint however, not all of them equal. I don't expect said path to go well for smallholders by definition, though even though the survivors would no longer qualify as smallholders for one reason or the other. Winners and losers I must note are the result of any system, even in ones of very high equity or even or especially a 'null system'.

Hilift 2y ago

The solution is economic diversification. "...sources suggest that 6 million Kenyans are employed directly or indirectly in the coffee industry." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Kenya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Kenya Also: "Over half a million Kenyan smallholder farmers are farming coffee. But they only produce 2 to 3 kilograms of cherry per tree on average, while there is a potential of over 30 kilograms per tree. This low productivity, coupled with low prices and high costs for labour and fertilizer, make it extremely difficult for smallholder farmers to mitigate or adapt to climate change, invest in good practices, access markets and attract competitive prices. And in the end, the whole coffee value chain in Kenya is at risk." https://www.solidaridadnetwork.org/news/coffee-sustainability-kenyas-looming-crisis-amidst-the-soaring-cost-of-production/ https://www.solidaridadnetwork.org/news/coffee-sustainabilit...