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THE Africa Thread (merged)

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General interest discussions, not necessarily related to depletion.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby Macsporan » Mon 29 Aug 2005, 07:23:13

Jaws,

You still haven't read my post: you know about all the evil stuff the Nice White People have done in Africa since the end of colonialism.

Partial list: Angola, Mozambique, the Congo. Ethiopia, Eritria, Nigeria.

Corporations, covert warfare, arms-dealers, IMF austerity programs, Western Banks lending money to corrupt despots. Hello, have you heard of any of this?

If some are demonstrating for the return of colonialism I expect they'd like to have a government that functions.

So would we all, but why are so many of them not functioning?

Is it because Africans are debased savages incapable of anything better or is it because their politics have been warped and manipulated by malign outsiders?

Try again. I am not optimistic though. Free Market Economics rots the mind as well as moral sensitivity.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Mon 29 Aug 2005, 14:54:50

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', 'Y')our example is not trade it's blatent exploitation. Using that example if I went to an old couples home and sold them some some shiny trinkets or other item worth $1 in exchange for their home say worht $750,000 thats fair trade? See this happens in real life and we have laws to prevent exploitation. But to you thats just a fair trade LOL.
What things are worth is entirely subjective. Shiny trinkets worth 1$ to you might be priceless to the old couple (maybe they have memories attached to them). The point is if they agree to the trade then it's a fair trade, because they wouldn't have agreed to it if they didn't feel they gained from it.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Mon 29 Aug 2005, 15:13:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', 'J')aws,

You still haven't read my post: you know about all the evil stuff the Nice White People have done in Africa since the end of colonialism.

Partial list: Angola, Mozambique, the Congo. Ethiopia, Eritria, Nigeria.

Corporations, covert warfare, arms-dealers, IMF austerity programs, Western Banks lending money to corrupt despots. Hello, have you heard of any of this?
Just who [Expletive deleted by Backstop - See CoC]are 'nice white people'? If you're going to make this a racial issue then you're digging yourself into a hole. You can blame nice white people or stupid blacks for all Africa's problems and it won't provide you with any insight over the problem. So what if white people run arms? So do black people and brownish-red people. They're arms-runners, that's what they do. Blame the people who buy from them. Instead of blaming the IMF and the banks (who you are in no position to say are staffed by white people) for lending money, blame the corrupt despots who borrowed it and spent it on Mercedes collections and new capital cities. The banks will lend to anybody who promises to pay back, they can't control where the money will be spent.$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f some are demonstrating for the return of colonialism I expect they'd like to have a government that functions.

So would we all, but why are so many of them not functioning?

Is it because Africans are debased savages incapable of anything better or is it because their politics have been warped and manipulated by malign outsiders?
It's going to be the savages option. Face it, European colonies in Asia are doing just fine with progressive politics. Why would it be different for Africa? Africa is worth even less than India or Malaysia or Indonesia, and yet the nice white people and their bad corporations haven't messed up the place. In fact they are doing quite well today, catching up with their former colonial masters in wealth at a rapid pace. The evil corporations have invested and created jobs for them.

Face it, Africans don't have the culture necessary to understand how an advanced civilization works. Their civilization is broken down into tribal lines and it is going to stay that way for many more generations. That's why the first thing any government does when established is to steal that much from the other tribe as possible before the power swings back the other way. The few Africans who do come to understand will choose to get the hell out of Africa and move into the countries of the oppressive white men where they can be free, and where many tribes seem to coexist in harmony. Only control by European countries can provide them with peace, security and prosperity, and that's what the people protesting for Europeans to come help them have figured out.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby Concerned » Sun 11 Sep 2005, 21:01:29

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', 'T')he point is if they agree to the trade then it's a fair trade, because they wouldn't have agreed to it if they didn't feel they gained from it.


How does what you advocate fit in with the concept of an "free market", "transparency", "truth in advertising", "consumer education" Information is the essentially fundamental requirements fo a properly functioning economy?

See I could sell a cancer cure pill or potion and people would agree to the trade. This does not make it fair for a number of reasons.

A proper functioning economy works only when people have access to information on which to base their business decisions.

Now you might consider deception, distortions, and a general lack of information a great way to run an economy. I don't I think it just leads to skewed outcomes for economic participants. Some might call such transactions Fraud but when you're on the winning side I guess it's just a great deal :wink:
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby rogerhb » Sun 11 Sep 2005, 21:12:06

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'F')or example buying Manhattan from the native Americans for a bunch of beads was a fair trade, since the natives had so much land but no beads. Manhattan was completely worthless to them.


Trade is defined as being mutually beneficial and voluntary, if it's not mutually beneficial they would not do it else it's called extortion.

The value of something changes from location to location, but in each persons mind at the time of trade they thinking they are either (a) doing a swap, eg no difference in perceived value (b) getting profit, the thing they receive is worth (to them) more than the thing they offer.

In the case of selling Manhatten for beads, beads had the advantage of rarity and portability. It's only when you devalued the bead in the Americas by flooding the market with them that the trade looks silly.

In Cook's travels, nails were a highly sort after commodity, because of the value to the islanders who had never seen metal before, and had rarity value because how often would they next get any?
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Sun 11 Sep 2005, 23:15:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', 'S')ee I could sell a cancer cure pill or potion and people would agree to the trade. This does not make it fair for a number of reasons.

A proper functioning economy works only when people have access to information on which to base their business decisions.

Just who is going to buy a cancer pill or potion from someone who has no established credibility? Maybe some people will, but not at any price. Certainly not as high a price they would if it were established as a certainty that your cure worked. Buyers will put a risk premium on your product, which will quickly evaporate once it is determined whether or not your cure works. If it works demand will grow explosively. If it doesn't work it will disappear entirely and you will not be able to get any buyers. The point is that those who buy your products are willing to take the risk that it will not work, just like people who buy lottery tickets take the risk they will lose their wealth. It's a risk they feel is worth it the price.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby Concerned » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 05:46:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', 'S')ee I could sell a cancer cure pill or potion and people would agree to the trade. This does not make it fair for a number of reasons.

A proper functioning economy works only when people have access to information on which to base their business decisions.

Just who is going to buy a cancer pill or potion from someone who has no established credibility?


Probably the same sort of person who would sell manhattan island for a box of beads.

Fraud or exploitation based on lack of free market mechanisms of transparency, openess and access to information is not what real capatilism is all about.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 14:49:27

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '
')Probably the same sort of person who would sell manhattan island for a box of beads.

Fraud or exploitation based on lack of free market mechanisms of transparency, openess and access to information is not what real capatilism is all about.

I just showed you how people take lack of information into account when making economic decisions. It's a calculated risk, just like anything having to deal with an uncertain future.

And Manhattan is just a stupid strip of island, certainly not worth as much as Long Island or New Jersey's side of the harbor. Until the Dutch built a city on it, it was for the most part worthless, thus a good trade for both sides.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby Concerned » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 22:47:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '
')Probably the same sort of person who would sell manhattan island for a box of beads.

Fraud or exploitation based on lack of free market mechanisms of transparency, openess and access to information is not what real capatilism is all about.

I just showed you how people take lack of information into account when making economic decisions. It's a calculated risk, just like anything having to deal with an uncertain future.

And Manhattan is just a stupid strip of island, certainly not worth as much as Long Island or New Jersey's side of the harbor. Until the Dutch built a city on it, it was for the most part worthless, thus a good trade for both sides.


NO you just showed how you think it's ok to rip people off. Somehow this is your verson of capatilism?

I'd suggest as a starting point
http://www.mises.org/
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 23:20:38

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '
')
NO you just showed how you think it's ok to rip people off. Somehow this is your verson of capatilism?

I'd suggest as a starting point
http://www.mises.org/
Subjectivity of value is the foundation of Mises' theory of economics. I know this for having read it, and it was quite enlightening. I recommend you do the same.

Mises would tell you there is no such thing as ripping people off unless you break your contractual obligations. The native American tribe who sold Manhattan valued it very little. They valued beads much more. From their subjective point of view the trade was a clear win.

I'll give you another, more hypothetical example. In the 1530's Francisco Pizarro invaded the Inca empire, a civilization that was literally bathing in gold. They had so much gold that nearly everything was made out of it. It was in fact their only metal. Unfortunately the Spanish had in their hands a much better metal, steel. Steel rapiers and armor were used to slaughter the Inca army defending the emperor, and the Spanish took no casualties in the battle. Now what do you think a set of one hundred steel rapiers would have been worth in gold to that emperor? It would have been worth easily all the gold he had on hand, because those one hundred steel rapiers would have defeated the spanish conquistadores and saved his empire from destruction.

Here is the part where you accuse me of supporting exploitation and ripping off the native Incas. That is completely baseless. You only see exploitation because you apply your subjective valuation of the two goods from your point in time to the value of gold and steel rapiers. Obviously today steel rapiers are worthless, while gold is much more valuable. They should never agree to such a trade you say, as that would be exploitation. If they do agree, then some insidious forces must be forcing them into the trade. Capitalism, based on subjective value of tradeable goods, becomes exploitation.

That was no help to them. They needed those rapiers and they needed them then, not now, and they needed them in Peru, not in some arsenal in Europe. Gold in Peru was practically worthless, while in Europe is was extremely valuable. Value is established in a definite time and a definite place. At different times and different places values are completely different. That was another important lesson of Mises, which incidentally was used to debunk the concept of GDP accounting.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby rogerhb » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 23:36:28

You can rip people off if you privatise the necessities of life. If all the commodities are luxuries then you can do without the luxuries.

This, for example, is why I am against the privatisation of water, which is counter productive and leads to disease as people who can't afford it start to cut back on it's use. Disease is one of those things that is not so discriminatory about who it affects once it is rampant.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 23:46:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'Y')ou can rip people off if you privatise the necessities of life. If all the commodities are luxuries then you can do without the luxuries.

This, for example, is why I am against the privatisation of water, which is counter productive and leads to disease as people who can't afford it start to cut back on it's use. Disease is one of those things that is not so discriminatory about who it affects once it is rampant.
Well that raises a lot of important question. First why can't they afford water? Is it because it has become too scarce? The source of water has depleted? In that case privatisation is not the source of the problem, the problem is lack of water. Is it because negligence and underinvestment in infrastructure by the government who previously owned the water is forcing the private enterprise to undergo costly reinvestment? In that case the public management of water had become unsustainable, and the government is shirking its responsibility in this event by putting the blame on the company now running the water supply. Prices don't go up without reason.

If you want water to be a public good free to all, then by the same logic food should also be free to all. The government should own all the farms and run them with income tax money. They should grow the food that they want you to eat and your preferences would be meaningless, because how can you complain if it's free? And free goods means waste and lots of it. Just look at how much water is wasted watering lawns and golf courses in Las Vegas. Another necessicity that people need to survive are clothes. Without clothes we will all get hypothermia and die!!! The government should provide clothes for free and prevent disease to people that cannot afford clothes, because as you say disease is not discriminatory. I think Mao had a nice little uniform fit for everyone of pure will, that should be good enough to prevent all people from going cold.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby rogerhb » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 23:58:52

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'P')rices don't go up without reason. If you want water to be a public good free to all, then by the same logic food should also be free to all.


Something can be a public good without it being free. Water and sewage are part of the rates in UK and NZ, that's not free, but then we also consider health an important issue as well.

And no, we don't all wear blue uniforms.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 00:02:35

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'P')rices don't go up without reason. If you want water to be a public good free to all, then by the same logic food should also be free to all.


Something can be a public good without it being free. Water and sewage are part of the rates in UK and NZ, that's not free, but then we also consider health an important issue as well.

And no, we don't all wear blue uniforms.
Well if it's not free there's no point for the government to be involved in it. People will settle on the rate of cost-benefit that they deem appropriate.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby rogerhb » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 00:09:51

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'P')rices don't go up without reason. If you want water to be a public good free to all, then by the same logic food should also be free to all.


Something can be a public good without it being free. Water and sewage are part of the rates in UK and NZ, that's not free, but then we also consider health an important issue as well.

And no, we don't all wear blue uniforms.
Well if it's not free there's no point for the government to be involved in it. People will settle on the rate of cost-benefit that they deem appropriate.


So how do you pay for the military or the police?
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby jaws » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 01:14:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'S')o how do you pay for the military or the police?
The military and the police are free. There is no conceivable way to arrange society other than to provide the military and police free of charge through bureaucratic management and taxation. Same goes for the courts.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby spudbuddy » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 01:35:25

All the philosophies notwithstanding -

Africa (as with many other third world locations) will change I'm sure
when the glow-baloneys slowly fade away......

Whatever they owe the World Bank will become a distant memory.
Consequently, there will be no need for cash crops...no more strawberries and exotic orchids for European consumers (whose sale never helped Africans anyway.)
No more banana republic economies.
Which means that the peasants...get their land back. (And why not?)
No-one will be able to afford to exploit it from ten thousand miles away.

This being the case...they'll have lots of opportunity to grow good food (because they were never rich enough to suburbanize all the farmland.)
Three sqare meals a day will cause these good people to miss all the techno-toys not overmuch, perhaps not at all.
If they're lucky they'll boot Shell out of Ogoniland.
(let them go play in the desert...somewhere far away in Chad.)

Foreign aid...has been a bit of a joke, anyway.
Let's not kid ourselves...(as was previously mentioned) a lot of these so-called "peasants" will do quite well being able to revert back to a way of life that was stolen from them. They never gave it up out of their free will.
They never were coddled with visions of lifetyle sugarplums dancing in their addled brains.
Once the agribusiness conglomerates leave the premises, they will do nicely.
Africa is not likely to breed their own homegrown transnational anytime soon.
(roast Wildebeest, anyone?)
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby UIUCstudent01 » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 03:22:38

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('spudbuddy', 'A')ll the philosophies notwithstanding -

Africa (as with many other third world locations) will change I'm sure
when the glow-baloneys slowly fade away......

Whatever they owe the World Bank will become a distant memory.
Consequently, there will be no need for cash crops...no more strawberries and exotic orchids for European consumers (whose sale never helped Africans anyway.)
No more banana republic economies.
Which means that the peasants...get their land back. (And why not?)
No-one will be able to afford to exploit it from ten thousand miles away.

This being the case...they'll have lots of opportunity to grow good food (because they were never rich enough to suburbanize all the farmland.)
Three sqare meals a day will cause these good people to miss all the techno-toys not overmuch, perhaps not at all.
If they're lucky they'll boot Shell out of Ogoniland.
(let them go play in the desert...somewhere far away in Chad.)

Foreign aid...has been a bit of a joke, anyway.
Let's not kid ourselves...(as was previously mentioned) a lot of these so-called "peasants" will do quite well being able to revert back to a way of life that was stolen from them. They never gave it up out of their free will.
They never were coddled with visions of lifetyle sugarplums dancing in their addled brains.
Once the agribusiness conglomerates leave the premises, they will do nicely.
Africa is not likely to breed their own homegrown transnational anytime soon.
(roast Wildebeest, anyone?)


Actually, haven't alot of Africans moved to the slums in the city or somesuch? They may also have lost critical knowledge about raising food and may not know critical 'sustainable' agriculture... I'm just saying that it's been years and years that these things have been going on.. and supposedly the population has increased alot - there may be alot of dependants on food aid. It won't all just revert to a happy place with nice old tribes and such if everybody just up and left...

Not advocating staying either.. more like - altruistic self-help programs... and not self-help crap sold here in the states that is mental masturbation, but real things to get themselves out of the city gutter and go back to the land so to speak... Of course, I don't think that will happen - that place is going to be a most hellish warzone post-peak if farming yields and peak-oil are directly related...
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby Concerned » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 06:25:01

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '
')
NO you just showed how you think it's ok to rip people off. Somehow this is your verson of capatilism?

I'd suggest as a starting point
http://www.mises.org/
Subjectivity of value is the foundation of Mises' theory of economics. I know this for having read it, and it was quite enlightening. I recommend you do the same.

Mises would tell you there is no such thing as ripping people off unless you break your contractual obligations.


I did say as a "starting" point. The theory of subjectivity of value has merit when you have a transparent market and participants have access to information on which to make sound business decisions.

Mises is "one" economist that has "some" valuable insights, by no means should people fawn at his feet.

You're happy to have people ripped off thats fine, more power to you. In my opinion it certainly explains the current state of world affairs.
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Re: Poor Africans hit hard by rising world oil prices

Unread postby max_power29 » Tue 13 Sep 2005, 16:36:25

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'S')o how do you pay for the military or the police?
The military and the police are free. There is no conceivable way to arrange society other than to provide the military and police free of charge through bureaucratic management and taxation. Same goes for the courts.


A lot of police in oregon pay for themselves by writing traffic tickets! :evil:
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