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brook2yModerator Comment3

I think this comment is flamebait, and broke Forum norms. Examples below:

"I bet somewhere there's a small group of rich elites who actually bet on the gang fights in Haiti, have their own private app for it, and I bet some of them are also in an EA circle"
"forget I mentioned the word 'neocolonialism' because you'll be just like every other woke white person here and take offense that I said something true, you can go spend more time debating gender."

I’d like if the discussion could be more civil going forwards.

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Why not invest towards ending neocolonialism?

by AlanGreenspan

Aug 22 20233 min read 6

-15

PolicyCause prioritizationEffective givingGlobal health & developmentOpinion

Frontpage

Teaching a man to fish, and giving him fishnets, is worth to invest more in than giving him fish, right?

So are we going to be giving malaria nets for the next decade? What if some of that money were to petition the UN, or create a new ICC to judge the nations involved in colonialism, to get them to do reparations? If it costs $5 million to do this, but 40+ nations in Africa in return recieve $50+ billion, with oversight in how they invest it, wouldn't that be the most effective path forward to solve the root cause of the hundred + million people living in poverty in developing nations?

What if we invested $1 mil just to stop the 14 ex french colonies in Africa from still using their specially exploited currency, how much would they end up making to be able to invest in their countries a year? Any economists know how much their still paying to France to this date?

Still talking about France, what about Haiti? How many people are in poverty there that can easily be solved, how many lives saved?

You can look at Rwanda as an example of success. It's poised to be like a Singapore of Africa. The DRC is in exact opposite situation, and well there I have no idea what to say to solve it... going to take a lot more than EA investing, but what if getting the snowball rolling is all that's needed to become like Rwanda too.

Not going to go into a possible butterly effect of a war spilling out from there if Putin/xin want to go gung-ho there... let's keep it simple.
I strongly believe we can solve poverty in Africa in 20 years of this becomes a focus investment. Because we could also get more foundations involved, and another snowball effect of petitions from politicians to end neocolonialism, and ensure there's no corrupt deals, no exploitation, increase transparency in their governments so every citizen can know what's going on.

This is something I'm working on, and know without a doubt simple marketing, petitioning, and the right connections we could solve this not in 20 years, not in 10, but even in 5 years we can see results.

But a part of me thinks that the corruption runs so far deep in the UN, that yes a new court is needed, perhaps it could offer checks & balances to the UN, just like every democratic system has. Because there's just so much damn human rights violations in the member countries that they get away with.
But for some reason a part of me thinks it should also offer the voice of some leaders of the major technical backgrounds, faiths, & even the citizens. Say if it will judge a corporation for ecocide, 1,000 (10k, 1 mil, %, w/e) random locals who are affected should be able to vote on convicting them. Adding a sortition to democracy, not just electing representatives, w/ some tech I believe it's the next possible best future in government/politics.

In summary, 3 things I presented here, sorry for going from the original topic

end neocolonialism is an exponential investment
create a court to do this. in the middle of the world, close to Africa, close to Europe, and Asia..
create tech to assist in doing this
Results in exponentially more lives saved/improved with a minimal viable investment possible to do so and see results in our lifetime.

I look forward to a discourse, and some experts interesting in doing some good math, researching possibilities, constructive criticism, words of wisdom, inspiration, xoxo is nice too, some memes are ok if this forum allows it, and a le'chaim.

I expect everyone who's voting to give your thoughts; in this age of democracy, why hide? And don't tell me "cuz AI is worth more to invest in, why waste time on such trivial things when AI will rule our society like the God I think it is" because then AI already controls you.

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Jackson Wagner2y6

"what about Haiti? How many people are in poverty there that can easily be solved, how many lives saved?"

I agree that there is probably a lot more that rich western countries should be doing to make life better for ordinary Haitians. Unfortunately, Step One in almost every conceivable plan is "help establish some kind of functional government in Haiti, to end the ongoing gang-fueled anarchy and violence." And that would involve sending western soldiers to take temporary control of the island, which (justly or not) would be derided by the press and public as... "neocolonialism"!

"You can look at Rwanda as an example of success. It's poised to be like a Singapore of Africa..."

I agree that it would be awesome if the EA movement could help create more beacons of freedom and opportunity across the developing world. Making more Rwandas, Singapores, Dubais, Shenzhens, etc, seems like it has the potential to lift millions of people out of poverty. Once approach to doing this is to create "Charter Cities" that have the ability to create many of their own laws and governing institutions (modeled after the best international examples of good governance): https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iwcCBLqfmhG2sshHN/charter-cities-why-they-re-exciting-and-how-they-might-work

Unfortunately, if the influence of western companies/institutions/countries is too strong, or if the "best international examples" being adopted in the Charter City seem too much like ordinary western laws / structures, then Charter City projects can run into trouble when they are criticized for being... "neocolonialism"!

So, maybe EA should invest in promoting neocolonialism??

Or maybe the real lesson is that the word "neocolonialism", is pretty vague, and people use it as a blanket criticism that unfairly groups together bad ways of trying to exploit developing countries, with good-faith new ideas and attempts to help solve real problems.

AlanGreenspan2y-14

Your answer to Haiti is spot on. I'm sure it's why everyone agrees with you more. Let's see how you behave when someone else takes away all your money because they freed you from slavery, and you and your great grandkids must live in poverty for hundreds of years paying them back forever in debt for being set free. Like puting 2 hungry dogs in a pit, I bet somewhere there's a small group of rich elites who actually bet on the gang fights in Haiti, have their own private app for it, and I bet some of them are also in an EA circle. It's like fighting over toilet paper, which happened in America so easily, but when it happens somewhere else, who cares? Who cares about Niger? Not your problem, plus it's religion, and Putin, we can't even mention it. Yemen, theyre arabs it's always their fault. Right? No need to talk about a proxy war, or that the UN members are funding it.

I don't see how you came to the conclusion that charter cities are neocolonialism. No one is doing that in Africa besides the charter city institute. They're the good guys out in that wild west...just like startups.
Everyone else is either giving them loans for infrastructure w/ high interests, China, Japan, & russia, etc are jumping on the neocolonial band wagon, or outright mining the sh!t out of Africa and the governments/municipalities/police are decades already corrupted to let it trickle down to the rest of the population. Just look at Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zambia, the list will go on and on, because it's predatory, it's the definition of neocolonialistic: not using a military to gain control financially. Snakeoil loans. Which is not what CCI is doing at all. I also chatted w/ them about their work. You should check out their NXT 50 initiative. Still won't help if they're stuck using another currency.

There's nothing vague about the word. But you knew that, you're always right, you're just playing like a cat. Yes the average citizen in the average country who works an average job makes lets say $45k/year. Yes you're right, they're also being "neo-"exploited by the CEOs who make 10000x them. It's almost like modern-day slavery, maybe someday someone will escape the rat race if they 'hustle more!!!" "Or exploit others w/ an MLM scheme!" How many american citizens go so low and steal someone's amazon delivery?
And by institutional investors who game the market. But sometimes the little guy wins, like w/ gamestop/BBB... fighting injustice.
But you're wrong because most developing countries citizens' are making on average $5/week, because of hyperinflation, because of neocolonial tactics. the currency used in the francafrique is proof enough of this in action. And so is the outrageous loans by China. And this is where I draw the line w/ your wokeness.

People should feel ashamed to think that this is OK. To turn a blind eye to this is as bad as to be a normal innocent german citizen during WW2. Everywhere along the supply line (of the exploitation/extraction of natural resources), complicit. I didn't even mention how no one has really paid reparations for slavery. The king/queen of Britan briefly mentioned it, but no real apology. No $ for them. All seriousness aside, you're right, this issue's not as bad as buying almond milk in California, (it's super fine that saudi arabia has massive lands in Arizona growing alfalfa to ship back to them, while water gets turned off in some avg citizens homes) and doing nothing is definitely not as bad as eating meat.

You should read Winners Take All: The elite charade of changing the world, if you haven't. Or don't, you probably really don't care about anything besides your existential criss that AI will kill us all or wokeness, forget I mentioned the word 'neocolonialism' because you'll be just like every other woke white person here and take offense that I said something true, you can go spend more time debating gender. No need to really discuss about solving the root cause for issues today that are just repeating themselves over, because little kids like putting bandaids on things. But this time you can be happy to choose a unicorn or a spaceship bandaid, or both, and wear it to the next eaglobal.

Jackson Wagner2y4

For what it's worth, I didn't mean to come off as being hostile to the idea that EA should pay more attention to the exploitation of poor countries. I really just don't know much about this area -- for example I've never before heard the idea that France has an extractive relationship with former colonies that use the French currency. Maybe to you, "neoliberalism" is a very clear-cut concept. But personally, I would have a hard time telling apart which loans are good and which are ill-intentioned debt traps. (Is the IMF mostly good and Belt-And-Road mostly bad? Or probably they are both bad? Or maybe it depends on a country-by-country basis?) So to me, sadly, the concept of "neoliberalism" really is vague.

By the way, I also don't think of myself as "woke", I actually consider myself pretty "anti-woke". So, I think you are probably picturing some kind of "generic member of the elite who loves wokeness", but I'm not that guy!

I actually share your frustration at the ways that people (journalists, leaders, rich people, but also ordinary folks) focus on exaggerated culture-war issues instead of paying attention to the things that are objectively most important -- things like like growth and wellbeing of the developing world, or existential risk, or etc.

"People should feel ashamed to think that this is OK. To turn a blind eye to this is as bad as to be a normal innocent german citizen during WW2."
Yes, sadly I think this is true for a lot of things. I feel this way sometimes about the vast scale of animal suffering. I feel this way about how our institutions and leaders are some mix of hostile and incompetent. About the unfairness of society, of the universe, the arbitrary circumstances of people's birth. About how little we do to protect the long-term future of human civilization and the planet Earth. I sometimes feel like I am a normal innocent german citizen turning a blind eye, not just to one WW2, but to like five different WW2s that my nation is committing at the same time. But I just don't know what to do about that fact. I try to do what I can on the margin. Participating in EA and learning more about different problems (like this French currency thing you mentioned, which I will read more about) is a way for me to try and understand how I might be able to take action to help.

I guess I don't have much more to say, except: I feel like I'm ultimately on your side. I feel like we both want to make the world a better and fairer place, and a less hypocritical place where people and nations do a better job living up to their stated ideals.

I think that the EA movement would actually be pretty interested to hear a more detailed, specific outline of what an "anti-colonialist" agenda would look like -- what types of modern-day exploitation are holding back poor countries the most? How should loans and other agreements be designed so they are less predatory, more mutually beneficial? Etc. I think you're probably right that ultimately, efforts towards the right kind of big geopolitical / systemic changes will be more effective than a micro focus on things like antimalarial bednets. But, besides the idea of charter cities, right now I don't have a good picture of what any of those changes might look like. I wish I did!

brook2yModerator Comment3

I think this comment is flamebait, and broke Forum norms. Examples below:

"I bet somewhere there's a small group of rich elites who actually bet on the gang fights in Haiti, have their own private app for it, and I bet some of them are also in an EA circle"
"forget I mentioned the word 'neocolonialism' because you'll be just like every other woke white person here and take offense that I said something true, you can go spend more time debating gender."

I’d like if the discussion could be more civil going forwards.

freedomandutility2y3

I don’t think the bottleneck on reparations is a court saying they should happen. The bottlenecks are 1) high income countries agreeing that this court should exist and 2) high income countries following what this court tells them to do. Both seem vanishingly unlikely to me.

AlanGreenspan2y1

That's fine of course, just additional thoughts. If you think you can achieve #1 without the others, by all means, is it then not a better option to do than spending over a decade investing in simple bandaids and hoping someone else solves this issue? Or that the big $ coming in from China/Japan/Russia/etc actually improves the QOL for everyone... and not just the logistics system that brings them more natural resources? I sincerely doubt we'll see another Rwanda in even 5 other countries in Africa in the next 5 years, but maybe 10.