Tens of billions spent on AI data centers. But people still starve across the planet. Amazing.
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In the United States, starvation doesn't exist so we've expanded the definition to include more people because we really care to feed people. If you've been to countries where actual starvation is a possibility, you'd understand. So tired of this self hating unaware self flagellation.
https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...
Do you argue that money should all go to feeding the hungry?
The “solution” to countries with starvation today is likely massive full-scale invasion and domination; something the modern world doesn’t have an appetite for.
Like right now there is starvation in Nigeria because Islamofascists from the north are hunting Christians in the south. Exactly how will any amount of American money convince religious zealots to stop being zealots? If anything, a large influx of money from infidels will just make the clerics claim that their victims are foreign operatives. There is nothing we can do other than pray or stage a full scale military invasion. At that point we can either choose to fully administer the place (unsustainable) or we would have to destroy the apparatus that made the situation possible, which is going to look a helluva lot like a genocide. An impossible situation and only one of many across the globe.
It boggles the mind how anybody over the age of 20 can think this way.
If the government had sold “we are making this place the 51st state and it will take 100 years to make that happen” there would be an entirely different outcome.
I’m not saying that’s what should have happened. I actually feel nothing should have happened. But if you are going to take extensive lethal action like that, at least man up and be honest over what it will take to be successful.
The US populace is bizarrely afraid of admitting they live the amazing lives they do due to empire. It’s politically untenable to actually state the reality of what it takes to subjugate a population, no matter if the death numbers are similar for abject pointless failure versus eventual success.
What we did in Iraq and Afghanistan is an embarrassment and black stain; had we been openly evil and empirical (?) we'd have killed less with a better result.
Nowadays even the poorest countries are not starving, unless there is a war going on.
Also, there are multiple wars going on across the world that are making the problem even worse.
Think of Afghanistan as an example, where the US really did create a modern tolerant state ... for a while. Locals didn't want to keep it going, or at least, not enough. Because the idea that there aren't very wealthy Afghans is just wrong. There's entire neighborhoods in Kabul full of luxury villas with people going into fancy restaurants constantly. That's effectively what the Taliban are fighting for.
Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth.
As good counters go, this underperforms.
Afghanistan might have worked out if the US took a king like role sitting in a fort somewhere and saying ok, you're prime minister to some Afgan after each election. The king role may seem like nothing but if a UK prime minister says sod this I'm ruler for life then the king doesn't endorse them and the king is the head of the armed forces which makes it difficult to do such stuff.
Extreme poverty from 45% to less than 10% https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief
Famine deaths about 1/3 https://ourworldindata.org/famines
There are no clean hands here. Any attempt to claim the moral high ground by dictating how other people should spend their money (or their machine cycles) will meet with the usual degree of success.
It’s difficult to reconcile the desires of 8bn people. Some don’t care about climate change, some would like to see their granddaughter, some will live through flooding or an earthquake, some would like better health. Most of misery in the world does not come from the lack of money. If anything, disagreements between people are the cause of the lack of money, not the result.
It’s not like the US rose in a vacuum. It sees impressive on its face and to some extent I believe it is, but it has more to do with being a resource rich nation (lots of plentiful raw material within our borders) and the fact the last time we had a foreign invasion was during the war of 1812.
We aren’t some near unbelievable anomaly of history, we built on our British roots
But the details of the story expose a great many painpoints for many ideologies and parties so people don't like to talk about it. First it exposes that the US (and Europe, and many others, but of course not the UN or Russia) supported the Taliban ... because they were better than communists. My favorite stats is that the Taliban, as bad as they are, in 2.5 wars and ... still haven't killed as many people as the communists massacres killed in Afghanistan.
So "capitalist" or more accurately US and UK support for the Taliban did indeed exist (was a lot less than reported though), but yes, that included supporting and training a certain Osama Bin Laden ... Of course what's never mentioned when this is brought up is why people supported the Taliban. It wasn't to destroy socialism ... or at least that wasn't the only reason.
On the other side of the aisle it exposes that there was a time that socialism tried to eradicate religions ... using genocide (not just in Afghanistan). WITH the support of socialists in the west, the same socialist parties that still exist, were violently against immigration and protested against western states saving even one of those muslim men, women and children.
Both ideologies, left, center and right, want to believe they're constant, rational, and right. So an extremely large change in policy ... especially leftist parties who supported Soviet/communist genocides against a decent chunk of their current electorate.
Including famous current politicians like Antonio Guterrez, secretary general of the United Nations, who organised and personally physically attacked and hurt people for trying to give muslims sanctuary 40 years ago (he probably didn't even hate muslims, he just supported communism, including Soviet and Chinese genocides)
So everybody denies it but that's how Afghanistan got where it is.
But, yeah. Keep comparing the egregious billionaires looking to lock out competition and hold on to their billions with all their might! Clearly it has to be the bike or board games the normies own, though. FFS.
US businesses have had a much larger market to sell to, and that attracts investment and talent.
Also, when ideas like yours are tried, it turns out that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and powers - including the US - serve their own interests. How could you imagine otherwise at this point?
And without democracy, they can't help it - self-determination provides better outcomes because the people who are subject to the 'help' have a seat at the table and they have power. The issues that others dismiss or make secondary (or tertiary) are the ones the self-determined people can insist on in a democracy.
> modern world doesn’t have an appetite for
It's not a lack of appetite, it's counter to our goals of freedom and self-determination, and all experience of prosperity.
The colonial Brits weren't trying to feed the world, but aggregate power and wealth. Their former colonies didn't do too well, except wealthy ones like the US, Canada, etc.
After the colonial period ended, many of those countries have utterly transformed economically. Look at Brazil, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, .... all prospered after embracing democracy (or at least moving in that direction, in China's case).
Can you provide some evidence that that's a cause of hunger problems in Nigeria? It's such a politicized claim onw, it's
> There is nothing we can do other than pray or stage a full scale military invasion.
Warfare doesn't solve any problems, as anyone who knows its history or experiences it will express. It's the worst problem for humanity.
Are you really claiming that problems aren't otherwise solved? It's absurd. Your plan is almost never done and the correlation, between peace (and the outlawing of war) the growth of freedom and prosperity - including in West Africa - is the opposite.
You say Christian social shame, those are the very first things that come to mind.
That being said, the most common reason is simply war. If you look at the famine in Sudan right now, it is a direct consequence of the civil war (which also happens to be the biggest and bloodiest war by far in the world right now). Lost crops from weather or diseases can also restrict local food production, but it only ever really turns into a problem when armed groups prevent outside food supplies from moving to affected areas like the military in Sudan does right now.
A country that has been destabilized by foreign invasions again and again. The last one from the USA.
It is not about culture, it is about been ruled by outside powers that do not allow for internal development. Except for a few tax havens, former colonized countries struggle with violence, inequality, and corruption. That was the system that was setup for them and it will take decades to fix if they are left alone, it will never be fixed if other countries intervene to keep the status quo to profit from it.
Charitable donations follow a similar pattern, the USA is a different system so not really comparable to some other developed countries which have public systems in place to cover these cases.
I don't think ASML was "funded" by American technology, it's actually ASML who has to pay for licencing...
There have always been and always will be outside powers. Hell, the very first stories we have, from the Epic of Gilgamesj, the oldest stories in the Bible and Greek Legends are all about outside powers intervening, and here we are, over 4000 years later, and there's (checks wikipedia) 32 current wars (and none are "the west" doing that at the moment, China is currently the worst offender, there's of course Russia and Ukraine/Europe) where outside powers are trying to dominate someone else. At some point you have to accept outside powers trying to fuck things up as a basic part of life. So other countries will keep intervening, probably for another 4000+ years.
If you squint a bit there's a suspicious cadence in the Taliban taking over and eradicating most of the heroin production and the US invading soon after and restarting it.
The Taliban also did messaging along the lines that it's not a good idea to use foreign investment for mining infrastructure and the like when kids are starving to death.
Basically your assertion that "reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive" is completely and utterly wrong. Desperate family planning is needed, but religion stands in the way. No amount of international aid will fix this fundamental problem.
The modern western morality is different from Christianity in a lot of ways. So, yes, a person executing classical Christian morality would shame for those things and consider them wrong. I’m an atheist so I don’t have to agree with them, and I didn’t make their rules, that’s just what they are.
I’m also not claiming that Christianity enforcing a morality would make better “people”. It would just make better (i.e. more consistent and less hypocritical) “Christians”.
$940 million to the Congo.