Decarbonising transport

[madd0ct0r]

Can you pick a bloody country that proves your case?

I am getting very bored of vauge generalisations such as "many environmentalists rarely touch upon this issue at all. " when you aren't engaging when people try to discuss the issue.

Cambodia? Fiji?

Fiji

Island chain country, miles from New Zealand and Austrailia, and heavily developed for tourisim from both.
population of just under a billion? (what?). GDP per capita nominal is $5876, rising to $10251 PPP - so this is a pretty poor but not desperetly poor country that produces and consumes a lot of stuff locally (creating the difference between nominal and PPP). At a billion people, I'm not suprised it makes and consumes a lot of stuff locally. Major imports are oil fuels and cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita puts it around the 100th country, below the BRICSAM and far below Thailand. Tourism wise, that locally cheap cost of living means it is considered " Fiji is a mid-range priced holiday/vacation destination".

That suggests a couple of things to me. One is that increase in travel costs will cut into that tourisim number, but possibly not by much given tourists from Austrailia have little trasnport options. The other is that as Fiji develops, it will stop being so cheap for Austrialians to visit. Tourisim is a current low hanging fruit


Lets have a look at what it 'exports' https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?c ... =undefined

40% tourisim. Outside of that, some 30% of exports are different food products, including bottled water.
Also interesting chunks exported are ICT services(6.5%), and gold (1.6%).

Easy wins: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/n ... =undefined lots of yellow and green dots to connect into - suggesting an intensification of agriculture and fabric garment sweatshops. Easy wins, but not really good development.
The same data set suggests that, based on what it currently exports and what is close in the 'tech tree' - some plastic sheet type products and also packaged medicaments, I'm assuming like paracetemol, is a good option in terms of building diversity and complexity. https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/f ... =undefined

Outside of the current ballpark, Fiji has got amazing potential for reneawables, including hydropwer and geothermal as well as acres of sunshine. This suggests that it may have a long term niche looking into energy hungry industry locally. But that's a way off. I note tourist hotels tend to be very energy hungry comapred to housing, although obviously less than factory.

That ICT service is intersting. The haravard complexity atlas is focused on manufacturing, not services. Fiji's relatively cheap internal costs, good ICT connections and long history of english education and speakers make them competitive for back office serivces being offshored. There's a lot of competition in this sector, but there's a lot in tourisim too, and the ICT work has the potential to tech tree upwards into higher skilled services like programming without being limited by the islands semi-remote location. Most tourisim driven jobs do not help build complexity and value (citation needed).
http://www.investmentfiji.org.fj/pages. ... y-ict.html


Summary:
Fiji should continue to research and develop agriculture/aquaculture, purely for food security. Renewable energy has a big potential for the same security and resiiliance. The support and supply chains for these two sectors should be encouraged to develop naturally. Medicine factories look to be possible, and should be investiagated.
Diversion of educated english speakers into ICT services instead of resort staff will support intensification of the local economy.


I'll type up Cambodia in a bit. These are fun to reasearch, but I'm mostly procrastinating about work overtime.

[Jub]

Can you pick a bloody country that proves your case?

I am getting very bored of vauge generalisations such as "many environmentalists rarely touch upon this issue at all. " when you aren't engaging when people try to discuss the issue.

Cambodia? Fiji?

Fiji

Island chain country, miles from New Zealand and Austrailia, and heavily developed for tourisim from both.
population of just under a billion? (what?). GDP per capita nominal is $5876, rising to $10251 PPP - so this is a pretty poor but not desperetly poor country that produces and consumes a lot of stuff locally (creating the difference between nominal and PPP). At a billion people, I'm not suprised it makes and consumes a lot of stuff locally. Major imports are oil fuels and cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita puts it around the 100th country, below the BRICSAM and far below Thailand. Tourism wise, that locally cheap cost of living means it is considered " Fiji is a mid-range priced holiday/vacation destination".

That suggests a couple of things to me. One is that increase in travel costs will cut into that tourisim number, but possibly not by much given tourists from Austrailia have little trasnport options. The other is that as Fiji develops, it will stop being so cheap for Austrialians to visit. Tourisim is a current low hanging fruit


Lets have a look at what it 'exports' https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?c ... =undefined

40% tourisim. Outside of that, some 30% of exports are different food products, including bottled water.
Also interesting chunks exported are ICT services(6.5%), and gold (1.6%).

Easy wins: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/n ... =undefined lots of yellow and green dots to connect into - suggesting an intensification of agriculture and fabric garment sweatshops. Easy wins, but not really good development.
The same data set suggests that, based on what it currently exports and what is close in the 'tech tree' - some plastic sheet type products and also packaged medicaments, I'm assuming like paracetemol, is a good option in terms of building diversity and complexity. https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/f ... =undefined

Outside of the current ballpark, Fiji has got amazing potential for reneawables, including hydropwer and geothermal as well as acres of sunshine. This suggests that it may have a long term niche looking into energy hungry industry locally. But that's a way off. I note tourist hotels tend to be very energy hungry comapred to housing, although obviously less than factory.

That ICT service is intersting. The haravard complexity atlas is focused on manufacturing, not services. Fiji's relatively cheap internal costs, good ICT connections and long history of english education and speakers make them competitive for back office serivces being offshored. There's a lot of competition in this sector, but there's a lot in tourisim too, and the ICT work has the potential to tech tree upwards into higher skilled services like programming without being limited by the islands semi-remote location. Most tourisim driven jobs do not help build complexity and value (citation needed).
http://www.investmentfiji.org.fj/pages. ... y-ict.html


Summary:
Fiji should continue to research and develop agriculture/aquaculture, purely for food security. Renewable energy has a big potential for the same security and resiiliance. The support and supply chains for these two sectors should be encouraged to develop naturally. Medicine factories look to be possible, and should be investiagated.
Diversion of educated english speakers into ICT services instead of resort staff will support intensification of the local economy.


I'll type up Cambodia in a bit. These are fun to reasearch, but I'm mostly procrastinating about work overtime.

Why did you keep using a source that claimed Fiji had a billion people and not go somewhere like the CIA World Factbook for this basic surface-level info? For the record Fiji actually has a population of ~935,000 and sees almost that many tourists (~842,000) in a year.

Other factoids include that they are considered one of the most developed Pacific island economies, have remittances as their other primary driver of foreign currency, and export a lot of freshwater to the US. Importantly "Fiji’s trade imbalance continues to widen with increased imports and sluggish performance of domestic exports." which doesn't bode well for their fate if tourism suddenly collapsed with no framework to replace it. You can see this even more clearly when you look at the breakdowns for GDP composition and Employment by sector:

GDP - composition, by sector of origin:
agriculture: 13.5% (2017 est.)
industry: 17.4% (2017 est.)
services: 69.1% (2017 est.)

Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture: 44.2%
industry: 14.3%
services: 41.6% (2011)

Even if they are well positioned to transition their economy in the mid-term, tourism not recovering my badly harm those plans moving forward.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't let airlines die and travel costs spike if that is an issue coming out of this pandemic and its resulting depression, but it serves to show that potential may not always translate to reality.

[ray245]

Why did you keep using a source that claimed Fiji had a billion people and not go somewhere like the CIA World Factbook for this basic surface-level info? For the record Fiji actually has a population of ~935,000 and sees almost that many tourists (~842,000) in a year.

Other factoids include that they are considered one of the most developed Pacific island economies, have remittances as their other primary driver of foreign currency, and export a lot of freshwater to the US. Importantly "Fiji’s trade imbalance continues to widen with increased imports and sluggish performance of domestic exports." which doesn't bode well for their fate if tourism suddenly collapsed with no framework to replace it. You can see this even more clearly when you look at the breakdowns for GDP composition and Employment by sector:

GDP - composition, by sector of origin:
agriculture: 13.5% (2017 est.)
industry: 17.4% (2017 est.)
services: 69.1% (2017 est.)

Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture: 44.2%
industry: 14.3%
services: 41.6% (2011)

Even if they are well positioned to transition their economy in the mid-term, tourism not recovering my badly harm those plans moving forward.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't let airlines die and travel costs spike if that is an issue coming out of this pandemic and its resulting depression, but it serves to show that potential may not always translate to reality.

Indeed. No economic transition is easy, and I am not saying we should not make an attempt to transit away from being overreliant on tourism. It's just deeply frustrating that people are outright dismissing those challenges. It is easy for someone who comes from the developed world to say the developing world needs to get used to a collapse in tourism and move away from that sector, but I find it deeply inhumane if they refuse to acknowledge just how challenging it is, and how many people might just end up impoverished as a result.

[madd0ct0r]

A billion, a million. First was a typo, second was rereading myself with brain off.

What did you think of my proposed development plan?

[Sky Captain]

Do you define a 'working solution' as one that eliminates 50%, 85% or 100% of co2 in which detailed sector in which country by which deadline?

If by mid 21st century globally emissions get reduced by around 50% I would call it a big vin.

Does existing and near future social realities include social changes on the scale we've seen in the last six months. If not, why not?

Current coronavirus caused chenges and resulting emission reductions show that it is possible have rapid social changes, however as a result of it world is facing largest economic depression. Restrictions like these are not sustainable long term if we also want functioning economy.

In terms of economic realities, does it include current deficit spending? Historic ones? Apollo program levels of mobilisation? Are we allowed to assume current cost curves for renewables continue indefinitely?

I assume cost of renewable energy will continue to fall as tech gets better, currently energy storage is the big hurdle , however there is some proogress too, it appears that grid scale batteries for short term fluctuations caused by intermittent energy sources are becoming a reality. We have reached the point where renewable energy with natural gas backup is competing against coal and forcing older coal power stations to close. Definately a good sign.

In terms of critics, there are critics of global warming full stop. Do they count? How about Nigel lawsons dodgy propaganda foundation on climate change? What about critics of the status quo? Do they count?

Sure they count if they can influence public opinion one way or another. Look how vaccine critics are changing public opinion into believing that vaccines are bad.

In terms of majority support, do I take that to mean you think only policies that have a majority support should be enacted? Is this a pure majority popular vote or is it limited to those effected by the policy?

I mean that transition to mostly fossil fuel free economy is a long term goal and policies leading to that must survive multiple election cycles. Long term public support is important here. Public opinion can be changed , but it is a slow process. Think how long it took for majority of people to accept that car seat belts are good idea.

[Jub]

Indeed. No economic transition is easy, and I am not saying we should not make an attempt to transit away from being overreliant on tourism. It's just deeply frustrating that people are outright dismissing those challenges. It is easy for someone who comes from the developed world to say the developing world needs to get used to a collapse in tourism and move away from that sector, but I find it deeply inhumane if they refuse to acknowledge just how challenging it is, and how many people might just end up impoverished as a result.

I think the issue we're coming to in this thread is that the correct time to start diversifying away from tourism was a decade or two ago. The second best time is literally immediately. Waiting only serves to maximize the upcoming harm and forces ever more and more reliance on the benevolence of the world powers.

[ray245]

I think the issue we're coming to in this thread is that the correct time to start diversifying away from tourism was a decade or two ago. The second best time is literally immediately. Waiting only serves to maximize the upcoming harm and forces ever more and more reliance on the benevolence of the world powers.

Yes, but between having a choice between being impoverished today and saving the planet for your children, people are not going to chose the latter option. To people from developing country, what use is there of a future if you are going to end up dying due to impoverishment today?

The only way out of it is to take the money the developed world would be spending on tourism, and redeploy it as actual development aid that can ensure the developing countries can make the transition to a different economy. The effect of global warming is going to be the most severe on the developing world, and if the developed world wants to prevent a mass migration movement, they need to spend the money now to ensure the developing world can transit to a more sustainable economy with the least amount of pain possible.

A low-income cleaner working in the tourism sector in a developing country is not going to suddenly get a job in a factory if the tourism industry ended for good overnight. They are going to starve while they wait for new jobs to open up for them, because very few developing countries have an actual welfare system that prevents them from starving.

Very few developing countries have strong welfare safety nets that people from developed countries have.

[Jub]

Yes, but between having a choice between being impoverished today and saving the planet for your children, people are not going to chose the latter option. To people from developing country, what use is there of a future if you are going to end up dying due to impoverishment today?

Then they are making a choice that will fuck both them and their children and in doing so are absolving the developed world of the need to care. You can't make your bed and then demand ever more resources to fix a mess that you're continuing.

The only way out of it is to take the money the developed world would be spending on tourism, and redeploy it as actual development aid that can ensure the developing countries can make the transition to a different economy.

Forming actual stable governments that bother with things like planning and infrastructure would also help... You can't keep throwing money at unstable governments that aren't spending their aid money effectively.

The effect of global warming is going to be the most severe on the developing world, and if the developed world wants to prevent a mass migration movement, they need to spend the money now to ensure the developing world can transit to a more sustainable economy with the least amount of pain possible.

The developing world could also do stuff like, not preventing condoms and sexual education from being disseminated and generally educating their population rather than having the guys at the top pocketing a ton of money and being overthrown every decade or so. At a certain point, you're just throwing good money after bad dealing with bad faith governments.

A low-income cleaner working in the tourism sector in a developing country is not going to suddenly get a job in a factory if the tourism industry ended for good overnight. They are going to starve while they wait for new jobs to open up for them, because very few developing countries have an actual welfare system that prevents them from starving.

Very few developing countries have strong welfare safety nets that people from developed countries have.

They could, they could also bother investing in a diversified economy rather than living off tourism and pretending the gravy train will never end.

The first rule in geopolitics is to assume that the only one who has your best interests in mind is you. Thusly you need to do whatever you can to get your people fed, clothed, sheltered, and educated so you can develop a functioning economy. Riding on tourism dollars and aid from the developed world is and always has been an insidious trap designed to keep them dependant forever.

[ray245]

Then they are making a choice that will fuck both them and their children and in doing so are absolving the developed world of the need to care. You can't make your bed and then demand ever more resources to fix a mess that you're continuing.

Gaining as much money as quickly as possible now allows them to migrate to the developed world before shit hits the fan. Staying impoverished doesn't.

Forming actual stable governments that bother with things like planning and infrastructure would also help... You can't keep throwing money at unstable governments that aren't spending their aid money effectively.

It would, but why do you care more about throwing money away when those money would have been wasted on tourism anyway?

The developing world could also do stuff like, not preventing condoms and sexual education from being disseminated and generally educating their population rather than having the guys at the top pocketing a ton of money and being overthrown every decade or so. At a certain point, you're just throwing good money after bad dealing with bad faith governments.

The developing world is also lacking access to the investments that could have helped them in dealing with those problems. This reeks of first-world privilege to me. Oh the developing world is at fault for wasting money, but let's happily ignore the fact that those problems exist in part due to the legacy of colonialism in the first place.

The throwing good money away is something the developed world just have to accept as the cost of creating those problems for the former colonies in the first place.

They could, they could also bother investing in a diversified economy rather than living off tourism and pretending the gravy train will never end.

The first rule in geopolitics is to assume that the only one who has your best interests in mind is you. Thusly you need to do whatever you can to get your people fed, clothed, sheltered, and educated so you can develop a functioning economy. Riding on tourism dollars and aid from the developed world is and always has been an insidious trap designed to keep them dependant forever.

Developing countries turn to tourism because the developed world is happily hampering their development for centuries. The only value the developed world see in those places are idllyic beaches that allows them to daydream about a tropical paradise.

Riding on tourism is only there because it is some of the only way those countries can get money flowing into their country from the developed world. They can invest in diversified economy, but the loans needed for those investments are often tied to organisation like the World Bank.


The developed world loves to wash its hands off taking any real responsibility other than to protect their own economic status. When the only hope a developing country has to save itself from climate change is to increase their wealth as fast as possible, a big deal of that responsibility has to come from the developed world.

If you want to cut or end tourism, then the developed world must use those money to ease the transition process for the developing world. That is the only humane option.

[madd0ct0r]

I am very uncomfortable with the two of you throwing around the general category of 'the developing world' and generalisations attached to that.

Fiji is not Cambodia

[ray245]

I am very uncomfortable with the two of you throwing around the general category of 'the developing world' and generalisations attached to that.

Fiji is not Cambodia

No, but they are both not developed world with that could support a strong welfare system to ease the transition.

[Jub]

Gaining as much money as quickly as possible now allows them to migrate to the developed world before shit hits the fan. Staying impoverished doesn't.

Show me all the states that have used tourism as the springboard to becoming a developed nation, the timescales on which that transition happened, and that the nations currently using that model will have enough time to copy those examples.

It would, but why do you care more about throwing money away when those money would have been wasted on tourism anyway?

So you're saying we should create a tax to syphon off unspent tourism dollars to give it to under-developed nations?

The developing world is also lacking access to the investments that could have helped them in dealing with those problems.

Yes, because it takes a grant to tell people not to shit in the same water source they drink from or to tell them that washing themselves as often as possible prevents disease outbreaks... There's a lot of common sense low hanging fruit that they don't need our help to disseminate.

This reeks of first-world privilege to me. Oh the developing world is at fault for wasting money, but let's happily ignore the fact that those problems exist in part due to the legacy of colonialism in the first place.

Just ignore that fact that I named the four main colonial powers in my last post... Yes, they fucked a lot of places up and continue to meddle in the affairs of the developing world. No that doesn't change the fact that the governments in these nations are often unloading both barrels into their own feet. There's blame to go around for the sorry state that the poorest nations are in.

The throwing good money away is something the developed world just have to accept as the cost of creating those problems for the former colonies in the first place.

The main four colonial powers should break out their pocketbooks then...

Developing countries turn to tourism because the developed world is happily hampering their development for centuries. The only value the developed world see in those places are idllyic beaches that allows them to daydream about a tropical paradise.

Those nations don't need to be at a modern internet age level to develop sustainable agriculture, basic hygiene, etc. Yes, they need us to get beyond that stage, but many of these nations never even got close to just functioning on their own.

Riding on tourism is only there because it is some of the only way those countries can get money flowing into their country from the developed world. They can invest in diversified economy, but the loans needed for those investments are often tied to organisation like the World Bank.

Japan, Korea, China, India, Vietnam, the Middle East, yup look at all that tourism...

[ray245]

Show me all the states that have used tourism as the springboard to becoming a developed nation, the timescales on which that transition happened, and that the nations currently using that model will have enough time to copy those examples.

I did not say it was a springboard for states to become a developed nation. I am saying it is a springboard for some individuals to gain enough personal wealth.

So you're saying we should create a tax to syphon off unspent tourism dollars to give it to under-developed nations?

In essence, yes.

Yes, because it takes a grant to tell people not to shit in the same water source they drink from or to tell them that washing themselves as often as possible prevents disease outbreaks... There's a lot of common sense low hanging fruit that they don't need our help to disseminate.

There's no such thing as common sense. Cultures takes a long time to change and for people to gain the education they need to start changing their habits. For many people in developing world, they still find it not worth it to invest in their kids' education.

Just ignore that fact that I named the four main colonial powers in my last post... Yes, they fucked a lot of places up and continue to meddle in the affairs of the developing world. No that doesn't change the fact that the governments in these nations are often unloading both barrels into their own feet. There's blame to go around for the sorry state that the poorest nations are in.

Yes, but it does not detract from the fact that those countries are finding it challenging to deal with plenty of corruption issues because of the history of colonialism and cold-war era politics. When Superpowers are actively funding and supporting dictators just because they aren't communist, you've laid the groundwork for the issues that continues to exist today.

The main four colonial powers should break out their pocketbooks then...

Ideally, certainly if people do want to advocate for an end to tourism.

Those nations don't need to be at a modern internet age level to develop sustainable agriculture, basic hygiene, etc. Yes, they need us to get beyond that stage, but many of these nations never even got close to just functioning on their own.

And many of those issues are a result of historical actions actively crippling those basic abilities to do all those stuff. Developing sustainable agriculture is a challenge if all the lucrative farmlands is already bought up by international companies, basic hygiene is a challenge when people are so poor that they can only live in slums. Getting kids to schools is a challenge when their parents are so desperate for money that they prefer their kids to work and bring money into the family.

Telling the developing countries they ought to know better is rather hypocritical when poverty is the main reason why those issues are so challenging to solve.

Japan, Korea, China, India, Vietnam, the Middle East, yup look at all that tourism...

The Middle East have oil. Japan, Korea, Vietnam and India all benefited from the current globalism geo-politics that actively incentivises companies to move their industries from the developed world and shift them to developing countries because labour is cheaper. To solve climate change, the output of the factories will have to be reduced, and the developed world is already screaming about how China is taking away jobs from the US and etc.

[Jub]

I did not say it was a springboard for states to become a developed nation. I am saying it is a springboard for some individuals to gain enough personal wealth.

So you're saying the only correct move is to get yours and then get lost? Doesn't that only contribute to the drain of wealth and talent from already disadvantaged nations? Should these nations continue to work with remittance as a primary source of foreign currency transfer?

In essence, yes.

That's going to be a tough issue as people don't even like paying taxes for things that impact them and their community. Is there a reason you think this is likely to be a feasible policy in the near future?

There's no such thing as common sense. Cultures takes a long time to change and for people to gain the education they need to start changing their habits. For many people in developing world, they still find it not worth it to invest in their kids' education.

Animals can figure out the worth of not shitting in their drinking water, crows can pass on skills to their offspring. If these people are literally dumber than animals I weep for them and their lack of ability to see beyond their own toes.

Yes, but it does not detract from the fact that those countries are finding it challenging to deal with plenty of corruption issues because of the history of colonialism and cold-war era politics. When Superpowers are actively funding and supporting dictators just because they aren't communist, you've laid the groundwork for the issues that continues to exist today.

None of that changes the fact that it was also inevitable that these dictators would be cut off and left to twist in the breeze the moment their usefulness was over. Nor does it excuse the absurd behavior that has arisen within these populations and their fall to barbarism.

And many of those issues are a result of historical actions actively crippling those basic abilities to do all those stuff. Developing sustainable agriculture is a challenge if all the lucrative farmlands is already bought up by international companies, basic hygiene is a challenge when people are so poor that they can only live in slums. Getting kids to schools is a challenge when their parents are so desperate for money that they prefer their kids to work and bring money into the family.

Governments can always privatize such lands as are needed for the success of their own people. Hygiene can be solved by taking measures to reduce population densities and creating new planned settlements to move people to. Getting kids in school can be done by employing government-funded teachers to travel to villages and teach in the fields.

None of this is, or should be, beyond these nations and a lot of it has been done in the nations which are further ahead than other nations that started in the same shitty place.

The Middle East have oil. Japan, Korea, Vietnam and India all benefited from the current globalism geo-politics that actively incentivises companies to move their industries from the developed world and shift them to developing countries because labour is cheaper. To solve climate change, the output of the factories will have to be reduced, and the developed world is already screaming about how China is taking away jobs from the US and etc.

So show me that any nation has ever managed to become self-sufficient based on tourism income because you seem to suggest that this is good thing at a national level as well as for the individual employed by a resort/hotel/etc.

Also, manufacturing needs to evolve to fit with climate change, that doesn't mean it has to scale back, only that it needs to find new materials and methods (or in the case of manufacturing in orbit spaces) to maintain output. This might not be possible for all industries but it should be for many of them.

[ray245]

So you're saying the only correct move is to get yours and then get lost? Doesn't that only contribute to the drain of wealth and talent from already disadvantaged nations? Should these nations continue to work with remittance as a primary source of foreign currency transfer?

I am saying that's the only choice you're leaving the people of developing countries with if they cannot sufficiently develop their economy before the worst impact of climate change hits them.

That's going to be a tough issue as people don't even like paying taxes for things that impact them and their community. Is there a reason you think this is likely to be a feasible policy in the near future?

That's the trade-off you have to make if you advocate for policies that will disrupt an entire sector of the economy. If you aren't willing to bear that cost, then do not advocate it.

This is what I mean by climate change action should be driven primarily by the interest of the developing countries in mind first. It cannot be action driven from the perspective of the developed nations.

Animals can figure out the worth of not shitting in their drinking water, crows can pass on skills to their offspring. If these people are literally dumber than animals I weep for them and their lack of ability to see beyond their own toes.

It's not that people can't figure it out. It's mostly because people aren't left with not much of a choice.

None of that changes the fact that it was also inevitable that these dictators would be cut off and left to twist in the breeze the moment their usefulness was over. Nor does it excuse the absurd behavior that has arisen within these populations and their fall to barbarism.

It's an underlying system that has been perpetuated by the developed world, for decades and centuries. Those underlying conditions cannot go away overnight just because you want them to. It does not excuse their behaviour, but the underlying system is heavily influenced by external factors.

Governments can always privatize such lands as are needed for the success of their own people. Hygiene can be solved by taking measures to reduce population densities and creating new planned settlements to move people to. Getting kids in school can be done by employing government-funded teachers to travel to villages and teach in the fields.

How is privatising those lands going to help? How are you going to get the lands back without the developed world screaming that those poor developing countries dare to take away the land we bought. How do you reduce the density without the funds to actually build new cities? It's not about getting funded teachers to travel to schools ( and you still need to fund those teachers as well), it's about creating a system where people aren't so desperate for money that they can afford to send their kids to school without much thought.

You are severely, severely lacking in understanding of just how challenging it is to accomplish those tasks. Only relatively few developing countries have avoided those trap, and that's because they lucked out in having the conditions that can by-pass those poverty trap. You are utterly taking the perspective of someone from a developed world that have no idea just how difficult it is to accomplish those tasks.

Hence this is why I am repeatedly calling for a developing-countries led action on climate change, because it is clear that even those trying to push for climate change in the developed world have no idea just how much suffering they will cause by being utterly incapable of understanding how much pain and suffering the transition will cost.

None of this is, or should be, beyond these nations and a lot of it has been done in the nations which are further ahead than other nations that started in the same shitty place.

Yet it is. Only a minority of countries have managed to escaped the poverty trap. India, despite trying to decades to escape from it, is still facing immense challenges in development to this day.

So show me that any nation has ever managed to become self-sufficient based on tourism income because you seem to suggest that this is good thing at a national level as well as for the individual employed by a resort/hotel/etc.

That's not what I am saying at all? I am saying countries turn to tourism because all other means of development has been largely blocked off by the developed world. The countries that had managed to avoid the trap ( Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore and etc) have all massively benefited from foreign investment and were allowed to massively scale up their export economies. China also lucked out in the early 2000s because the West was so desperate for cheaply manufactured goods, at a time where most of the population are not fully aware of the consequences of such actions.

Also, manufacturing needs to evolve to fit with climate change, that doesn't mean it has to scale back, only that it needs to find new materials and methods (or in the case of manufacturing in orbit spaces) to maintain output. This might not be possible for all industries but it should be for many of them.

Manufacturing is very energy intensive, and the ability to set up manufacturing base requires a fair bit of technical support from the more developed countries. It's why engineers are still flying in from the developed world to ensure the manufacturing standards in Chinese factories can meet the standards required for export. Quality control in many Chinese factories are still terrible. The recent issue with Masks highlights just how challenging it can be to manufacture essential medical product to a standard that actually works.

Our current manufacturing output is still driven to feed the wants of the developed world. It is that demand that allows China to massively benefit for the scale necessary to build up their industrial base.

[Jub]

I am saying that's the only choice you're leaving the people of developing countries with if they cannot sufficiently develop their economy before the worst impact of climate change hits them.

Then their governments should get their shit together and start working on things. Maybe form an alliance of nations with similar issues and try to get shit done.

That's the trade-off you have to make if you advocate for policies that will disrupt an entire sector of the economy. If you aren't willing to bear that cost, then do not advocate it.

Where did I say I was unwilling, quote me. I said there's unlikely to be the political will to do this.

This is what I mean by climate change action should be driven primarily by the interest of the developing countries in mind first. It cannot be action driven from the perspective of the developed nations.

No, climate change action should be driven by anybody willing to make a change. We can wait and do nothing and fuck everybody more than we already are or we can act and only some people get an extra helping of being fucked. I'm in favor of fucking slightly fewer people by taking drastic actions now.

It's not that people can't figure it out. It's mostly because people aren't left with not much of a choice.

Dig a latrine/cesspit away from the drinking water, dispose of waste into that cesspit.

It's an underlying system that has been perpetuated by the developed world, for decades and centuries. Those underlying conditions cannot go away overnight just because you want them to. It does not excuse their behaviour, but the underlying system is heavily influenced by external factors.

No shit, I acknowledge all of that. What it boils down to is that the powers that be will always fuck them because they can and it's easy. Knowing this these underdeveloped nations should do everything they can to become as independent as possible even if it means staying at a slightly lower standard of living for longer.

This is literally what C. A. Pital and I have been saying all thread.

It's not me saying fuck the poor people, lol. It's my saying that my government will happily say that and that these developing nations should have caught a clue by now.

How is privatising those lands going to help? How are you going to get the lands back without the developed world screaming that those poor developing countries dare to take away the land we bought. How do you reduce the density without the funds to actually build new cities? It's not about getting funded teachers to travel to schools ( and you still need to fund those teachers as well), it's about creating a system where people aren't so desperate for money that they can afford to send their kids to school without much thought.

I meant to type nationalize, and it should be obvious how giving arable land back to a nation's citizens can help a nation feed itself and generate income for its people. As for the wealthy nations, or more aptly their multinational corporations, fuck 'em. This is how these smaller nations will need to think because they absolutely will be left out in the cold (or heat as it will be) when it comes to climate change.

As for a new city, ally with another small nation and trade what you have that they need for what they have and you need. Work it out, and create a chain of allies that is poor now but that supports each other. None of the tiny developing nations can stand alone against the coming storm.

Yeah, ideally you get to the point where families want educated children rather than a cheap source of labour but before that, you can start getting some basic life skills into them by sending the teaching versions of missionaries around to espouse life skills that will improve things little by little. They don't have to do things our way to find a way that makes things better.

Hence this is why I am repeatedly calling for a developing-countries led action on climate change, because it is clear that even those trying to push for climate change in the developed world have no idea just how much suffering they will cause by being utterly incapable of understanding how much pain and suffering the transition will cost.

If we wait for that, we'll be more fucked than we already are. The best time to worry about and prevent climate change was 50 to 100 years ago, the only other time to fix it is RIGHT FUCKING NOW AND THE COSTS BE DAMNED.

Yet it is. Only a minority of countries have managed to escaped the poverty trap. India, despite trying to decades to escape from it, is still facing immense challenges in development to this day.

India is a bit of a shit show in terms of minorities, religious friction, border friction, and general inability to get its shit together. They should be doing better than they are but are going to get passed by many poor African nations if that's where China eventually wants to outsource production to. They stumbled over too many hurdles and will be stuck like Russia is compared to the West.

That's not what I am saying at all? I am saying countries turn to tourism because all other means of development has been largely blocked off by the developed world.

That's bullshit, they don't need to become the next Japan or even the next India to improve things drastically. They could have looked inward and to nearby nations in a similar spot, combined forces, and taken their destiny into their own hands. They didn't and now it might be too late.

Manufacturing is very energy intensive,

Yes, and energy is cheap and green energy is rapidly becoming cheap.

and the ability to set up manufacturing base requires a fair bit of technical support from the more developed countries. It's why engineers are still flying in from the developed world to ensure the manufacturing standards in Chinese factories can meet the standards required for export. Quality control in many Chinese factories are still terrible. The recent issue with Masks highlights just how challenging it can be to manufacture essential medical product to a standard that actually works.

That only matters if you want western quality products, if you settle for 90's level technology and understand that it's still an upgrade for much of your population you need much less technical knowledge. In some cases, 60's level tech would be a massive help to your citizens.

You're mistaking become rich first world nation lite with improving living conditions and putting up barriers that aren't there. These nations could have settled for a lower initial goal, invested towards that, and been significantly better off. Instead, they took the bait, and are hooked on a trickle of funds from uncaring world powers who will cut the line the second the gains of keeping the hook in becomes too much work.

Our current manufacturing output is still driven to feed the wants of the developed world. It is that demand that allows China to massively benefit for the scale necessary to build up their industrial base.

Open your fucking eyes and read what C. A. Pital and I have been saying:

UNDERDEVELOPED NATIONS DON'T NEED TO AIM FOR FIRST WORLD STANDARDS OF LIVING OR MODERN TECHNOLOGY TO VASTLY IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR THOSE LIVING THERE. THEY CAN FORM SMALLER LOCAL ALLIANCES, WORK WITH TECHNOLOGY FROM PLACES LIKE VIETNAM OR BRAZIL AND STILL COME OUT BETTER OFF THAN THEY COULD EVER BE COZYING UP TO THE WEST.

[ray245]

Then their governments should get their shit together and start working on things. Maybe form an alliance of nations with similar issues and try to get shit done.

So the developed world should wash their hands off their responsibilities?

Where did I say I was unwilling, quote me. I said there's unlikely to be the political will to do this.

Then it is the responsibility of those from the developed world who advocate for an end to the tourism industry to create the political will to do so. Do not advocate for policies without advocating for the necessity to bear the cost of it.

No, climate change action should be driven by anybody willing to make a change. We can wait and do nothing and fuck everybody more than we already are or we can act and only some people get an extra helping of being fucked. I'm in favor of fucking slightly fewer people by taking drastic actions now.

But not people who are perfectly willing to fuck over people of developing countries who are reliant on tourism as their livelihood and not advocate for any measures to ensure those people do not starve to death. Otherwise, it is just another round of world-worldism that tries to privilege the benefits of future generation of first-worlders over that of the third-worlders today.

Dig a latrine/cesspit away from the drinking water, dispose of waste into that cesspit.

Those still requires communal actions. Who is going to dig it? Who is going to maintain it? All those actions still requires communal action. It is not helpful when those communities are actively being displaced and fucked over thanks to centuries of entrenched colonialism and etc.

No shit, I acknowledge all of that. What it boils down to is that the powers that be will always fuck them because they can and it's easy. Knowing this these underdeveloped nations should do everything they can to become as independent as possible even if it means staying at a slightly lower standard of living for longer.

This is literally what C. A. Pital and I have been saying all thread.

It's not like those countries have been sitting around doing nothing. Everything that they are doing is still being actively handicapped by capitalist-globalist policies to this day.

It's not me saying fuck the poor people, lol. It's my saying that my government will happily say that and that these developing nations should have caught a clue by now.

That's what you are effectively doing anyway. You are still constrained by having a perspective that comes from the developed world that trivalise how easy it is to break free from the economic and political constraints of those countries. Development is ridiculously hard. Before you can develop the country properly, you need to establish public institutions that the people can actively trust. Developing even that is a massive challenge. India has been trying for decades since independence and they are still struggling to do so.

And because there is no real support given to help those countries, what they can effectively do is to partake in the existing system by getting rich ASAP and fuck the environment for doing so. Because getting rich allows them to flee their country and migrate to the developed world, who will only take in migrants if they are rich.

I meant to type nationalize, and it should be obvious how giving arable land back to a nation's citizens can help a nation feed itself and generate income for its people. As for the wealthy nations, or more aptly their multinational corporations, fuck 'em. This is how these smaller nations will need to think because they absolutely will be left out in the cold (or heat as it will be) when it comes to climate change.

And watch as the developed world happily impose trade embargo on those countries and laugh at them as they struggle to gain access to many materials they need to develop their economy. What happens when those countries experience a famine or natural disaster? Well sit back and watch those poor people starve to death. What happens when there is a pandemic? Well don't let them have access to all the medical treatment and vaccine because those countries refuse to "play by the rules".

As for a new city, ally with another small nation and trade what you have that they need for what they have and you need. Work it out, and create a chain of allies that is poor now but that supports each other. None of the tiny developing nations can stand alone against the coming storm.

You're assuming the developed world will happily allow those nations to form political alliances that actively disrupt the ability of the developed world to gain access to their markets. And many of the things that the developing nations needed is still exclusively under the control of the developed world.

Yeah, ideally you get to the point where families want educated children rather than a cheap source of labour but before that, you can start getting some basic life skills into them by sending the teaching versions of missionaries around to espouse life skills that will improve things little by little. They don't have to do things our way to find a way that makes things better.

You're still coming across as someone from a background that have no idea just how challenging it is to change the mentality of such families. Those kids are "getting" life-skills from their family. They are learning those life-skills because they need to actively help out their family with their livelihood. The problem is those live-skills aren't translatable into higher income jobs. My parents come from a background where they had to stop their education at secondary school because the cost of tertiary education was too expensive for them. Their parents reached an retirement age or simply got to an age where they can't work any more due to physical toll on their bodies. And because at that time there is barely any adequate retirement plans, children working as early as they can was their retirement plan.

If we wait for that, we'll be more fucked than we already are. The best time to worry about and prevent climate change was 50 to 100 years ago, the only other time to fix it is RIGHT FUCKING NOW AND THE COSTS BE DAMNED.

If you are someone who are barely getting by in a developing country by working in the tourism sector, who cares if the world is going to be fucked in the future? If you are going to worry if you are getting paid to avoid being homeless and getting food on the table? For those people, their future is literally what is going to happen the next day.

Cost be damned is ridiculous coming from someone of a developed world, when you are not the one bearing the heaviest cost. You are passing the cost onto the people in the developing world, just like how existing globalist-capitalist system is passing the cost to them.

India is a bit of a shit show in terms of minorities, religious friction, border friction, and general inability to get its shit together. They should be doing better than they are but are going to get passed by many poor African nations if that's where China eventually wants to outsource production to. They stumbled over too many hurdles and will be stuck like Russia is compared to the West.

Trying to get its shit together is fucking hard! It's one of the hardest thing in trying to build a political society. Places like the US, despite having an advanced economy can barely get its shit together politically. And somehow you're expecting it to be easy for the developing world?

That's bullshit, they don't need to become the next Japan or even the next India to improve things drastically. They could have looked inward and to nearby nations in a similar spot, combined forces, and taken their destiny into their own hands. They didn't and now it might be too late.

So in other words, fuck the developing world aye?

Yes, and energy is cheap and green energy is rapidly becoming cheap.

Green energy still not going to be cheap enough for many people in the developing world. And energy is cheap only if you ignore the cost of pollution.

That only matters if you want western quality products, if you settle for 90's level technology and understand that it's still an upgrade for much of your population you need much less technical knowledge. In some cases, 60's level tech would be a massive help to your citizens.

Sometimes the bare minimum IS western quality products. The recent mask fiasco reveals just how utterly useless medical masks are if they are not of "western quality". You can get away with a low-grade pots and pans, but you still need high-quality medical equipment, mechanical parts, electronic parts and so forth. You might not need the latest XBOX, but you need good quality computers that can run the softwares for engineering jobs and etc.

You're mistaking become rich first world nation lite with improving living conditions and putting up barriers that aren't there. These nations could have settled for a lower initial goal, invested towards that, and been significantly better off. Instead, they took the bait, and are hooked on a trickle of funds from uncaring world powers who will cut the line the second the gains of keeping the hook in becomes too much work.

Many of those nations did. That's partly why they ended up developing behind countries like the five Asian tigers. They got fucked over because they tried to do the sensible thing and are now playing catch up to the advanced Asian economies.

Open your fucking eyes and read what C. A. Pital and I have been saying:

UNDERDEVELOPED NATIONS DON'T NEED TO AIM FOR FIRST WORLD STANDARDS OF LIVING OR MODERN TECHNOLOGY TO VASTLY IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR THOSE LIVING THERE. THEY CAN FORM SMALLER LOCAL ALLIANCES, WORK WITH TECHNOLOGY FROM PLACES LIKE VIETNAM OR BRAZIL AND STILL COME OUT BETTER OFF THAN THEY COULD EVER BE COZYING UP TO THE WEST.

Who said they need to aim for first-world standards? Even if they don't, they are still going to end up being reliant on many technologies from the developed world anyway. Places like Vietnam isn't going to produce vaccines or medical treatment that can prevent their economies from shutting down in a pandemic.

[K. A. Pital]

“Places like Vietnam isn’t going to produce vaccines”
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/politics/20 ... 53492.html

Are you sure?

[ray245]

“Places like Vietnam isn’t going to produce vaccines”
https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/politics/20 ... 53492.html

Are you sure?

Manufacture them? Yes. India is the largest manufacture of vaccines in the world after world. But developing the actual vaccine itself? China is doing well, but all the other leading vaccine development belongs to the developed world ( with various actors like Trump actively trying to ensure the US will get the vaccine before anyone else). Vietnam is producing vaccine that has been developed by other countries.

If we are talking about a de-globalised world where manufacturing is shifted back to the developed world, there is going to be far less incentive for pharmaceutical to base their production in the developing world.

[Jub]

So the developed world should wash their hands off their responsibilities?

No, but it will and the bread and circuses will keep the people ignorant of it until the displaced masses are arriving on our shores. It's also the responsibility of even the smallest government to be self-serving towards the needs of its people. Thus these poor nations should be forming networks among their peers to offer one another mutual aid.

Then it is the responsibility of those from the developed world who advocate for an end to the tourism industry to create the political will to do so. Do not advocate for policies without advocating for the necessity to bear the cost of it.

I'd rather see SOMETHING actually done than nothing. Allowing airlines to fail and the cost of overseas travel to drastically rise may be realistic if the damage to the industry by Covid is bad enough. Also, convincing governments such as the Trump administration or whatever the fuck the UK is doing at the moment to support the smaller nations hurt by this will not be possible over that same span of time.

You're a useless idealist, the real world will not be so kind as you wish it to be.

But not people who are perfectly willing to fuck over people of developing countries who are reliant on tourism as their livelihood and not advocate for any measures to ensure those people do not starve to death. Otherwise, it is just another round of world-worldism that tries to privilege the benefits of future generation of first-worlders over that of the third-worlders today.

That's how the world is setup to run. If the choice is do nothing about climate change or do something that will hurt the poorest nations on earth... There's not even a choice, you do something about climate change.

Those still requires communal actions. Who is going to dig it? Who is going to maintain it? All those actions still requires communal action. It is not helpful when those communities are actively being displaced and fucked over thanks to centuries of entrenched colonialism and etc.

You can dig a basic cesspit away from your drinking water in minutes to hours depending on how hard the ground is. This isn't a significant engineering project and a displaced community should be MORE willing to band together and help one another than one that has had it easy and can be perfectly fine not knowing a single person on their block.

It's not like those countries have been sitting around doing nothing. Everything that they are doing is still being actively handicapped by capitalist-globalist policies to this day.

Show me what they've been doing? Show me some examples that aren't receiving aid, having a violent revolution every decade or two, and courting tourism or resource extraction that do more harm than good in the long run.

That's what you are effectively doing anyway. You are still constrained by having a perspective that comes from the developed world that trivalise how easy it is to break free from the economic and political constraints of those countries. Development is ridiculously hard. Before you can develop the country properly, you need to establish public institutions that the people can actively trust. Developing even that is a massive challenge. India has been trying for decades since independence and they are still struggling to do so.

As I said, India is a complete shit show that lacks the strong centralization that China used to accomplish what they have so swiftly. They shouldn't still be mired with a massively growing population and massive income equality issues.

And because there is no real support given to help those countries, what they can effectively do is to partake in the existing system by getting rich ASAP and fuck the environment for doing so. Because getting rich allows them to flee their country and migrate to the developed world, who will only take in migrants if they are rich.

Or they stay and use their wealth to better the lives of those around them either via a political campaign, the formation of a non-profit organization, or job creation at home. Fleeing with your wealth and trickling it back via remittance until you can bring your family over only hurts your home country overall. But I guess when a citizen of the first world does something harmful its bad and when somebody from the third world does it's noble or something...

And watch as the developed world happily impose trade embargo on those countries and laugh at them as they struggle to gain access to many materials they need to develop their economy. What happens when those countries experience a famine or natural disaster? Well sit back and watch those poor people starve to death. What happens when there is a pandemic? Well don't let them have access to all the medical treatment and vaccine because those countries refuse to "play by the rules".

Hence why for form an alliance of peers and mutually support one another. If the west threatens to embargo a nation you can bet that a bunch of material exporters threatening to nationalize their diamond mines, oil well, etc. would cause people to take notice. You can push around one small nation, but not all of them.

They support one another, court a nation like China or Russia for aid. They aren't stuck suck the US or Europe's cock for eternity.

You're assuming the developed world will happily allow those nations to form political alliances that actively disrupt the ability of the developed world to gain access to their markets. And many of the things that the developing nations needed is still exclusively under the control of the developed world.

So you're saying China or Russia wouldn't happily expand their sphere of influence by protecting a growing alliance of developing nations? Also, what was the response of the west to AfCFTA or CARIFTA? It must have been devastating so I'm sure you can find the punitive actions taken to try to prevent its formation. Please show me all the examples of what the west has done to prevent mutual support networks.

You're still coming across as someone from a background that have no idea just how challenging it is to change the mentality of such families. Those kids are "getting" life-skills from their family. They are learning those life-skills because they need to actively help out their family with their livelihood. The problem is those live-skills aren't translatable into higher income jobs.

Hence why you send educators out to the villages to teach these skills either in the field, where people are scavenging for scrap or after the working day has ended. They can bring in food, clothing, etc. and trade it for the families time and willingness to let them spend a few weeks/months teaching. It wouldn't fix things overnight but if anybody had bothered doing this a few decades ago things would be different now.

My parents come from a background where they had to stop their education at secondary school because the cost of tertiary education was too expensive for them. Their parents reached an retirement age or simply got to an age where they can't work any more due to physical toll on their bodies. And because at that time there is barely any adequate retirement plans, children working as early as they can was their retirement plan.

That's a shitty plan and I feel sorry your parents were burdened and prevented from a better life by having to take care of an older generation.

If you are someone who are barely getting by in a developing country by working in the tourism sector, who cares if the world is going to be fucked in the future? If you are going to worry if you are getting paid to avoid being homeless and getting food on the table? For those people, their future is literally what is going to happen the next day.

You can't get out of that way, better to break things now than to allow the system to continue to grow and trap more souls on a treadmill of barely earning enough to see another sunrise.

Cost be damned is ridiculous coming from someone of a developed world, when you are not the one bearing the heaviest cost. You are passing the cost onto the people in the developing world, just like how existing globalist-capitalist system is passing the cost to them.

What is the other option for taking drastic near term action to combat climate change?

Trying to get its shit together is fucking hard! It's one of the hardest thing in trying to build a political society. Places like the US, despite having an advanced economy can barely get its shit together politically. And somehow you're expecting it to be easy for the developing world?

Looks at China... You have a model to follow.

So in other words, fuck the developing world aye?

Fucking read, what I type Ray. I said they could settle for less and be better off than they are no for having done so. Reaching an attainable goal is better than setting an unreachable one and dying of exhausting running towards it.

Green energy still not going to be cheap enough for many people in the developing world. And energy is cheap only if you ignore the cost of pollution.

I'm talking about the governments of those nations building infrastructure, not some village trying to build a field of solar panels out of sticks and leaves. FFS Ray, quit shifting the conversation to the scale people and communities when we're talking about national scale problems.

Sometimes the bare minimum IS western quality products. The recent mask fiasco reveals just how utterly useless medical masks are if they are not of "western quality". You can get away with a low-grade pots and pans, but you still need high-quality medical equipment, mechanical parts, electronic parts and so forth. You might not need the latest XBOX, but you need good quality computers that can run the softwares for engineering jobs and etc.

We put a man on the moon using less computing power than a Gameboy. Developing nations can still undertake major projects using much older and easier to build technology. They can also start building the infrastructure to create their own machine tools as they look to become self-sufficient. You keep looking at near term costs when I'm focused on long term self-sufficiency.

It's better for 10 million to die now if it means that over the next 50 you'll save 20 million. Future lives have just as much value as current ones.

Many of those nations did. That's partly why they ended up developing behind countries like the five Asian tigers. They got fucked over because they tried to do the sensible thing and are now playing catch up to the advanced Asian economies.

Why are you so focused on Asia? There are places like the Stans, Africa, South America etc. Also, show me what plans those nations tried that failed because they aimed low. This should be easy to find a wealth of papers about so provide them.

Who said they need to aim for first-world standards? Even if they don't, they are still going to end up being reliant on many technologies from the developed world anyway. Places like Vietnam isn't going to produce vaccines or medical treatment that can prevent their economies from shutting down in a pandemic.

Being self-sufficient and having the autonomy to close your borders early and being heartless enough to keep even your own citizens abroad from coming back, or sending them right into strict quarantine with sufficient space between families to prevent it becoming a breeding ground, can solve for any pandemic that isn't homegrown. Look at how a nation like New Zealand that self-isolated quickly is doing compared to most places...

Also, again you can work with Russia, China, even India for many of these breakthroughs. You may not get them first, but you can still get these drugs.

[K. A. Pital]

If feel sorry for ray because he grew up in a capitalist nightmare where university education is private and exorbitantly expensive.

But it does not change the fact that if you build such a system, you are bound to experience its consequences.

Under socialism or social democracy, you as a student do not pay for university. Maybe start thinking how to make the world more like that, instead of saying the world is shit therefore people must stick to their harmful behaviours anyway.

[ray245]

No, but it will and the bread and circuses will keep the people ignorant of it until the displaced masses are arriving on our shores. It's also the responsibility of even the smallest government to be self-serving towards the needs of its people. Thus these poor nations should be forming networks among their peers to offer one another mutual aid.

Sure, but that still doesn't wash the responsibility off the hands of the developed world.

I'd rather see SOMETHING actually done than nothing. Allowing airlines to fail and the cost of overseas travel to drastically rise may be realistic if the damage to the industry by Covid is bad enough. Also, convincing governments such as the Trump administration or whatever the fuck the UK is doing at the moment to support the smaller nations hurt by this will not be possible over that same span of time.

You get something done if the developing world don't see the end of the tourism as another attempt at fucking them over.

You're a useless idealist, the real world will not be so kind as you wish it to be.

It's not about being kind. It's about the only way to break the current cycle of everyone trying to get rich ASAP and flee to a safe haven before the worst effect of climate change is felt. Because it will come across to the developing world as a mere attempt at screwing them over and merely protecting the developed world.

That's how the world is setup to run. If the choice is do nothing about climate change or do something that will hurt the poorest nations on earth... There's not even a choice, you do something about climate change.

And those people in the developing world tourism sector can easily as let's all get screwed over together if they at the least get to survive till tomorrow.

You can dig a basic cesspit away from your drinking water in minutes to hours depending on how hard the ground is. This isn't a significant engineering project and a displaced community should be MORE willing to band together and help one another than one that has had it easy and can be perfectly fine not knowing a single person on their block.

Not if the community is so fucked over in a desperate to make money for themselves for daily survival that no one cares about the latrine or longer health problems.

Show me what they've been doing? Show me some examples that aren't receiving aid, having a violent revolution every decade or two, and courting tourism or resource extraction that do more harm than good in the long run.

Do you think there was no attempt at building up universities, educating their population and trying to set up an industrial base in developing countries?

As I said, India is a complete shit show that lacks the strong centralization that China used to accomplish what they have so swiftly. They shouldn't still be mired with a massively growing population and massive income equality issues.

Yet they still are. Despite having decades of attempts at building up universities and educating their population, they are still stuck with many developmental issues to this day. It is not easy.

Or they stay and use their wealth to better the lives of those around them either via a political campaign, the formation of a non-profit organization, or job creation at home. Fleeing with your wealth and trickling it back via remittance until you can bring your family over only hurts your home country overall. But I guess when a citizen of the first world does something harmful its bad and when somebody from the third world does it's noble or something...

Who said anything about being noble? When the developed world, even those advocating for climate change mitigation policies are still more than happy to let the developing world fend for themselves, why should those with the means to move out of those countries care?

They are merely reflecting the exact same attitude of the people in the developed world.

Hence why for form an alliance of peers and mutually support one another. If the west threatens to embargo a nation you can bet that a bunch of material exporters threatening to nationalize their diamond mines, oil well, etc. would cause people to take notice. You can push around one small nation, but not all of them.

They support one another, court a nation like China or Russia for aid. They aren't stuck suck the US or Europe's cock for eternity.

That requires strong institutional governments, with strong social backing from the population ( which is only possible if the population are not stuck in poverty) which most of those countries do not have. I think you are the one being idealistic rather than me. But your idealism is rooted in a perspective from the developed world.

Let's be idealistic that the developing world can fend for themselves, but we cannot be idealistic about the developed world actually helping them if they are going to wreck economic havoc during the transition process.

So you're saying China or Russia wouldn't happily expand their sphere of influence by protecting a growing alliance of developing nations? Also, what was the response of the west to AfCFTA or CARIFTA? It must have been devastating so I'm sure you can find the punitive actions taken to try to prevent its formation. Please show me all the examples of what the west has done to prevent mutual support networks.

China and Russia will, but those countries are not necessarily there to help those other countries without extracting concession in return. The creation of a free-trade area is not an active threat to the West, because members in those free-trade areas are still actively trading with the West.

Hence why you send educators out to the villages to teach these skills either in the field, where people are scavenging for scrap or after the working day has ended. They can bring in food, clothing, etc. and trade it for the families time and willingness to let them spend a few weeks/months teaching. It wouldn't fix things overnight but if anybody had bothered doing this a few decades ago things would be different now.

How on earth are you going to teach someone computer programming, or engineering skills in a village? You are being rather ridiculous and idealistic here.

That's a shitty plan and I feel sorry your parents were burdened and prevented from a better life by having to take care of an older generation.

It was a shitty plan, but that's the reality for many families in developing country. You are coming from a perspective of someone where those social infrastructure has already been built up for a long time. Before you can daydream about educating children in poor families, you need to actively fix the issues that are preventing kids from going to school.

You can't get out of that way, better to break things now than to allow the system to continue to grow and trap more souls on a treadmill of barely earning enough to see another sunrise.

And what happens when breaking things now will result in people not seeing the sunrise tomorrow? People are going to starve due to you breaking things down today. They don't care about your future, or even their own distant future if they cannot survive till the next day.

What is the other option for taking drastic near term action to combat climate change?

Develop financial support that help developing countries ease the pain of transition first. The cost of any economic disruption as a result of combating climate change ought to be bore by the developed world.

Looks at China... You have a model to follow.

You mean lucking out due to a very particular set of circumstances that created the incentive for the West to move all their factories to China? China lucked out massively in the early 2000s.

Fucking read, what I type Ray. I said they could settle for less and be better off than they are no for having done so. Reaching an attainable goal is better than setting an unreachable one and dying of exhausting running towards it.

The "attainable goal" you have is nothing more than dreaming about wining the lottery.

I'm talking about the governments of those nations building infrastructure, not some village trying to build a field of solar panels out of sticks and leaves. FFS Ray, quit shifting the conversation to the scale people and communities when we're talking about national scale problems.

Green energy is still not as cheap as you think. There are still technical issues in trying to extract sufficient energy for solar panels and etc, production capacity and etc. There is still issues with distribution of green energy. Electric cars are getting massively cheaper, but they are still expensive compared to buying an old car.

We put a man on the moon using less computing power than a Gameboy. Developing nations can still undertake major projects using much older and easier to build technology. They can also start building the infrastructure to create their own machine tools as they look to become self-sufficient. You keep looking at near term costs when I'm focused on long term self-sufficiency.

It's better for 10 million to die now if it means that over the next 50 you'll save 20 million. Future lives have just as much value as current ones.

Not if this is going to vastly increase the cost-per-unit because of a reduced scale of production. Smart-phones are cheap ( even for developing countries) not because they are using older technology, but because the demand is so high that China can manufacture them at a cost that is affordable even for people of developing countries. Relying on older technology means you are relying on older software that aren't being supported any longer.

You can use an older OS that is no longer supported by microsoft of any tech company, but watch as your digital infrastructure becomes an easy target for hackers.

Hell, the whole self-sufficiency technological base was what India has been trying to do ever since Independence! That has not get to them to where they wanted today.

Why are you so focused on Asia? There are places like the Stans, Africa, South America etc. Also, show me what plans those nations tried that failed because they aimed low. This should be easy to find a wealth of papers about so provide them.

Because they are the only countries that have moved on to become advanced economies? The various Southeast Asian countries shunned foreign direct investment during the cold-war, and tried to develop a self-sufficient economy. Singapore happily welcomed it all and gained the monopoly of foreign direct investments and used it to build up its own industrial and technological base.

Being self-sufficient and having the autonomy to close your borders early and being heartless enough to keep even your own citizens abroad from coming back, or sending them right into strict quarantine with sufficient space between families to prevent it becoming a breeding ground, can solve for any pandemic that isn't homegrown. Look at how a nation like New Zealand that self-isolated quickly is doing compared to most places...

Those policies has nothing to do with whether those countries are self-sufficient. It has all to do with countries not being idiotic. This is why Vietnam managed to contain the virus, while it is spreading like wildfire in Indonesia.

Also, again you can work with Russia, China, even India for many of these breakthroughs. You may not get them first, but you can still get these drugs.

Russia, China and India are still not going to be magically more altruistic than the West. You are still going to get drugs and treatment later than those countries. Which isn't helpful in a pandemic if you are unlucky enough to have a mass outbreak and your citizens are dying every day.

If feel sorry for ray because he grew up in a capitalist nightmare where university education is private and exorbitantly expensive.

But it does not change the fact that if you build such a system, you are bound to experience its consequences.

There are state-universities in Singapore, and while they certainly aren't free or cheap, it is still massively cheaper than education in many parts of the West, namely the UK and the US because of state-subsidies.

Under socialism or social democracy, you as a student do not pay for university. Maybe start thinking how to make the world more like that, instead of saying the world is shit therefore people must stick to their harmful behaviours anyway.

For god's sake Stas, that is exactly what I am saying. It's just a form of global socialism instead of socialism for the West and the developed countries. Developed world needs to socialise the cost of economic transition for the developing world. Is that a hard concept for you to grasp?

[Jub]

Ray, I'm not going to go back and forth point by point anymore because you don't seem to understand the difference between ideal and realistic. You also place no personal responsibility on those in the developing world to help themselves, beyond it seems taking whatever job pays best and fleeing to whichever more developed nation will take them. Nor do you see the value in developing nations taking a series of intermediate steps towards securing independence via alliances with smaller/rising powers rather than trying to appease the most developed nations who will never see them as anything but a source of resources and cheap labour to be exploited and dumped.

Not if the community is so fucked over in a desperate to make money for themselves for daily survival that no one cares about the latrine or longer health problems.

That's on them. If they're that short-sighted that they can't see semi-annual disease outbreaks as worth digging a hole to resolve we may as well put bullets in them now and save them the suffering.

Do you think there was no attempt at building up universities, educating their population and trying to set up an industrial base in developing countries?

I didn't ask for a rhetorical asshole. Proof now or fuck off.

Yet they still are. Despite having decades of attempts at building up universities and educating their population, they are still stuck with many developmental issues to this day. It is not easy.

Waaaahh, running my own nation is hard so the developed world should pay to support us forever because we can't figure out that we shouldn't shit in the river we gather water from.

Fuck right off with this.

That requires strong institutional governments, with strong social backing from the population ( which is only possible if the population are not stuck in poverty) which most of those countries do not have. I think you are the one being idealistic rather than me. But your idealism is rooted in a perspective from the developed world.

So it requires the bare minimum to function as a nation...

China and Russia will, but those countries are not necessarily there to help those other countries without extracting concession in return. The creation of a free-trade area is not an active threat to the West, because members in those free-trade areas are still actively trading with the West.

So developing nations can totally form support networks and you concede your former point. Concession accepted.

How on earth are you going to teach someone computer programming, or engineering skills in a village? You are being rather ridiculous and idealistic here.

You don't start with that you absolute moron. You start with teaching basic literacy, toolmaking, and infrastructure skills so that these people can have easier lives and fewer health issues. This slowly eases the pressure to send every child to work and allows for communities to improve over time. You don't go from subsistence farmer/gather to programmer or engineer quickly, you need to build a stable base to advance from.Z

The issues in the developing world are that they often tried to skip steps to expedite a process that simply cannot be rushed unless you have a massive population and food surplus like China or Japan.

Develop financial support that help developing countries ease the pain of transition first. The cost of any economic disruption as a result of combating climate change ought to be bore by the developed world.

Or we could not waste the time and political capital that would take and instead invest in more aggressive steps to combat climate change. I know which one is more likely to leave a planet we can still survive on as a species and it isn't your idea.

The "attainable goal" you have is nothing more than dreaming about wining the lottery.

Buying old machinery and machine tools and setting up a functional if outdated industrial base is winning the lottery now? Taking steps to provide basic health, sex, and hygenic education and infrastructure to your poorest citizens in an unattainable dream? Having a function government and alliance of developing nations is impossible?

No, none of this is that difficult it's just that nations are short-sighted and want too much too fast and bite the lure the developed world dangles without a thought to the cost.

Green energy is still not as cheap as you think. There are still technical issues in trying to extract sufficient energy for solar panels and etc, production capacity and etc. There is still issues with distribution of green energy. Electric cars are getting massively cheaper, but they are still expensive compared to buying an old car.

Then don't use those methods... Use solar boilers for steam generations. Use simple wind and water mills for places where any electrification is a big improvement. Use electric rail for the transport of goods instead of trucks.

These nations don't need the suburban sprawl and 24/7 electrification that the developed world has to be far better off than they are right now.

Not if this is going to vastly increase the cost-per-unit because of a reduced scale of production. Smart-phones are cheap ( even for developing countries) not because they are using older technology, but because the demand is so high that China can manufacture them at a cost that is affordable even for people of developing countries.

In those cases buy that, but you don't need everything to be at this standard.

You can use an older OS that is no longer supported by microsoft of any tech company, but watch as your digital infrastructure becomes an easy target for hackers.

Why is your national engineering mainframe connected to the world wide web? Why are your powerplants dialing out to facebook? Your stuff can't be hacked, at least not easily, if it requires physical access to reach.

Because they are the only countries that have moved on to become advanced economies?

Why is this the end goal? You can have a significantly improved standard of living without becoming a modern capitalist nation.

Russia, China and India are still not going to be magically more altruistic than the West. You are still going to get drugs and treatment later than those countries. Which isn't helpful in a pandemic if you are unlucky enough to have a mass outbreak and your citizens are dying every day.

How is that any different than it is right now?

-----

Ray, why is the TLDR of your argument that because development can be a bumpy road that the only way for development to happen is to syphon off as much money from the developed world as quickly as possible rather than building up a sufficient baseline within your means and then trying to advance from there?

[ray245]

Ray, I'm not going to go back and forth point by point anymore because you don't seem to understand the difference between ideal and realistic. You also place no personal responsibility on those in the developing world to help themselves, beyond it seems taking whatever job pays best and fleeing to whichever more developed nation will take them. Nor do you see the value in developing nations taking a series of intermediate steps towards securing independence via alliances with smaller/rising powers rather than trying to appease the most developed nations who will never see them as anything but a source of resources and cheap labour to be exploited and dumped.

For god's sake. I am not saying they should not take responsibility for themselves. What I am opposed to is when "asking them to take responsiblity for themselves" is used by people from developed world as a nicer way of saying "fend for yourself, too bad if you fail".

It's nothing more than a variant of captialism-rhetoric reused for the developing world, like saying there should not be any form of social welfare support in developed countries because people need to learn to fend for themselves

That's on them. If they're that short-sighted that they can't see semi-annual disease outbreaks as worth digging a hole to resolve we may as well put bullets in them now and save them the suffering.

So fuck the poor aye? "They deserve it because they are so stupid!" That is the exact kind of rhetoric the right-wing is using to cut benefits to the poor and dismantle the social benefits system. It's ironic to see you deploying the same kind of language on a geo-politics stage.

I didn't ask for a rhetorical asshole. Proof now or fuck off.

Read up on Autarky in India? That was exactly what they tried to do?

Waaaahh, running my own nation is hard so the developed world should pay to support us forever because we can't figure out that we shouldn't shit in the river we gather water from.

Fuck right off with this.

Do you think those people did it because they enjoyed having dirty water? Carry blaming political and societal failure on individualism.

So it requires the bare minimum to function as a nation...

And many of those places aren't because they are so utterly fucked over by colonialism.

So developing nations can totally form support networks and you concede your former point. Concession accepted.

Way to waste the point.

You don't start with that you absolute moron. You start with teaching basic literacy, toolmaking, and infrastructure skills so that these people can have easier lives and fewer health issues. This slowly eases the pressure to send every child to work and allows for communities to improve over time. You don't go from subsistence farmer/gather to programmer or engineer quickly, you need to build a stable base to advance from.Z

1. That's what those countries are trying to do.
2. That is not enough because parents still don't see the value of that, because they are uneducated themselves and find it difficult to believe education could really transform their lives despite such promise. Send their kids to school, watch their kids fail their school-leaving exams because they are not in ideal situation to do well academically, and watch as the cycle repeats itself.

The issues in the developing world are that they often tried to skip steps to expedite a process that simply cannot be rushed unless you have a massive population and food surplus like China or Japan.

Show me examples of how those countries are skipping those steps.

Or we could not waste the time and political capital that would take and instead invest in more aggressive steps to combat climate change. I know which one is more likely to leave a planet we can still survive on as a species and it isn't your idea.

Watch as your proposal fail anyway because people see it as an attempt at fucking them over without recourse to any help in easing the transition. They have a choice between getting fucked over now and getting fucked over tomorrow. For countries that don't believe the developed world will somehow stop fucking them over in the future if the worst damage of climate change are mitigated, getting fucked over tomorrow at the least allow those lucky enough to earn sufficient wealth to escape in the future.

Buying old machinery and machine tools and setting up a functional if outdated industrial base is winning the lottery now? Taking steps to provide basic health, sex, and hygenic education and infrastructure to your poorest citizens in an unattainable dream? Having a function government and alliance of developing nations is impossible?

You are talking about reaching China's status. China did not buy old machinery, set up outdated industrial base to reach their status today.

No, none of this is that difficult it's just that nations are short-sighted and want too much too fast and bite the lure the developed world dangles without a thought to the cost.

The vast majority of the developing world has failed to come anywhere close to where China is today. The odds of success is still incredibly small. There is a distinction between having a paper plan and actually being able to execute it.

If it is truly as easy as you think it is, there would have been plenty of countries that can succeed like China by today. Reality bites. Running a country is not a video game.

Then don't use those methods... Use solar boilers for steam generations. Use simple wind and water mills for places where any electrification is a big improvement. Use electric rail for the transport of goods instead of trucks.

These nations don't need the suburban sprawl and 24/7 electrification that the developed world has to be far better off than they are right now

Who said anything about suburban sprawl? And if you are advocating for developing countries to use outdated machinery and parts, those older parts are going to be even more energy intensive than modern equipment. Simple wind and water mills are not going to power an entire factory.

In those cases buy that, but you don't need everything to be at this standard.

You can't buy that if developed world jack up the price of electronics because you dismantled the existing manufacture at scale infrastructure that is a part of the globalist system.

Why is your national engineering mainframe connected to the world wide web? Why are your powerplants dialing out to facebook? Your stuff can't be hacked, at least not easily, if it requires physical access to reach.

So you're asking the developing world to cut themselves off from the Internet? Hey, instead of using computers that can save countless man-hours for hospital staff, let's not use modern networks that can save countless manhours doing simple task like retrieving medical information and records on your patients!

Key national infrastructure of the developed world is connected to the world-wide-web. Hospitals in developed countries have their system hacked regularly. And the developed world still thinks it is more beneficial to for their system to stay connected to the Internet in some form because of all the benefits it brings.

But the developing world can go back to old fashion technology that increases the manhours needed to do simple tasks.

Why is this the end goal? You can have a significantly improved standard of living without becoming a modern capitalist nation.

Because those are the countries that did not get fucked over today? The countries that aimed for economic autarky is actively getting fucked over today. History taught those countries the lesson of being late to the party. Any economic disparity gets taken advantage of in some way or another.

How is that any different than it is right now?

Some are lucky enough that the developed world has stupidly placed most of their vaccine manufacturing base in your country because companies saves cost of production. Why do you think India is getting promised to early access to vaccines?

Or how despite Trump howling about China, they still can't cut off economic ties because China is manufacturing the medical masks the US needs.

Ray, why is the TLDR of your argument that because development can be a bumpy road that the only way for development to happen is to syphon off as much money from the developed world as quickly as possible rather than building up a sufficient baseline within your means and then trying to advance from there?

Because the reality of history has shown us the vast majority of the developing countries in the world failed to develop despite gaining independence after WW2. History is a good indication that your chances of failure is vastly higher than your chances of success.

[ray245]

There are over 160 countries in the world that are considered to be developing countries. 13 of them managed to move on to developed economies since WW2. 9 countries have reached the Newly industrialised country status. ( Aka the level China is at today)

Those are not good odds for most developing countries.