Aug 6 2009: Spoken like a true economist - to assume that (1) those who would be willing to translocate would leave their cultural baggage behind, (2) the difference between Haiti and DR is purely institutional, (3) you can just pre-fab a successful city onto a empty stretch of coastline, and (4) that the Hong Kong experiment and its authoritarian quasi-capitalism alone did more to alleviate poverty 100 years of aid (ostensibly including the Marshall plan).
Lastly, one further reason electrification is a problem is that desperately poor people in rural areas will salvage and sell copper wires to buy food and medicine. I love the optimism, and the idea bears further consideration. If only we had a clean slate...
Jul 10 2009: The devil is in the details. If only gluing a known reactive epitope to HIV were as easy as drawing a line between a square and a triangle (not to mention that Mullis himself is one of the few remaining skeptics of the connection between HIV and AIDS). Second, the immune system is a complicated thing, and activating the right kind of immune response is critically important, and is something that we don't do very well yet. Still, it's a fascinating proof of concept.
Jul 7 2009: Religion has enormous power to do good and to bring people together - how many inner city missions and global development projects would cease to exist without the religious organizations that spawned them?
Second, I would argue, as she alluded to, that religions are not the cause of conflicts, but are often fault lines along which other causes of conflict can drive their wedges. Religious disharmony was until the early 20th century more the exception than the rule. Jews lived among Arabs in Iraq for thousands of years, Greek Orthodox and Turks lived alongside each other until around 1912. The drive for a unitary nation-state, among other things, used religion to distinguish between self and other.
To respond to Z.A, religion has been a political tool for all sorts of purposes, including pacifying the people. But it's also been used as a driver for liberty, as in the liberation theology in Latin America and US slave colonies.
It's a powerful thing, it's our job to use it for good.
Jul 7 2009: Nope. The stat means that if your partner has HIV and you don't, unprotected sex will statistically result in transmission once per 1000 times. The number is actually a bit higher for male-to-female transmission than female-to-male, and only holds if you're healthy. It varies for all sorts of other reasons - eg. If you have another STI, it greatly increases the risk of infection, likewise if your immune system is active, the virus is more likely to encounter a T cell that it can infect. That being said, a 0.1% risk of HIV is not a risk I'm willing to take. wrap up.
Jul 7 2009: It's true that there is a cultural norm in some places to have a wife as well as a mistress, and that arrangement is considered faithful. This DOES NOT mean you can extrapolate this, either statistically or socioculturally into assuming that every sexually active person in Africa is connected. That claim is a great example of the intellectual laziness and assumption of pan-African uniformity that Rosling warns against.
There have been interventions (eg Uganda) that resulted in successful reductions in incidence by convincing people to stay within their two-partner system, and to abstain from occasionally "grazing".
Of course, concurrency isn't the whole story, but I'll save that for another post.
Jul 5 2009: Before I criticize, I have to say I'm intrigued... Now for the criticism:
The idea that donor countries reward countries that adapt friendly measures too often leads to coercive measures by assymetrically larger countries (and the NGOs that operate at their behest) to implement conditions that are favorable to the metropole, not the recovering country. Look no further than the SAPs in Africa or the lost decades in Latin America.
It's a well-intentioned idea, and it might work, but my feeling is that the odds are not good.
Jul 5 2009: The opium example is interesting, but probably not the cleanest example. While opium production provides employment, it also furnishes the Taliban with billions of dollars with which they can buy arms and recruit other unemployed, disaffected young men.
More broadly, Collier misspoke slightly, implying that boredom is the core of the problem. Nobody straps TNT to their chest because they're bored. They do it because they and their families are living miserable, subordinated lives, and somebody with money promises to change that. I have a hard time believing that the common footsoldier in these conflicts is doing this out of much more than desperation (plus coercions and oftentimes induced addiction). Offering employment assuages this desperation, and makes it easier to say 'No' to militant recruiters.
Jul 4 2009: I disagree on two counts: FIrst, "our human reticence to war is a proble" - your normative judgment that this great power posturing and geopolitical swinging of dicks justifies the inevitable erosion of liberty and the callous sacrifice of this country's youth (not to mention Guatemalan peasants, Nicaraguan priests, and a generation of Vietnamese);
Second, I would argue that excessive militarization takes resources away from more economically, culturally and technologically productive investments, weighing the country down enough to allow other powers to catch up enough to challenge US hegemony.
Jul 4 2009: His presentation wasn't about classifying failed states, but he alluded to who would make such a classification (UNSC) and the criteria for a failed state is often more obvious than you'd like it to be. In Barnett's analysis, as soon as you come up with an arbiter for identifying the most egregious political disasters (Mugabe, Kim-Jong-Il), the idea is that an effective, internationally sanctioned "world political police" would dissuade the (arguably) less severe abusers of power (Saudi, Myanmar) to cut it out. That seems to make some level of sense, Next question: Who gets to make that decision and on what grounds? There's the messy part.
Jul 3 2009: 1. I think the fact that the elections had to be rigged speaks volumes of Ahmedinejad's decreasing clout. Millions don't march against an up and-coming, popular leader.
2. More importantly, the demonstrations quickly stopped being about the election results, and became an argument over the direction of the country, accented by the unprecedented criticism of the regime from within the clerical establishment (http://www.slate.com/id/2221256/pagenum/all/#p2)
3. I wonder how the model's assessment of stakeholders and policymakers holds up against turbulent upsets of the day-to-day function of government, such as we've seen lately.
More than anything, I think it's fascinating that a few parameters, calculated over many stakeholders, can quantify policy, sometimes with counter-intuitive prescriptions.
Comments
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A comment on Talk: Paul Romer's radical idea: Charter cities
Lastly, one further reason electrification is a problem is that desperately poor people in rural areas will salvage and sell copper wires to buy food and medicine. I love the optimism, and the idea bears further consideration. If only we had a clean slate...
A reply on Talk: Kary Mullis' next-gen cure for killer infections
A reply on Talk: Karen Armstrong makes her TED Prize wish: the Charter for Compassion
Second, I would argue, as she alluded to, that religions are not the cause of conflicts, but are often fault lines along which other causes of conflict can drive their wedges. Religious disharmony was until the early 20th century more the exception than the rule. Jews lived among Arabs in Iraq for thousands of years, Greek Orthodox and Turks lived alongside each other until around 1912. The drive for a unitary nation-state, among other things, used religion to distinguish between self and other.
To respond to Z.A, religion has been a political tool for all sorts of purposes, including pacifying the people. But it's also been used as a driver for liberty, as in the liberation theology in Latin America and US slave colonies.
It's a powerful thing, it's our job to use it for good.
A reply on Talk: Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals
A reply on Talk: Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals
There have been interventions (eg Uganda) that resulted in successful reductions in incidence by convincing people to stay within their two-partner system, and to abstain from occasionally "grazing".
Of course, concurrency isn't the whole story, but I'll save that for another post.
A reply on Talk: Paul Collier's new rules for rebuilding a broken nation
The idea that donor countries reward countries that adapt friendly measures too often leads to coercive measures by assymetrically larger countries (and the NGOs that operate at their behest) to implement conditions that are favorable to the metropole, not the recovering country. Look no further than the SAPs in Africa or the lost decades in Latin America.
It's a well-intentioned idea, and it might work, but my feeling is that the odds are not good.
A reply on Talk: Paul Collier's new rules for rebuilding a broken nation
More broadly, Collier misspoke slightly, implying that boredom is the core of the problem. Nobody straps TNT to their chest because they're bored. They do it because they and their families are living miserable, subordinated lives, and somebody with money promises to change that. I have a hard time believing that the common footsoldier in these conflicts is doing this out of much more than desperation (plus coercions and oftentimes induced addiction). Offering employment assuages this desperation, and makes it easier to say 'No' to militant recruiters.
A reply on Talk: Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace
Second, I would argue that excessive militarization takes resources away from more economically, culturally and technologically productive investments, weighing the country down enough to allow other powers to catch up enough to challenge US hegemony.
A reply on Talk: Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace
A reply on Talk: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts Iran's future
2. More importantly, the demonstrations quickly stopped being about the election results, and became an argument over the direction of the country, accented by the unprecedented criticism of the regime from within the clerical establishment (http://www.slate.com/id/2221256/pagenum/all/#p2)
3. I wonder how the model's assessment of stakeholders and policymakers holds up against turbulent upsets of the day-to-day function of government, such as we've seen lately.
More than anything, I think it's fascinating that a few parameters, calculated over many stakeholders, can quantify policy, sometimes with counter-intuitive prescriptions.