Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

Post by sumanthvepa » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #40

kumarvvr wrote: post #15

The drastic move to organic farming is puzzling. Any level headed person , forget a politician , would want to experiment first, see the results, gauge and then expand selectively. That is common sense . I guess when you are a dictator ish government and you rule the country with an iron first, the institutions of the state stop being anything and simply become rubber stamps. This also underlines the importance of se…

This is a common feature of dictatorships: a boneheaded decision from a central government wreaks havoc on the people in the field that would know better. It reminds me of Mao ordering all sparrows be killed because they eat agriculture seeds. This of course caused a much bigger crisis with insects destroying crops - because everyone knows sparrows also eat lots of insects.

Post by virgulino » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 4:13 AM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #53

kumarvvr wrote: post #15

The drastic move to organic farming is puzzling. Any level headed person , forget a politician , would want to experiment first, see the results, gauge and then expand selectively. That is common sense . I guess when you are a dictator ish government and you rule the country with an iron first, the institutions of the state stop being anything and simply become rubber stamps. This also underlines the importance of se…

I've been reading a lot of Soviet history lately and it provides a source of a huge number of similar agricultural disasters. Both Russian and Chinese attitudes towards agricultural peasants has been that they are dispensable humans, and it shows in how these countries have had disasters: * collectivitzation leading to the Holodomor in Ukraine, mass famine in Kazakhstan, and hunger throughout the USSR, killing millio…

Post by roody15 » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

rlt wrote: post #55

Perhaps a dumb question: why does every little country need its own currency? Are they all just addicted to printing money? Ignoring the volatility and environmental concerns, why shouldn’t all these small to medium-sized countries standardize on a cryptocurrency?

Post by dougSF70 » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

Post by vishnugupta » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 4:37 AM UTC

asciiresort wrote: post #8

> Without imports, many Sri Lankans will quickly find themselves hungry, stranded How did these island nations sustain themselves before ? In other words, what has changed that they can’t live off the land anymore? And by that, I mean the sea. Has Sri Lanka’s fish been pillaged? Is it being exported to wealthier nations that command higher prices, even as there is a domestic food crisis? How much of this is because o…

  1. Tourism took a big hit due to COVID lockdowns.

  2. They took on huge debt from China to fund their massive infrastructure developments with close to zero plan as to how to reap the benefit of that infrastructure. For instance this airport[1]

  3. The knee jerk banning of fertiliser.

  4. Corrupt and authoritarian (despite being democratically elected) government favouring their cronies.