Killing sparrows led to famines in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#31

Post by zabzonk » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

zabzonk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who else would you blame it on? communist, centralised states are reknown for causing these kinds of problems - look at the ussr in the 1920s and 30s.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

one nitwit in a town somewhere decides to kill sparrows - stupid, but not too bad

one nitwit, megalomaniac communist dictator decides to kill them all off across a vast country he rules by terror - stupid, and a disaster

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#32

Post by at_a_remove » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:18 PM UTC

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

zabzonk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who else would you blame it on? communist, centralised states are reknown for causing these kinds of problems - look at the ussr in the 1920s and 30s.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

The ideas of communism are that of the command economy, total centralization. Someone at the TOP decides all of this stuff. This means that if someone at the top (who is not to be questioned, see Mao's other wacky hijinx) makes any kind of error, well, you don't hear about it until it is unavoidably terrible. No early feedback, everyone is afraid to give it to you.

In a more decentralized setup, it is bottom-up, and suddenly "hey this isn't working" gets propagated. Also, a peer is more willing to call you on your bullshit, but if you're a dictator, you just get yes-men.

Essentially, the setup was such that anyone less than a perfectly informed leader who never made mistakes would wreak havoc.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#33

Post by bobthepanda » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:19 PM UTC

SonicScrub wrote: post #30

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

The power and control wielded by centrally planned economies allows for wide-scale top-down dictation which vastly exceeds that of the democratic-capitalistic states. Thus enabling destruction on this scale. It's not about specifics of ideology, it's about how much authority is concentrated in the hands of the central planners. If central planning only works in a world where perfect knowledge of the state of the econ…

Also, authoritarian communist states in practice have a very hard time course correcting from courses their leaders decided on.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#34

Post by OrbOfConfusion » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:27 PM UTC

dduugg wrote: post #3

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Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#35

Post by SonicScrub » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:27 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #33

SonicScrub wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power and control wielded by centrally planned economies allows for wide-scale top-down dictation which vastly exceeds that of the democratic-capitalistic states. Thus enabling destruction on this scale. It's not about specifics of ideology, it's about how much authority is concentrated in the hands of the central planners. If central planning only works in a world where perfect knowledge of the state of the econ…

Also, authoritarian communist states in practice have a very hard time course correcting from courses their leaders decided on.

Just want to expand on this comment, because it can be easily handwaved away with a "our version will be democratic". The level of power afforded to central planners is a stabilizing force away from distributed power, and towards tyrannical governments. Every government's primary objective is to retain power for themselves, else how would they achieve their goals? Every other objective must be subservient to this, because no other objective can be achieved without it. This is true be it a state is democratic, monarchic, communist, or whatever. Give a governing power 100% control of a national economy, and they will use it to entrench their own power. If they fail to do so, they will lose power to those who will. Benevolence cannot be relied upon as a long term stabilizing force.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#36

Post by more_corn » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:32 PM UTC

kevviiinn wrote: post #6

I find it rather strange that people tend to blame the famine on communism and central planning

This was 100% a problem caused by central planning and failure to consider second order effects.

But at the core the problem was blindly following the suggestion of a leader who is not making evidence based decisions. This will always end in tragedy.

I regret to report that such leaders can and do emerge under every economic system.

Maybe free markets are less susceptible to them because the leaders have less power over people’s lives in free markets.

Perhaps the takeaway should Be to limit the power our leaders have over us because the world is complex and a central plan will never encompass the realities of every individual.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#37

Post by lostlogin » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:32 PM UTC

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #22

lostlogin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gates’ have a pretty spectacular track record, what do you mean?

Like buying up farmland an using GMOs.

I was more referring to their work with malaria. I suppose it’s up for debate how much good they have done, but the scales weigh petty clearly from where I sit.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#38

Post by hidroto » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

Brybry wrote: post #27

goda90 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally those efforts are targeted at disease carrying mosquitoes. There are other species of mosquitoes in the same regions and there aren't any animals that only eat one kind of mosquito.

To add to this, the disease carrying mosquito species like aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus are invasive species in the Americas. These mosquitoes do some pollination but given that they're invasive it probably wouldn't be a big deal to wipe them out. Also, invasiveness is true of a lot of pests in North America: the American cockroach isn't American, it's from Africa. Brown rats, red/fire ants, and wild pigs are a…

a complication to eradicating a invasive species is when that species has replaced a native species ecological niche. getting rid of it at that point may cause more problems then it solves.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#39

Post by zabzonk » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

SonicScrub wrote: post #30

kevviiinn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

The power and control wielded by centrally planned economies allows for wide-scale top-down dictation which vastly exceeds that of the democratic-capitalistic states. Thus enabling destruction on this scale. It's not about specifics of ideology, it's about how much authority is concentrated in the hands of the central planners. If central planning only works in a world where perfect knowledge of the state of the econ…

culture minds are not always so benevolent (though they may tend to be towards culture human citizens) - this is one of the major threads of the series

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#40

Post by jemmyw » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

alfor wrote: post #17

Another example of the peril of central planning and total authority. Make me think of the climate change orthodoxy were we focus solely on co2 and forget about all the other human problems.

Not really. Climate change is a multiplier or interwoven with lot of those other problems. Plus burning fossil fuels is so central to our economies that we haven't even stopped co2 emissions rising.

If we'd actually focused on co2, rather than the less than minimum effort made so far, then maybe there'd be more space for the other problems. Instead this one problem looms larger and larger.