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Killing sparrows led to famines in China

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Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#81

Post by alfor »

ericd wrote: post #74
alfor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look into the work of Tony Seba: renewable are on an exponential growth. Tesla Master plan 3 highlight the step needed to fully transition Bjorn Longburgh explain in his book and interview what are the different priorities and costs associated with the different way we can do good in the world. I am super into renewable, but climate change will not be a problem at the current speed of innovation. We should focus on m…

Does he have a good answer for the problem of overgeneration during the summer months, and undergeneration in winter? If you run the numbers on battery energy density, cost, and what it takes to run an efficient heat pump, it seems clear that renewables alone aren’t quite a solution yet. I’d love to be wrong, though.

I don’t know for Musk, for Seba the solution now is overgeneration: it’s more cost effective to have excess solar than to have enough batteries.

The advantage is that you have period were you have free energy if a business find a way to use it. He think that as that become common more more business will find ways to take advantage of it: H2 generation, heat storage, steel/ciment, and other things we are yet to find.

I came to the same conclusion when I installed solar on my motorhome, it’s was way more effective to install "too much" solar so that I have enough for the night of a gray and cold winter day. Otherwise I would had to pay 10X more in lithium batteries. In a summer sunny day I use a fraction of the power. hopefully with a large grid and many free agent and an efficient market the free energy will find uses.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#82

Post by andrewflnr »

scythe wrote: post #61
andrewflnr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a similar note, there's a danger of comparing "the early colonial period in the Americas", a 300-400 year period containing many distinguishable catastrophes, to anything not of equal scale. It's kind of like comparing an apple and a whole apple tree.

A fair complaint, but I didn't put the comparison; the poster I responded to did.

Quite. I'm extending your point, not disagreeing. :)

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#83

Post by cryptonector »

nitwit005 wrote: post #79

Worth noting that poorly planned "pest eradication" campaigns were a global thing. Here in California they paid bounties on a rather wide variety of perceived pest animals. Alaska actually had a bald eagle bounty, as the hunters and fishermen didn't want competition: https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=baldeagle.printer...

That was also when the Population Explosion became a thing, and with it human eradication became a darling of certain people. China tried it with the one child policy.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#84

Post by xeonmc »

dirtyid wrote: post #78
neovialogistics wrote: post #19

Someone once commented to me that rather than blaming Mao personally, the blame for the negative consequences of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution should be placed on the systemic forces that legitimised the absence of domain experts in policy making. It's a nice sentiment but I have a gut feeling that these kinds of frameworks - where blame is taken away from people and attributed to abstract concepts -…

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress wa…

[flagged]

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#85

Post by cryptonector »

dirtyid wrote: post #78
neovialogistics wrote: post #19

Someone once commented to me that rather than blaming Mao personally, the blame for the negative consequences of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution should be placed on the systemic forces that legitimised the absence of domain experts in policy making. It's a nice sentiment but I have a gut feeling that these kinds of frameworks - where blame is taken away from people and attributed to abstract concepts -…

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress wa…

> >worse outcomes long-term

> Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes.

"You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette."

"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."

"By all means necessary."

"The ends justify the means."

Disgusting.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#86

Post by cryptonector »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #46

This article has the causality inverted. The sparrows were just a sideshow to distract from the famines cause. Most famines were caused by the culture of face and the nature of the party. The party dictated a plan, and as failing the plan and making the great leader loose face, ment the local governments loosing face would get them Maos wrath, all the members of the party reported success when it came to harvests. So…

This. Killing the sparrows didn't help, but it wasn't the main cause of the famine. It was the same as Stalin's famines, and he didn't try to get rid of the sparrows. It was just a matter of taking away all incentives for farmers to farm, abusing them, and then using whatever food was available as a weapon for exacting compliance in the ensuing famine. Using food as a weapon means making the famine worse. Add to this all the mismanagement that goes with central planning, and there's a problem.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#87

Post by dirtyid »

cryptonector wrote: post #85
dirtyid wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress wa…

> >worse outcomes long-term > Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette." "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." "By all means necessary." "The ends justify the means." Disgusting.

>Disgusting

Yes, but effective. Manifest some destiny. Future generations reap reward. All of sudden it's 5% bad and 95% good. Maybe 10% bad and 90% good during periods of introspection. The sins of founding father(s) are easy to cleanse.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#88

Post by dirtyid »

dirtyid wrote: post #78
neovialogistics wrote: post #19

Someone once commented to me that rather than blaming Mao personally, the blame for the negative consequences of The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution should be placed on the systemic forces that legitimised the absence of domain experts in policy making. It's a nice sentiment but I have a gut feeling that these kinds of frameworks - where blame is taken away from people and attributed to abstract concepts -…

Official CCP position on was Mao 70% right and 30% wrong. There wasn't lack of domain experts per say, rather Mao pursued modernization agendas at aggressive rate, one that traded lives for progress. 4 pests / killing sparrows didn't lead to famines, the bureaucracy trying to hit Maos KPIs did. Which does not necessarily lead to... >worse outcomes long-term Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress wa…

@xeonmc [flagged] [dead]

>So what you’re saying is, India is badly in need of a cultural revolution?

Maybe 50/60 years ago post partition. But too late now, IMO India system finally built up some momentum + favourable external conditions while starting very precarious transition period. IN trending towards 1.7B medium term with weaker state capacity than PRC dealing with 2/3 that amount. 1/3 of PRC household still medium income developing poor. Worst thing they can do is try massive restructuring that reduces state capacity further, they're best course is to be doomed to continue muddle along which at India scale might still mean great things for fraction of population. Unfortunately, my guess is that means 40%+ of workforce trapped in subsistence farming and weak female labour participation bordering on repressive Islamic country level. Too much people = demographic curse, India likely not going to maintain growth to keep up with even new (male) job demand, will get old before rich, basically the worst case scenario for PRC demographers that slammed through family planning / one child policy. On the other hand 1/3 of India doing well + geography makes her a formidable power.

E: One useful socially disruptive thing India can do is massively incentivize inter cast marriages to demolish cast within a couple generations. Basically open limited pool of tier1 / high income opportunities to more candidates and select for the best. Also prevent brain drain.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#89

Post by PicassoCTs »

cryptonector wrote: post #86
PicassoCTs wrote: post #46

This article has the causality inverted. The sparrows were just a sideshow to distract from the famines cause. Most famines were caused by the culture of face and the nature of the party. The party dictated a plan, and as failing the plan and making the great leader loose face, ment the local governments loosing face would get them Maos wrath, all the members of the party reported success when it came to harvests. So…

This. Killing the sparrows didn't help, but it wasn't the main cause of the famine. It was the same as Stalin's famines, and he didn't try to get rid of the sparrows. It was just a matter of taking away all incentives for farmers to farm, abusing them, and then using whatever food was available as a weapon for exacting compliance in the ensuing famine. Using food as a weapon means making the famine worse. Add to this…

And after that, rewrite history, to make it seem like an accident. After all, the plan of the party could never be horrible.

Same today, building more coal plants, while half of the country in the south is sliding towards a wet-bulb scenario. 400 Mio living in an area, that could become uninhabitable within a human lifetime, and the plan for that? Get rich faster and run, fuck the peasants, obviously.

The chinese deserve some better government of there own choice with some longterm planning, that poured the money into actual working science, to solve the problems they got. But for that this face nonsense has to vanish first.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#90

Post by Teever »

yareally wrote: post #66
bryanlarsen wrote: post #2

I didn't realize sparrows ate insects too. The rule of thumb on the farm was "swallows good, sparrows bad". Swallows ate insects and sparrows ate grain. Maybe China could have replaced sparrows with swallows but that would probably have led to a different kind of disaster since importing species has a horrible track record.

Swallows will only eat flying insects and catch them in the air. The common house sparrow typically forges on the ground. The intersection of the insects both species eat is probably close to zero

They may eat the same insects but at different phases of their life cycle.

Some insects crawl before they fly. and some even fly before they crawl I imagine.

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