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Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

economist.com

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Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#241

Post by EasyMark »

yunohn wrote: post #224
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

> Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? This simply never happens. The developed world is constantly putting its nose into everyone else’s business, and through globalization and industrialization, there’s nothing on this world that the Western economy doesn’t touch.

Or China or Russia or …..?

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#242

Post by squigz »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #157
Aeolun wrote: post #91

> only the third time in the past 20 years Only the third time in the last 20 years? I thought we were firmly past this…

War and conflict and the resulting devastation is part of human nature, as it has been for all of our species' history. Why would you expect that to have changed in the last 20 years?

We've managed to generally stop doing lots of things that one might say are 'part of human nature' - because the most important part of human nature is our ability to reflect on our nature and improve it.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#243

Post by keiferski »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151
throwaway3521 wrote: post #15

At which point we admit that current approaches to helping these countries does nothing and we reach out for other, radical, approaches and ideas?

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

Not to excuse the various bad decisions and bungled coups supported by the US during the Cold War, but – had they just "completely stayed out of their business" then the Soviets merely would have intervened (as they actually did in many, many places). In real life, geopolitics is a complex game theory problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_S...

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#244

Post by csomar »

grecy wrote: post #22

I am very sad to watch this situation. I spent 3 weeks driving my 4x4 through Sudan in early 2019 [1], just a month before they finally got rid of Al-Bashir, and it was incredible. The people of Sudan were some of the kindest and friendliest I have ever encountered on the planet. When I asked for directions to buy bread and it turned out to be complicated, the following morning locals brought a bag of fresh-baked bre…

While your experience sounds exceptional, tourism used to be like that before it went mainstream. Essentially, normal people (not traders) will travel with very little resources. There are no credit cards or international banking. So they had to rely on strangers for food and housing.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#245

Post by [deleted] »

cen4 wrote: post #191
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

"Security" as provided by the Pentagon/MIL complex is an evolution of what the Brits used to do to maintain order across the Empire. After the Empire fell, the Americans basically cut and paste that policy, where the goal is mainly about protecting the flows of capital and trade. Colonial legacy and thinking needs a total reboot. Will die out naturally as boomers trained in that kind of thinking pre-globalization die…

[deleted]

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#246

Post by Dalewyn »

Aeolun wrote: post #101
Dalewyn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you why: My capacity to give damns is finite . If you happen to be some saint who has infinite capacity for empathy, good for you. I think most people share my sentiment, though.

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that my ability and will to do anything more than care is lacking. Presumably if I cared enough I’d donate to some charity, but I feel fixing this kind of stuff is why we have governments with humanitarian aid programmes (which I happily pay for through taxes), which should theoretically be a thousand times more effective.

I reiterate that I can't care because my capacity to do so is limited:

* First priority is caring for myself. I can't care for anyone if I don't.

* Next is immediate family.

* Then it's my closest friends.

* Followed by my other friends and extended/distant family.

* After that are my professional connections: Co-workers, bosses, subordinates, clients, suppliers, and so on. They are who I derive a living from.

* Now I get to strangers I happen to meet during my life. This is actually an important group as, indeed, most if not all friendships, professional connections, and even family originate here.

* Finally, after all that, I can maybe care about strangers I have not met and will never meet during my life.

I'm sorry, my damns ran dry somewhere in "strangers in my life" before I got through them and I think that's actually being generous. I don't have any left for someone on the other god damn side of the world who is literally meaningless to me.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#247

Post by giantg2 »

crop_rotation wrote: post #228
giantg2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure China is a good example of it working, unless you limit it to the past couple decades and ignore the human rights issues. South Korea may be a decent example, but also has some possible indirect negative effects, given all the protests, urban/rural divide, and social/birthrate issues. Sure they have the whole not starving thing handled, but so do the majority of countries regardless of central planning o…

Do you realise you are commenting in the context of a massive famine and millions of lives lost? All the countries in Africa and almost any non developed country will gladly take post Mao Chinese leadership and there current status quo over their current lives. Human rights don't come before people have a certain dignity to live. Trying to preach human rights to a starving population is just .....

Do you realize we're talking about approaches that work? What stages did China and South Korea go through to get to today? The 40s and 50s were pretty bad in either country. Show me a prosperous centralized government that didn't have some ethnic or political cleansing at it's roots.

Or you could not red herring me and supply a proposed solution that could work instead of painting my opposition to central planning as an opposition to fixing famine in an emotional appeal.

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#248

Post by Qem »

gruez wrote: post #220
Qem wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famine in Gaza generates a lot of outrage because there was a line of trucks loaded with food rotting outside, as there is an apartheid system in place actively withholding food to generate said famine. We have even instances were soldiers were caught in camera gunning down starving people trying to get food, like the infamous flour massacre: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_massacre

>The famine in Gaza generates a lot of outrage because there was a line of trucks loaded with food rotting outside, as there is an apartheid system in place actively withholding food to generate said famine. That sounds... pretty similar to what's happening in Sudan? From the OP: >[...] Some of the shortage is down to theft and damage by the RSF and other militias. But much blame lies also with the SAF, which is loth…

Sudan is, like, over 1000 km wide. The Gaza strip is only 25 km in its longest side. In one case sheer distance imposes some logistic challenges to deliver aid. In the other the distance that separates starving people from food could be traversed by foot, if occupation forces were not playing target practice with them. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestini... and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/11/13/if-gaza-w...

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#249

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151
throwaway3521 wrote: post #15

At which point we admit that current approaches to helping these countries does nothing and we reach out for other, radical, approaches and ideas?

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

Works for natural ecosystems because we accept that mass casualties is "normal" in the natural world; if some species doesn't survive a mass fire/drought/etc, welp, that's nature. When millions of people starve to death, we don't accept that.

(lol, well, we do accept it, as history has shown us time and time again, but we tend to not want to do nothing)

Re: Anarchy in Sudan has spawned the world’s worst famine in 40 years

#250

Post by jksflkjl3jk3 »

keiferski wrote: post #243
jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about going in the other direction? Completely stay out of their business and let whatever emerges from the chaos develop on its own? Central planning of societies doesn't have a good track record, especially when there are competing external interests. Look at the horrific consequences of the American meddling in geopolitics of the third world over the last 100 years. The CIA and war industry is responsible for…

Not to excuse the various bad decisions and bungled coups supported by the US during the Cold War, but – had they just "completely stayed out of their business" then the Soviets merely would have intervened (as they actually did in many, many places). In real life, geopolitics is a complex game theory problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_S...

I suppose the status quo is an inevitable consequence of technology expanding the practical spheres of influence of world powers. It sure would be nice though to have a world without globalization, still full of cultural diversity.
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