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[return to "Kenya and "the decline of the greatest coffee" (2021)"]
1. noodle+G5[view] [source] 2024-12-02 14:38:51
>>sebg+(OP)
I wonder what the long term solutions to these kinds of problems are in East Africa and similar contexts.

The remnants of colonialism continue to produce winners and losers economically, with the winners stuck in local maxima where they extract value from the people, but the people themselves see only marginal benefit, and development is stuck at a snail's pace.

As with seemingly everything in life, the incentives for the different players really don't line up. Consumers lose, producers lose, and only a select few middlemen win anything at all.

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2. fsckbo+T7[view] [source] 2024-12-02 14:55:09
>>noodle+G5
"the remnants of colonialism" include the ability to participate in world markets which create markets for local products. If Kenyans grew coffee (ignoring the fact that Kenyans growing coffee was itself a remnant of colonialism) just for the Kenyan market, the coffee sector in Kenya would be a tiny part of the local economy.

The reason New York City is the biggest city in the US is because when the Erie Canal was built, the agricultural riches of the Midwest had a route to world markets. Where you have a major seaport, you also need major banks and major insurance companies to smooth out the financial needs of traders and shippers, providing the funds right away back to the farmers, instead of them waiting till the voyages were complete. (without the Erie Canal, New Orleans would have become the largest city in the US)

Yes, there is a lot of money in trading, banking, etc. At every step of the transaction pyramid, a %age is added to the price, and the %age fees charged on that go up accordingly. But that measures the true value of the product at each stage; if you have a cheaper way of getting the same product to the same stage cheaper, the (supposed) riches will be yours.

The socialist instinct ("anybody getting rich must be cheating") unfortunately obscures the real problem ("monopolists and cartels controlling supply and setting prices are the true enemies of the people") which hinders solving it; by putting capitalism in your gunsights, you make enemies out of natural allies.

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3. buster+T8[view] [source] 2024-12-02 15:01:08
>>fsckbo+T7
It's painful having to remind people of this.

Also the fact that everyone alive today is so as a result of either being on the winning side of colonialism or from their ancestors otherwise clubbing somebody else over the head.

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4. Pittle+xa[view] [source] 2024-12-02 15:10:00
>>buster+T8
> Also the fact that everyone alive today is so as a result of either being on the winning side of colonialism or from their ancestors otherwise clubbing somebody else over the head.

That's a poor justification for it, though, and I don't want to live in a society that goes out of its way to view itself as Hobbesian.

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5. buster+NB1[view] [source] 2024-12-03 02:19:38
>>Pittle+xa
Peace and love is all well and good until your crops have failed for the third year in a row. Your food stores are empty. You killed and ate all of the livestock last season because there was nothing left to feed them. There's nothing wild to hunt. Your village has resorted to eating anything it can scavenge, even if it's inedible or even poisonous. People are gnawing on their fingers.

And it's like this for your village and your neighboring village and their neighboring village and so on.

Tell me about it when your neighboring villages' adult men are charging down the hill at you, filthy, starving, crazed and screaming at the top of their lungs, axes in hand.

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6. Pittle+gD1[view] [source] 2024-12-03 02:32:07
>>buster+NB1
Sure, but we are capable of more cooperation than your fantasy admits. Let's wait until there's no alternative to misanthropic behavior to indulge.
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