hansolo

joined 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 weeks ago

It's the Web 2.0 model of corralling people into walled garden platforms, where they're driven insane. One day people will look back at this time and wonder what we were thinking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Data is nice. I lived in West Africa for nearly a decade total, up until 18 months ago, working on economic devlopment. The data is notoriously bad, and you're comparing apples and camels.

Look, we have in common that we want to see greater African agency and less European colonialism of any sort (or Chinese for that matter).

That being said, I have seen dozens of examples of greed and corruption being the driving force behind nationalization. Often with only the short-sighted goal of raiding capital investment accounts and giving friends jobs. And nearly every time leading to costly failure. Decades of exampes, from Idi Amin to Zambia to South Africa to Mali to DRC to Tanzania to Niger to Ghana, across every possible industry, show that the only only only result from nationalizing something is killing it, and killing it stupidly. Down to things like water desalination plants, power distribution companies, or telecom companies. Maybe you can find a few that are barely solvent across a continent of 54 counties and 1 billion people. The rule is that it's always a play to line pockets and buy a flat on London or Paris and horde wealth for yourself.

And keep in mind that nationalizing something is eliminant domain of stuff. It's theft with a sorry card. Not for some greater good, to make someone else rich, not the first guy.

The result is my daily experience anywhere other than SA, Morocco, and Kenya: the power goes out for hours at a time most days, water comes from a truck and maaaaybe on Mondays or Tuesdays from the city, and mobile phone and internet only works from private companies like MTN or Vodaphone. Often that buy out the old, failing government telco for the license and have to pay hundreds of ghost workers that were promised jobs by a president way back when.

You should note that one of the wealthiest counties per capita in SSA, is Botswana. Which is basically a podunk AF suburb of Pretoria/Joburg anyway. But they never nationalized their diamond mines, and their population is relatively better off. Riddle me this - why has Botswana been the success story with a PPP while all these places with nationalized everything struggle to literally keep the lights on?

Which is not to excuse the bad parts of the system. I once spent a couple years living in a rural village of about 400 people in Niger, and we had a brackish well. A few people wondered of it might be oil. Clearly, it's not. But all I could was warn them they should hope is not oil, and the dangers of being near extractive industry. Mines are more often than not, a blight on the earth.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

wow, tell me you know nothing about West Africa without telling me you know nothing about West Africa.

I'm all for the Sahellian states getting rid of the French, but the Burkinabe gold mining system is pure chaos, often costing informal miners their lives. Burkina, in particular, didn't have anything other than use of the CFA really tying them to the French anyway. Sure, some gold mines, but that's more like a final vestige.

Like, just overall, Bukina Faso is a weird place. Every time I've been there, the only bird I really see around is vultures. Like, no doves, no pigeons. Just vultures.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Hardly. Usually the process goes like this:

African Nation - has natural resource and has no way to get it out of the ground.

Foreign company that does this all the time: Yo, we'll literally pay you to let us dig up this stuff.

Regime: Yes, I was paid, perfect. Thanks. And we'll charge you what seems like tons of money also.

10 years later

New Regime: Hm.....that's an awfully nice mine you have there. We've increased taxes on it 400 times and you are still not closing. It means there's too much money to be had! So we will take it and do the mining ourselves! How hard could it be?!

New regime nationalizes mine

3 months later

New Regime: Sadly, we must now close the mine and send everyone with jobs home because my drunk cousin is not a good mine director, and all the things broke and we didn't know you had to order more spare parts.

New Regime places FOR SALE sign on mine and waits for another foreign company to start the cycle over again.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

Also every African despotic regime that has has ever existed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

"U.S. payrolls"?

You mean job figures?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

I would bet money this results in a mess of data centers in Hungary, maybe Serbia, maaaaybe Texas.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

"Yes, your fancy jewelry is very pretty. Good job."

Edit: after I stopped laughing, of course.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

DDG is the search engine, just change your engine with the drop down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

He's not fat! He's big-boned!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

"It hurt itself in its confusion!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I really wanted this article to have more "YEET" and less "controlled burn."

 

Is it too late to vote for the Baby Lasagna x Käärijä mashup to win it all?

 

I'm looking to finally get my spouse and I both onto a non-G email service with a custom domain. Having storage and calendars to replace Drive is the deal-maker with the spouse.

I've been using Proton as my alt email for years, but all the new crypto bells and whistles just seems sus from a business management perspective. I get it, they're Swiss, but still.

But looking at Mailbox.org, their 2FA situation seems bonkers. That's the dealbreaker for me.

All I really need is IMAP, webmail, and actual security without feeling like I'm going to be doing this all again in 5 years to get out from under another crypto bro.

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