hansolo
@hansolo@lemm.ee
- Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink 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.
- Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink 3 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink 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.
- Comment on We Should Immediately Nationalize SpaceX and Starlink 3 weeks ago:
Also every African despotic regime that has has ever existed.
- Comment on "And my dick fucks your wife more than you do. What's your point?" 3 weeks ago:
“Yes, your fancy jewelry is very pretty. Good job.”
- Comment on *fliiiinnnnnggg*. 3 weeks ago:
He’s not fat! He’s big-bonned!
- Comment on Brichard! 3 weeks ago:
Are Brickathon and Toyotathon cousins? Seems like a family name.
- Comment on I can't believe it's necessary to ask the question... 3 weeks ago:
The potato?
Hmm… Maybe potato.
- Comment on I can't believe it's necessary to ask the question... 3 weeks ago:
…I can’t find it.
Where’s the Ed Sheeran bit? I’m sure there’s a reference in there.
Is he the carrot? He’s the carrot, isn’t he?
- Comment on The american crypto mafia 3 weeks ago:
He’s pro “Do the thing that gets me money.” He has zero idea how crypto works. He has no idea how a friggin’ electric car works.
They tapped out people in fixed incomes donating $50 at a time to his “legal defense” slush fund, and this is the next level of letting his broligarch funders use him as a what he is, a brand name, to fleece the undereducated and zealots.
- Comment on Eating an onion 🧅 on the plane ✈️ 3 weeks ago:
Because thats what passes for being “funny” online. Being a gross weirdo in public for likes and coopting anyone nearby into extras for simy having existed.
- Comment on Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the EU's (DMA) Digital Markets Act for EEA users, including Edge not prompting users to set it as the default unless opened 3 weeks ago:
1 out of 16 states. In 1 out of 27 countries.
Where is Estonia or Finland or the Netherlands to set the bar higher?
- Comment on Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the EU's (DMA) Digital Markets Act for EEA users, including Edge not prompting users to set it as the default unless opened 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, but it’s all piecemeal and small batches of workstations. There’s no full national scale moves.
- Comment on Nothing to see here 3 weeks ago:
Is there a hidden Ed Sheeran reference here I’m not getting?
- Comment on I see trees of green 3 weeks ago:
Is this a Balkan joke or something?
- Comment on What is something you like to tell people? 3 weeks ago:
Preach!
- Comment on Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the EU's (DMA) Digital Markets Act for EEA users, including Edge not prompting users to set it as the default unless opened 3 weeks ago:
I reeeeally wish they would just embrace and find open source software as a public good and get it over with. The equally glacial pace of adoption of OSS to avoid vendor lock in with MS is not exactly giving the OSS world the boost it deserves.
- Comment on Too bad we can't all act like this 3 weeks ago:
Yes, it is too bad you all are barely more than animals, failing daily to even aspire to live up to basic public decorum.
- Comment on So close! 3 weeks ago:
It’s because the bottled sewerage market demands that their product be called “refined sewerage,” or sometimes “sparkling sewerage” if carbonated.
But it can only be called “le fizzy shitz” if it’s from the Shitz region of France.
- Comment on The solution to many problems 4 weeks ago:
Same.
But whooooo damn do I occasionally miss having a smoke.
I’ve not smoked for more years than I smoked at this point, but the habit is in me. My brain only remembers the good parts.
- Comment on Want a humanoid, open source robot for just $3,000? Hugging Face is on it. 4 weeks ago:
Robot is as surprised as I am!
- Comment on Considering the old model is made with shrink-wrapping this is viable option 4 weeks ago:
In which case it’s just a 3D crocodile. 4D crocodile? It’s a beefy necked crocodile, OK?
- Comment on Never Forget. Please dear god don't forget 4 weeks ago:
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION IN THIS MATTER!
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 weeks ago:
Lol, not going to do it. Been mildly electrocuted too many times to mess around with something like this.
More so curious about the physics here, but I see it’s basically a roll of the dice that it does work and doesnt just fry everything.
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 weeks ago:
Any serious DIY person can just splice an extra male plug onto a cord faster than driving to the store and reading this sign.
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 weeks ago:
Holy shit, does that work?
I’m only familiar with having a generator properly wired into the house system at the panel, not some electrical Uno Reverse.
- Comment on How I discovered my partner was an undercover police officer sent to spy on me 4 weeks ago:
I understand what you’re saying. To be fair, my anchor point is oppressive socialist regimes writ large circa 1944-1990. Kim Il Sung predated Enver Hoxha in terms of models and tactics. Hoxha’s governance style changed over about a decade or two to distance Albania from Yugoslavia and the USSR and emulate North Korea.
By no means do I think it’s an “Asian” thing. Honestly, that’s a silly premise when I’m talking about a single country of 26 million out of 4.7 billion people. NK might barely round up to 1% of the population of Asia, so how is that exactly painting the whole continent? But between Hoxha-era Albania and North Korea, North Korea still exists in largely the same state. So it’s easier to reference as a standard right now.
- Comment on How I discovered my partner was an undercover police officer sent to spy on me 5 weeks ago:
It was more a comment on analog regimes that inspire household level paranoia.
What I had really wanted to say was “What in the Enver Hoxha?” But I expected that reference to Europe’s most North Korean-style regime to miss.
- Comment on How I discovered my partner was an undercover police officer sent to spy on me 5 weeks ago:
What in the Pyong Yang?
- Comment on you are now witnessing the peak of online discourse 5 weeks ago:
For reeeeal, I want an internet univeristy town. If I wanted to deal with a dumptruck full of dickbags all the time, I would move to Boston and go back on reddit.