
Jonathan Ledgard Believes Imagination Could Save the World - mitchbob
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/23/jonathan-ledgard-believes-imagination-could-save-the-world
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prvc
Can we get a succinct thesis statement of this article? Was put off by the
writing style of the portion I read.

~~~
Igelau
Some people are lucky enough to get jobs that give them connections and
resources to try out crazy ideas in far off lands with wild sciency stuff that
they barely understand.

Calling up EPFL right now with my pitch for why they should let me hang out
with top research scientists to flesh out a vague idea that blockchain can fix
the refugee crisis.

~~~
Animats
A blockchain system for land ownership records. Now that might actually work.
The problem needs an immutable shared ledger that cannot be easily destroyed
or tampered with. Transaction volume is low enough for a blockchain system.
There are many countries that lack documented land ownership.

One of the World Bank's blogs suggests this, but not much seems to have been
done.[1]

[1] [https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/keeping-it-
clean...](https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/keeping-it-clean-can-
blockchain-change-nature-land-registry-developing-countries)

~~~
paganel
> A blockchain system for land ownership records.

How would that handle shared ownership of some of those lands? Will that
entail their owners now paying tax on these lands whose ownership is now
“recognized”? (a negative for some of the people involved, because at this
moment they pay no tax on it). Will this registering of lands “help” them be
put on the market? If yes, how can we prohibit the sale of those lands to
people outside of the village/county? I.e. how do we stop alienating lands
that have been owned by the community for possibly centuries?

And these are just a couple of hard to answer questions, because land
“ownership” (for lack of a better word) is really complex and ancient and not
easy to put into “organizational boxes” dreamed up by our technocratic
society.

~~~
sbierwagen
>If yes, how can we prohibit the sale of those lands to people outside of the
village/county?

This is only a feature in a couple jurisdictions. Not all countries ban the
sale of land. You might guess those jurisdictions won't be interested in
recording land sales, since land can't be sold.

------
gumby
> … the best-educated generation in African history, digitally connected to
> the rest of the planet, yet the World Bank estimated that seventy-five per
> cent of sub-Saharan youths would be unable to find a salaried job in the
> coming years. “They will be easily knocked flat by mishaps or illnesses,”
> Ledgard continued, and would be prone to recruitment into insurgencies and
> terrorist groups. It was no coincidence, he thought, that the jihad was most
> active in the areas already being ravaged by oil extraction and climate
> change.

Substitute “American” for “African” and some more palatable-to-Americans word
for “jihad” and his could be the USA in a decade.

------
daenz
>What if human greed could be harnessed as a kind of natural resource, and
redirected to mitigate its own effects?

It's called capitalism. People like to rail against capitalism for rewarding
greed, and capitalism does have faults, but they forget that it is the only
system (so far) that acknowledges the presence of greed and actively harnesses
it for the benefit and advancement of everyone. Some alternative systems are
so foolishly idealist that they try to pretend that greed (and the
hierarchical systems constructed from it) doesn't exist. And of course it's
easy to build those make-believe systems if nobody is actively exploiting it.

~~~
cryptoz
> presence of greed and actively harnesses it for the benefit and advancement
> of everyone.

This is not what capitalism does. Much of capitalism today and in US history
is that of a destructive force that hurts the entire population without
consequence, enriching mostly the already wealthy.

The improvements and conveniences of modern society are unevenly distributed
and brought to the masses at great cost to our society.

Unchecked global climate change due to infinite-growth-greed-capitalism has
_dramatically decreased_ the quality of expected life for much of the world's
poor.

Capitalism absolutely does not, in theory or practice, make its benefits
available to everyone.

~~~
BubRoss
Historically what has worked better?

~~~
cristoperb
I'm not sure this is a meaningful question to most anti-capitalists who want
to move beyond capitalism to a non-exploitative economic system rather than
return to some real or imagined historic system.

~~~
dr_dshiv
Honest question: what is the non-capitalist alternative economic system?
European socialism and Chinese communism are still very capitalist. I'm always
generally confused by these debates.

