People can't look past the egregious* waste of money to see that it isnt a waste at all, even if Nigeria should have repaid the debt or Japan should have forgiven it.
None of that matters! The result matters! Eradicating polio matters!
You may think that "shithole" is too strong of a statement. But that description seems about right to me. What is average for Nigeria would qualify as a horrible slum in most countries.
> You may think that "shithole" is too strong of a statement. But that description seems about right to me
It's a term that was recently applied, with almost comical precision, to countries that are predominantly black. It was applied in respect of the people from those countries, specifically immigrants, more specifically regarding their individual merit as potential Americans.
TL; DR When discussing race, particularly anything relating to black people or predominantly-black countries, it's probably best to use another word.
as a minority immigrant from a shithole country, i find this opinion condescending and racist. please use whatever adjective you would use for any other race - i don't need my sensitive minority ears protected by an up-to-the-minute adjective whitelist, thanks.
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
his fake offense on behalf of others is a faux pas. its a common term. we can't use "shit hole" because some people recently decided that was the case?
I'm not going to bother keeping up with every tweet from our cheeto-in-chief to keep track of things that might offend politically correct people this week. There is no limit to what can potentially offend others. There is a limit to how much of my attention that I wish to devote to the topic.
If that bothers you, perhaps you should reconsider what offends you. Because like it or not, "shithole" is an accurate description of Nigeria. It would not be a fair description of, say, Botswana.
> If that bothers you, perhaps you should reconsider what offends you. Because like it or not, "shithole" is an accurate description of Nigeria
I am neither telling you to stop using that word nor expressing offense. Language is complicated. Two words with similar definitions can mean vastly different things. Understanding that is part of communication.
You now know this term carries additional implied meaning. Ignoring that fact could be used to communicate a message. Similar to how some people selectively use the words "retarded" and "fag" loosely to communicate something meaningful. (Others are simply linguistically clumsy, or mean to communicate something hateful.) Depending on the circumstances, that may be what you want to communicate, completely unnecessary (thereby lowering your signal:noise ratio) or even debilitating to your argument. Knowing that implied information simply allows you to control that nuance.
We clearly can and clearly should do much better on HN than bicker about whether '"shithole" is an accurate description of Nigeria"'. This is embarrassing. Please don't feed it.
Same goes for everyone else in this subthread of course.
To all the commenters too busy being aghast at giving money to a government to read the article:
>Nigeria’s debt to Japan is the result of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) provided by the Japanese government in 2014 for increased polio eradication. efforts.
>The country has made great strides in its efforts to eliminate the disease thanks to this funding.
>Nigeria did not record a wild case of polio from July 2014 to August 2016, when two cases were reported.
Presumably, the Gates Foundation wants to encourage state partnerships from nations like Japan in the service of eradicating solved diseases, regardless of a recipient nation's ability or willingness to settle incurred debts.
This is the correct perspective. It seems that, Reddit style, many people here comment just the titles, don't read the articles.
Polio is on the way to complete eradication all over the world. AFAIK the only place where it remains endemic is Baluchistan in Pakistan where the warlords are suspicious of vaccination agents.
Victory on polio is a fantastic story that doesn't get the attention it deserves.
It wasn't the last time. Pakistan is an extremely large nation with 40+ years of substantial vaccination efforts by the US and West in general. It'd be fair to say that at least 99.9% of that effort was entirely innocent.
The CIA doing what it did should have never happened obviously. That simultaneously doesn't excuse non-vaccination, which is extraordinarily inexpensive and could be performed by Pakistani government persons as a compromise.
> and could be performed by Pakistani government persons as a compromise.
Political opponents still can frame anyone associated with "being an US puppet"... and for the chemtrail-lovers with an addition of "they're not vaccinating you, they're putting tiny microchips into you". Do note I didn't make up that last one, it literally flew somewhere over my Facebook feed today.
The leaders being suspicious of vaccination efforts is a direct link to this activity, please stop making a cheap "THOSE CRAZY KOOKS BELEIVE ANYTHING" style dismissal.
> Do you really wanna try to frame the DNA analysis thing as an insane conspiracy theory?
No. Of course this is real. What I meant was that even using Pakistani staff would not help to restore trust. The CIA really did the world a service...
Exactly. It is my belief that the people who ordered this should have their asses dragged in front of the UN and should be tried for crimes against humanity.
Just as much HN style, where top comments frequently bring up old discussions completely unrelated to the article's content (e.g. js article -> js is a mess, blockchain article -> blockchain is a bubble, megacorp article -> this is why i never use megacorp's products)
I've noticed what you pointed out is fairly common especially recently, but it wasn't always the case. Moreover, it's incumbent on us to be better than that so to reverse the trend.
Just came off an 11 month involuntary HN-hiatus and noticed that the level of discourse is markedly lower. Wondering whether it could be quantified over time. Maybe a NLP expert could chime in?
The thing that's weird to me is that an economy the size of Japan would even keep track of such a thing. The Japanese government could find that kind of money in the couch cushions in the name of humanitarian aid.
You could say the same for Gates or the US. Or hell, Nigeria... 75m is < 0.3% of their annual government budget and < 0.02% of their annual GDP.
The answer lies in that it's always a political struggle to appropriate tens of millions of dollars, even if it's a tiny fraction of the whole. Hell, if I ask most people in my apartment building about their attitudes towards us spending 100 million or 100 billion on helping a different country, virtually nobody will really answer much differently. That surprised me a lot, but people just register something in millions or billions as a 'big number', and are either for or against on the basis of their attitude towards things like international development, or their stereotypes of or cultural affinity with the recipient country.
There's actually a lot of studies on people's perceptions on the amount that we give, and virtually all countries vastly overestimate (like, by an order of magnitude) the amount we give. It's not really a matter of numbers, it's just a matter of perceptions, they're political, knowing that it doesn't seem weird at all to me that Japanese officials can't simply get away with doing the right thing. It's really sad.
[0] for example point 1: People are often under the impression that a lot more is spent on foreign aid than it actually is. The average guess of US citizens estimates is that around 31% of the Federal Budget is spent on aid. In fact the US spends less than 1% of the Federal Budget on foreign aid.
This was a loan, possibly from the taxpayers, it wasn't charity. Governments don't just "lose track" of $76 million owed to them. Or at least, they shouldn't.
Presumably, Nigeria agreed to the terms, so I don't see the issue.
I'm sure Nigeria did agree to the terms, but if I were a citizen of Japan I would be embarrassed that the money was not just gifted as part of a foreign aid program.
I would probably feel the same way. But it was a loan, and if I were a citizen of Japan, I also might not be happy about the government loaning out that much money to a foreign country and then forgetting about it.
I didn't mean they should forget about it in the literal sense. I meant that when Nigeria started putting out the feelers for their loan to put the final nail in the coffin of polio someone in the international community, perhaps Japan, perhaps the US, should have just gifted them the money. The fact that it was a loan in the first place is the problem.
Taking and repaying a loan not only helps in solving the problem that the loan was earmarked for, but it also demonstrates the responsibility of the recipient government.
Making it a loan will also allow for larger sums to be spent.
Japan's ODA has been mainly done in Asia, and to me it looks like its philosophy is producing results.
Nigeria's got a population 50% larger than Japan and they're the largest economy in Africa. I don't see why little countries should be expected to give up their cash to bigger countries just because it's "polite" or something.
>if I were a citizen of Japan I would be embarrassed
You clearly don't understand the Japanese. If anyone is to be embarrassed, it is the Nigerians promising to pay and then failing to. Accepting money from the Bill Gates foundation is more shameful. Japanese do not beg.
The Japanese did not beg. There's nothing shameful about accepting money from the Bill Gates foundation as it has nothing to do with the nation's inability to do something. You're just spinning this to be about Japan.
"if I were a citizen of Japan I would be embarrassed that the money was not just gifted as part of a foreign aid program."
And my reply is, no, Japanese citizens would not be at all embarrassed about this. Japanese, culturally, do not give hand outs. Giving out money to beggars is not only something they don't do, but something they don't approve of others doing. It's the moral equivalent to feeding the stray cats in the neighborhood. You aren't helping the cats. You are making the cats dependent on handouts and attracting more of them.
Likewise, the Japanese do not expect handouts either. Japanese do not beg. They are too proud to do it, and they know they will be shamed if they were to try anyway.
I am pointing out to Consultant32452 that if he expects the Japanese to be embarrassed about their lack of giving to Nigeria in this case, he is mistaken. Quite the opposite. What Nigeria has done would be considered shameful shirking in Japan.
Danjoc's linked article is about Nigerian Polio vaccine workers being killed in the line of duty back in 2013, which seems relevant to me, as a person dying is a very real, human cost of polio, all the money in the world cannot fix.
I took it as a reminder that doing something good may require not only exceptional courage, but one's life. I'm ok with the off-topic aspect of the post.
I continue to be amazed and grateful we have such people.
>I continue to be amazed and grateful we have such people
That's a good thing to mention.
Sometimes when I look at Washington, Wall St., or corporate actions, it makes me fear everyone is a hyper-rational sociopath willing to seek out and screw over the other for any profit. But sometimss I'm reminded of the ones who do good for the future of humanity, not just for their bank accounts.
Minimization of poverty is important but I don't believe it can ever be totally eliminated. You and I just have different fundamental beliefs about human nature and motivation.
If the OP is right (and I think he is), the more safety nets and welfare programs there are the more poverty. This is because they have a learned helplessness and are subject to fiscal cliffs preventing them from escaping poverty.
in other words:
Poverty ought to be minimized.
Therefore, if giving people free shit increases poverty, we shouldn't do it.
Everyone over the age of 18 gets a check from the government for 1,000 dollars a month. The only qualification to get the money, is being 18 years old, being alive, residing in the united states and being a citizen or permanent resident of the united states.
Short of creating fictitious people, with fictitious identity documentation, its virtually impossible to cheat it.
So don’t tell anyone that your grandma who lives with you died in her sleep. And definitely don’t mention that your 21 year old brother is off backpacking Asia (how long does he have to be gone for that to even be cheating?)
Well, social security fraud already happens, nothing new there, I'd likely blend this with social security anyhow - so you'd move to the social security schedule upon retirement - in no case however would anyone bring home less than they would under the minimum income scheme.
I'd probably allow anyone who was not working overseas for longer than a year to continue to draw it, its really about your permanent residence and where it is - on the other hand the number of americans who work abroad is astonishingly small - so probably not enough to worry about.
one of them I eliminated by defining the rules in such a way that it wouldnt be an issue - the other requires keeping a rotting dead body hidden somewhere.
Part of what a GMI would need to overcome is ensuring that we have an accurate tracking program - a death should trigger an semi-automated removal from the rolls - as in you need to present yourself.
No system is foolproof, and even the best one in the world is going to have upwards of 2-3% fraud - that said the social security administration historically has been VERY good about tracking them down, and remarkably successful at clawing overpayments back.
In the end, by eliminating means testing you close down a ton of venues for fraud.
and so? they could do that with their paycheck too.
No system in the world is going to stop people from doing stupid shit - you try the best you can, but at the end of the day, people have to choose to do the right thing.
>What distinguishes cartels from roving bandits that pivot to stationary?
You're asking the wrong question, I think. The 64 trillion dollar question, IMO:
"what allows market incumbents to remain stationary"
The 'blame', as ever, lies in human frailty. Avarice and greed. Alternatively, you could look at avarice and greed as malformed extensions of self-preservation instinct.
Bad actors are omnipresent and relying on market forces to expel them from markets is like trying to pray cancer away.
You only say that because you don't like the answer, as it demonstrates that statist barriers on the market are the true causes of this problem, and a free market economy would render this issue entirely moot.
As the history of all communist states demonstrate, state-impose barriers to market creates all sortes of economical,social and criminal problems. Drug trafficking is one of them.
Because the person you are replying to is projecting. The gp never mentioned communism or really any of the things accused of them in the reply. I suspect when you have a system with little government oversight and people unafraid to use violence you naturally end up with something akin to what's going on with the Mexican cartels.
What's interesting is the rhetoric around cryptos as a populist movement. There's so many people on reddit that claim that trading cryptos is how they're going to get out of the 9-5 working man grind. That it's a way to end the dominance of the wealthy banking elites.
And yet, the wealth inequality in cryptos, especially bitcoin, makes our current economic situation seem like child's play. If bitcoin ever does go "to the moon", we will have a small, few mega-wealthy elite who did hardly anything to build that wealth, while the rest of the world missed the boat.
That’s one reason Bitcoin won’t “go to the moon.” Real currency represents a claim on current production in the economy. If Bitcoin were to continue its exponential price rise, we would have a situation where the people who amassed Bitcoins early could claim wildly disproportionate amounts of the current wealth of society.
There is simply no reason wealth holders are going to turn over real wealth to folks who happened to get in early to Bitcoin.
This reflects that Bitcoin is not real currency. It’s a digital token, with artificial scarcity. Since the core protocol has remained relatively secure, it allows it to serve as a pure commodity for the purpose of market speculation.
That’s the only thing driving the increase in price. Exponential gains (in dollar price) cannot continue. Therefore, the speculative motivation will leave the market. Probably the price will fall very soon.
Once the price resets to a lower price point,speculative demand could pick up again.
I suspect that there is massive, almost indefinite amount of demand for this type of speculative gambling. So, unless government steps in, we will see this constant, churning rise and fall distributed between the population of digital tokens suitable for this purpose.
You can see that attempts by early crypto coin holders to “cash out” and lay claim to their nomitive wealth in the real world, in any significant amount, hasten the “break” in the speculative mania cycle.
I’ve called the top here for Bitcoin, I don’t think it will break $20k.
People active in Bitcoin find this hard to believe, but as an example from “meat space,” the price of Beanie Babies never climbed after its big crash. (My to the shock of these “beanie bag” holders, I presume.)
There's a lot of people who think it's a way to get rich... and I'm just wonder where the money would come from? You can't just withdraw $1M from a bank account for doing nothing and have nobody suffer for it. You're either duping ignorant people or you're the ignorant person being duped. Which looks is predictably like a pyramid scheme.
The only problem with calling the "top" is that this latest bubble is the 8th crash. Of course depending on what we qualify as a bubble and as a crash. It could also be the 5th if we look at round powers of 10 being breached then recovered from.
Just look at the full historic price of USD:BTC in a log graph and you'll see what I mean.
> . There's so many people on reddit that claim that trading cryptos is how they're going to get out of the 9-5 working man grind. That it's a way to end the dominance of the wealthy banking elites.
It's a common way of selling get rich quick scams; having a handful of people who have gotten rich quick provides a veneer of plausibility. (Including, but not limited to, Ponzi schemes.)
People can't look past the egregious* waste of money to see that it isnt a waste at all, even if Nigeria should have repaid the debt or Japan should have forgiven it.
None of that matters! The result matters! Eradicating polio matters!