Mentatul

Tag: oil

  • “Helping” Developing Countries – The Mastery of Abuse

    “Helping” Developing Countries – The Mastery of Abuse

    The way superpowers and developed countries have spent money in order to „help” developing countries is often highly questionable. The „help” ranges from plaine naive to ruthless neo-colonialism.

    What adds insult to injury is that more often than not, the problem was caused by those „helpful” nation-states in the first place. This is a very complex topic that, for now, I will not debate. I’ll just give you the information along with a few short comments.

    Before that, however, I’d like to mention that this is not meant to disregard the many efforts that did work well for developing countries, particularly in the field of agriculture, human rights and social development.

    Arbitrary Border Creation, or How to Plant the Seeds of Destruction

    Take a close look at the shape of borders of countries such as Iraq^, Syria^, Libya^ and Egypt^ to name a few. There are quite a few straight lines. Why? It’s so easy for leaders to draw straight lines to partition territory they’re bickering about. But when they draw a straight line between communities that share the same religion or put vastly different cultures in the same bucket, bloodshed should not come as a surprise.

    Then again, those that planted the seeds of destruction probably knew what they were doing. A couple of dictators later though, millions of people worth unimaginable potential have been lost (and billions of dollars in profits from the sale of weapons have been gained).

    China’s Belt and Road Initiative

    A wonderful example of neo-colonialism^ is China’s BRI:

    https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/31/asia/china-kenya-belt-road-bri-intl/index.html^

    The Great Western Empire (my own name for it) is of course always quick to attack China’s expansionist plans. Perhaps it’s just jealous that China is trying to beat it at its own game.

    The $100 Laptop That Wanted to Change the World (and Miserably Failed)

    Once upon a time, an idealist computer scientist^ hoped that giving poor children laptops would improve their chances of success in a world where technology plays an ever-increasing role. We will never know if he was right, because the project failed (not with a bang, but with a whimper):

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop-education-where-is-it-now^

    To be honest, I disagree that throwing plastic and silicon at developing countries would be more helpful than investing in better training for teachers and a large number of social advisors to begin tackling major social issues such as corruption and toxic social stratification (I’m all for diversity, but not at the expense of the value of life).

    The Weapon Trade

    Recently, I became aware of a company that sells watches made out of metal extracted from confiscated weapons. Their marketing says that buying such a watch “supports peace”. One of their commercials shows Kalashnikovs being destroyed, because of course that’s the only weapon in the world:

    https://www.triwa.com/se/page/triwa-x-humanium-metal-pre-order

    Pardon me for going: “yeah, destroy the weapons made by the previous superpower so that you can sell new ones”. After all, there’s a lot of people banking on conflict in such nations; there’s fewer and fewer countries on Earth engaged in active war and the weapons industry can’t just die… right?

    Oil

    No comment.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/south-sudan-150-women-girls-raped-12-days-181204074727376.html^

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/journalist-south-sudan-181214094915498.html^

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  • Petrol Money Poison

    Petrol Money Poison

    One of the most unfortunate things that can happen to human beings is social disconnection. Depression often causes this. But in today’s article I’ll focus on wealth. A root cause of social disconnection due to wealth is when an unprepared individual attains great wealth. In this situation “unprepared” means not ready to emotionally and rationally adapt to a sudden change of situation. The moral compass of such individuals is vulnerable. In time, many of them end up behaving in ways that would seem unacceptable if they could ask their own younger selves.

    Social disconnection also occurs in children born in a situation where vast wealth has already disconnected the entire immediate social group (friends & family) from the way “normal” people live. By “normal people” I mean the statistical average for the standard of living when looking at the entire planet. Children born in socially disconnected families (and this includes royalty) grow and develop using completely different life standards. They don’t even get to opt out of this until much later and sometimes never, something that will in the future probably be considered akin to abuse through deprivation of opportunity (similar to what children in poor, unstable families experience with parents that have a history of substance abuse).

    In this post, I’m focusing on a certain social group: petrol-rich citizens from the Middle East. Here’s what that triggered me to write this piece, an article that tells about how Qatar’s billionaires have migrated to the richest areas of the most expensive city (property-wise) in Europe:

    https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/23432-qatari-quarter-emerges-in-london-s-posh-mayfair-neighborhood^

    And here’s another interesting article^, which covers the recent Saudi crackdown on (supposedly) corrupt princes and business-men. Of important note here is the fact that the media has focused on arrested prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s opulent lifestyle. He owns, for example, a yacht worth about $200 million. But here’s the kicker: the prince that is supposedly “draining the swamp” owns a $500 million^ yacht. As is often the case, the rules are oh-so flexible when it comes to what is a justified expense.

    The resource curse^, also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of natural resources (like fossil fuels and certain minerals), tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.

    Have mercy upon those that have drank the petrol money poison and are wasting away caught in the worst trap of all: the ego trap.

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  • The High Cost of Cheap Fuel

    The High Cost of Cheap Fuel

    The plummeting price of fossil fuel has made certain industries quite profitable due to decreasing production and delivery costs. It also marginally helped car owners in certain parts of the world, even though the actual fuel price has not decreased as much as crude price. That is due to the fact that the cost of transforming crude to fuel (refinement, transportation) has not changed that much.

    Unfortunately our reliance on fossil fuels may end up being much more costly in the long run than any short term gains. Here’s an article that explains why the situation is the way it is while also highlighting one of the worst effects of the worldwide drop in oil prices: collapsing oil-depending economies whose fall hurts millions of people:

    http://www.bikebandit.com/blog/post/the-high-cost-of-cheap-gas^

    The damage to the ecosystem is not that hard to quantify either. The sudden release (in geological terms) of all this energy that nature has stockpiled for millions of years^ is destabilizing the delicate balance of the atmosphere and oceans. The planet will rebalance itself, but the 99% of the Earth’s population that doesn’t afford shelter from the extreme weather conditions coming our way will pay a steep price for the shortsighted goals blindly followed by corporate leaders. United States’ withdrawal from the Paris accord^ encourages these dangerous practices and may set a very regrettable precedent.

    And if the destruction of societies and ecosystems is not enough reason for developed countries to think twice about burning these fossil fuels so fast and greedily, how about money lost due to the exaggerated focus on private transportation? Traffic jams are very expensive:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/02/20/los-angeles-new-york-and-san-francisco-most-congested-us-cities/98133702/^

    But who knows, I’m not ruling out the possibility of this industrial spurt spawning a scientific solution to the coming predicament. It’s a risky bet to make. I’ll always wish for the best while preparing for whatever I find likely to happen next.

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  • The United Arab Emirates and Climate Interventionism

    The United Arab Emirates and Climate Interventionism

    In typical “man versus nature” fashion, the UAE wants to alter the rainfall patterns in the region. The country plans to achieve this by erecting an artificial mountain, which should literally scrape the atmosphere for humidity and cause it to fall as rain:

    http://gizmodo.com/hell-no-the-uae-should-not-build-a-rain-making-mountai-1775007447^

    Sometimes, these projects are nothing more than attention grabbers and pompous declarations. But our planet’s climate is no laughing matter. It’s disturbing that such plans have even made it this far.

    It’s what I’d like to call “climate interventionism”. As if it wasn’t enough that we’ve worsened global warming, now we go about thinking we can understand climate models well enough to tamper with the airflow of an entire region.

    What terrified me is not that the project is doomed to fail. It’s that it might work. The question we should be asking the builders is: at whose expense will this benefit you? Obviously, if the UAE diverts ocean humidity for its own purposes, somebody down the line is going to get less of it. And, as the butterfly effect^ shows, the consequences will be global and difficult to fathom.

    Our planet’s air is much more of a shared resource than our rivers and lakes. Building a dam on a river has less of a global effect than interfering with massive quantities of air that was otherwise going on its merry way towards the other side of the planet.

    To me, such projects showcase the extreme arrogance of man. We’re talking here about a country that wastes water in huge quantities, as the article I linked above points out. I have nothing against a country that tries to survive, but some humbleness would be expected before invoking the survival instinct.

    We’ve seen many gargantuan projects completed by the oil-spoiled countries of the Middle East. Part of the heat that is currently building up in our oceans and atmosphere comes from oil extracted there. I wonder if they’ll think of this when the planetary ocean drowns their Palm Islands^. Life is not without a sense of irony.

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