[ExI] chinese colonization of africa etc

[spike at rainier66.com]

Adrian, I am posting this to ExI for general interest, but you might find my
commentary enlightening especially.

 

Regardless of the plan, I am one who is always looking for ways to profit
ofit, but some things are worth doing even knowing it is tragically unlikely
for one to profit ofit.  The best kind of profits are those that come in the
buttload, etc.  But now, I have an insight to offer regarding Africa.

 

The place where I grew up is very very different from the swingin Silicon
Valley where you were fortunate enough to live your childhood, where I have
lived nearly all my adult life.  It's a GREAT place to live!  The Silicon
Valley has sooooo many resources for the ambitious smart tech set, the
go-getters, the tech loving crowd, the ExI types, GREAT place to live,
nowhere better.  

 

But. most places aren't like here at all.  I grew up in the American deep
south.  There black and white got along well, for we worked shoulder to
shoulder in the kinds of jobs teenagers could qualify for: fast food,
construction, (my personal example, beekeeping.)  I also worked the other
two categories, but for most teens back there, those three categories mostly
spanned the job choices (and most of us needed jobs.)  

 

In the kind of place where I grew up, there were few resources for tech
hipsters, nothing at all analogous to here, just nothing.  Tiny, single
digit fraction of what is easily available here.  Most potential talent was
tragically squandered on nothingness, the hipsters ending up in trivial
boring dead end jobs, persistent waste and loss of talent everywhere always.
After I moved to California, I felt I had been raised in the canebrake by an
old mama lion.  But over time, I realized no, not at all.  That benighted
place was more like here in most ways than is much of Africa, where not only
is talent tragically wasted, there is no clear way out.  Where I grew up,
there was a way out, one example being military service.  Understatement,
there were multiple ways out.  I found one of them and got out.  I became
your neighbor, good for me.  Oh waaaay good for me.  California has been
very very good to me, and for this place I am most grateful.  It is STILL
the land of OPPORTUNITY!

 

Now consider interior Africa.  They produce smart hipsters too, but their
talent usually IS wasted, with the very few real educational opportunities
being bestowed upon the princes, regardless of their actual talent or
qualifications.  Where I grew up in the canebrake is more like the heart of
Silicon Valley than it is like the interior of Africa.

 

My notion is that we can help the interior Africans, and I am eager to do
things like this even if I know I will not profit ofit.  I do have a streak
of genuine heartfelt altruism hiding within my hyperaggressive unfettered
capitalistic nature, and besides, ya never know, ja?  I am eager to help the
Africans identify and develop their tech talent.  There are over a billion
people on that tragically underdeveloped resource-rich and still tragically
unexploited continent.  We can perhaps find ways to use leapfrog
technologies such as StarLink, create small independent semi-closed reliable
electric power grids, fired by reliable old tech such as a coal plant, with
a range of perhaps 10 to 20 miles, all within a militarily defensible
perimeter, a piece of ground which partially restricts or controls who is
present, vaguely analogous to a scaled up version of a university, where law
is strictly enforced and invaders are repelled, where modern infrastructure
can be built, maintained and vigorously defended.  Such a place could have
clean water, good medical facilities, good reliable communications, power,
universities, orderly housing, law and order, all the good stuff we have
enjoyed (and take for granted) in our fortunate western lives.  We can help
them get too.  If so, I will feel good about contributing to that, even in
the absence of the good old-fashioned profit motive, and besides. regarding
that profit business, ya never know, ja?  They will profit ofit, even if I
don't.

 

spike  

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