[ExI] chinese colonization of africa etc

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Sent: Wednesday, 3 September, 2025 12:48 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] chinese colonization of africa etc

On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 3:11 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
> 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 get it.  You are eager to help - but do not have much research into what actually are the detailed conditions over there, and precisely why relief and uplift efforts keep failing.

Just like all those other relief and uplift efforts that have kept failing for decades.  Arguably, this is the root cause of their
failure: eagerness to help and Do Something blinding to the need to do honest research and assessment of What Will Not Work(TM).

I prefer to learn from history's mistakes, and to try not to repeat them.

_______________________________________________



So I hear, but my notion is based on one of those failed efforts, which I heard about from a returned and disheartened missionary, who is a doctor.

They had money, they attempted to build an outpost clinic in an area which was war torn but was quiescent at that time.  They went in with the materials and a plan to hire a work crew, but there were no builders available with any experience or the least bit of intuition.  They were told if they were to even attempt such a thing, they would need to bring their own construction crew and hire the locals to defend the work site.

This was a missionary, from a mostly pacifist religious sect.

Skipping way ahead, he was eventually convinced what he was being told is true.  The team hired a platoon of soldiers, brought in a construction crew.

Skipping way ahead again, the quiescent place soon wasn't anymore, and the westerners (medical people) were told they needed to get scarce forthwith, which they did.  Soon all the medications were stolen, then the equipment, then, somehow... the building itself was disassembled and taken away, with the materials used elsewhere for other functions.

Once there was no longer anything to fight over, a semblance of peace returned and life resumed as it had been before, with not a trace left of the small but modern clinic which once stood at the site.  The project manager (a missionary doctor) discussed it with the locals.  One of them stated the truth, although my doctor friend refused to accept it.  He opined that westerners are far too eager to set up modern facilities in areas with more fundamental needs.  The way to help the Africans is not build outpost clinics and modern medications, but rather to send them guns and ammo, lots of it, lots of it.

Regarding my previous notion in light of the failure of naïve earlier efforts on that continent, I am convinced that such a vision could become reality, but the militarily defended perimeter is the prerequisite to ANYTHING that is to be done there.  They build the fence and the roads, they arm and station the guards before any building materials start to arrive.  Next the clean water facilities and the coal plant.  That preliminary infrastructure must be pumping clean water and belching thick choking black clouds of soot before further development can commence.  Until that other stuff is going, no clinics, no schools, no even StarLink.  No point in any of that stuff unless it is defensible.

spike