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How China Is Breaking The Colonial Effects Of Western Lending
In their latest Geo Economical Report economists Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson discuss Russia's move away from the 'West'.
The points on Russia are certainly interesting. But they also remark on the tussle between China and 'multilateral' international lenders about debt forgiveness. This is a theme that played out in Washington DC last week during a high-level sovereign debt roundtable on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Spring meetings in Washington.
In their talk Radhika Desai explains the basic problem with international debt:
RADHIKA DESAI: Well I think that the whole issue of debt, world debt in particular, has become a really important issue at this point, and it’s become an important issue because precisely now China is such a large part of the scene.
I remember going back to the earliest days of the pandemic when Third World debt had also figured as a major issue. Already at that point, the key reason why the debt issues were not going to be settled is because the West could not come to terms with the fact that it had to deal with China, and that it had to deal equitably with China.
Because what the West wants to do is precisely to get China to refinance the debt owed to it so that Third World debt repayments go to private lenders.
And China is basically questioning the terms of all of this, because for example China is saying, “Why should the IMF and the World Bank have priority? Why should its debt not be canceled?”
And the West is saying, “But this has always been so.”
And China is saying, “Well, if you don’t want to reform the IMF and the World Bank, then we are not going to accept their priority. If we have to take a haircut, they will also have to take a haircut.”
They simply do not accept that these institutions, the Bretton Woods institutions, have any sort of priority.
And this is part of the undermining, as you were saying. This is one of the biggest changes since the First World War. And part of these changes is that the world made at the end of the Second World War by the imperialist powers, who are still very powerful, is now increasingly disappearing.
On Wednesday a Reuters report claimed that China was changing its stand on the issue:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China is expected to drop its demand for multilateral development banks to share losses alongside other creditors in sovereign debt restructurings for poor nations, removing a major roadblock to debt relief, a source familiar with the plans said.
The development is expected at a high-level sovereign debt roundtable on Wednesday on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Spring meetings in Washington.
Beijing would no longer insist multilateral lenders take “haircuts” on loans to poor countries, the source said on Tuesday, while the IMF and World Bank agreed to ensure their debt sustainability analyses of countries undergoing debt restructurings would be made available to Chinese authorities earlier in the process.
The rumor that China would change its principle position turned out to be wrong. Reuters being abused by anonymous sources to make politics is not unusual. But in this case the piece came with a picture of U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen so its likely that she was the "source familiar with the plans" which pushed this false rumor.
As the New York Times reported yesterday in way too many misleading words the issue was not resolved:
WASHINGTON — China, under growing pressure from top international policymakers, appeared to indicate this week that it is ready to make concessions that would unlock a global effort to restructure hundreds of billions of dollars of debt owed by poor countries.
China has lent more than $500 billion to developing countries through its lending program, making it one of the world’s largest creditors.
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The United States, along with other Western nations, has been pressing China to allow some of those countries to restructure their debt and reduce the amount that they owe. But for more than two years, China has insisted that other creditors and multilateral lenders absorb financial losses as part of any restructuring, bogging down a critical loan relief process and threatening to push millions of people in developing countries deeper into poverty.
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Ghana appealed to the Group of 20 nations this year for debt relief through a fledgling program known as the Common Framework after securing preliminary approval for a $3 billion loan from the I.M.F. That money is contingent on Ghana’s receiving assurances that it can restructure the approximately $30 billion that it owes to foreign lenders. Officials from Ghana have been meeting with their Chinese counterparts about restructuring the $2 billion that it owes China.
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Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Friday that China had put forward a three-point proposal that included calling for the I.M.F. to more quickly share its debt sustainability assessments for countries that need relief, and for creditors to detail how they will carry out the restructurings on “comparable terms.”
The three point proposal is not a change but simply a repeat of China's long standing position:
Spokesperson发言人办公室 @MFA_China – 15:09 UTC · Apr 14, 2023
To effectively resolve the debt issue, the key lies in joint participation of multilateral, bilateral and commercial creditors under the principles of joint actions and fair burden-sharing.
The case of Ghana shows that the IMF, over which the U.S. has a veto, will only lend fresh money if bilateral lenders like China, but not the 'multilateral' IMF or World Bank, nor private 'western' lenders, take haircuts.
A long People's Dispatch piece about the IMF and Ghana's debt crisis describes how the debt spiral is hitting the poor but resource rich countries again and again. The debt is a continuation of colonialism and China has little to do with that:
Based on the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics, 64% of Ghana’s scheduled foreign currency external debt service, which includes principal and interest amounts, between 2023 and 2029 is to private lenders. 20% of the debt is to multilateral institutions and 6% to other governments. Notably, while mainstream reporting on Ghana’s debt scenario tends to emphasize China as the country’s “biggest bilateral creditor,” only 10% of Accra’s external debt service is owed to Beijing.
Approximately $13 billion of Ghana’s external debt is held in the form of Eurobonds by major asset management corporations including BlackRock, Abrdn, and Amundi (UK) Limited. “Ghana’s lenders, particularly private lenders, lent at high-interest rates because of the supposed risk of lending to Ghana,” the open letter read.
“The interest rate on Ghana’s Eurobonds is between 7% and 11%. That risk has materialized… Given that they lent seeking high returns, it is only right that following these economic shocks, private lenders willingly accept losses and swiftly agree to significant debt cancellation for Ghana.”
In 2020 the G20 promised to implement a Common Framework for debt relief:
[T]he Common Framework had the opportunity to provide a broader debt cancellation, involving private creditors alongside bilateral lenders in the process to ensure that countries’ debts became sustainable.
“But very little was done to outline the details of how that would work. While the G20 stated that government and private lenders would be included in the scheme, however, multilateral lenders were excluded,” [Tim Jones, the head of policy at Debt Justice,] said.
“They did not give any new mechanisms to countries to negotiate a reduction in their debt owed to private creditors, leaving it to the debtor governments to say ‘If you want debt cancellation from governments, you have to negotiate the same deal from private creditors.’ But they did not offer any tools to help indebted countries to do that.”
There should of course be a mechanism by which countries can restructure their debt and in which all lenders make similar concessions. However the IMF and others offer no such thing. They are only willing to give more money when a country makes political concessions over IMF prescribed austerity measures and uses the fresh money to pay private 'western' lenders.
China is now determined to end that scheme. China insists that the IMF, the World Bank and private lenders take a similar share of debt losses as it is willing to take:
China is willing to implement the common framework for debt disposal with other countries, China's central bank governor Yi Gang said during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring meetings, according to a statement released by the People's Bank of China on Friday.
Echoing Yi's remark, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a press conference on Friday that China attaches great importance to the sovereign debt issue of developing countries and called for multilateral creditors, bilateral creditors and commercial creditors to participate in debt handling in accordance with joint action and fair manner.
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"China has contributed more than anyone else to implementing the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). Besides, we have played a constructive part in the treatment of individual cases under the G20 Common Framework," Wang said.
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In contrast, Western creditors claim they need to maintain their credit rating and have thus refused to be part of the debt relief and service suspension effort, Wang said, noting that unprecedented massive interest rate hikes have led to tightening of financial conditions worldwide, making the severe debt problems of certain countries even worse.
China continues to press for its new scheme of international debt relief under equal terms for all lender. I am not ware of any pressure point the 'West' could use to change that position.
The IMF and its abusive role in global debt was likely a subject matter in the hours long talks Presidents Xi and Putin had in Moscow last month. Lets remember what was said at the end of that visit:
“Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi told Putin as he stood at the door of the Kremlin to bid him farewell.
The Russian president responded: “I agree.”
As Radhika Desai, quoted above, said about China's debt relief standpoint:
This is one of the biggest changes since the First World War.
Michael Hudson summarizes the consequences:
Well obviously, the one thing the characterizes the new global World Majority order is a mixed economy where other countries will do what China has done. They will make money and land, meaning housing, and employment into public rights and public utilities instead of commodifying them and privatizing them and financializing them as has occurred in the West.
So we’re really talking about, in order to move away from the dollar-NATO-sphere, we’re not really talking about just one national currency or another.
It’s not going to be a question of the Chinese yen and the Russian ruble and other currencies replacing the dollar. It’s a whole different economic system.
That’s the one thing that is not permitted in the mainstream media to discuss. They’re still on the “There Is No Alternative” Margaret Thatcher slogan, instead of talking about: What is the alternative going to be?
Because obviously things cannot last the way they are now.
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 16 2023 5:37 utc | 115
Thank you. That’s the sort of information I find hard to glean from most sources.
“To name but a few examples of BRI successes: China finished a metro system in Lahore, Pakistan, last year, opened a 1000MW nuclear power plant in the same country in May, is building Africa’s largest building in Egypt, as well as the largest building in South Asia (the Lotus Tower in Colombo, Sri Lanka), and is on the verge of finishing the China-Laos High Speed Railway. Multiple direct transcontinental railway routes through China to Europe have also been opened.
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The study concluded that “total debt forgiveness” was the most common outcome of debt renegotiations, and that asset seizures were “very rare”. The increasing pattern of debt forgiveness is aimed at fostering goodwill and greater openness to China on the continent. From China’s perspective, the creation of durable South-South economic partnerships and long-term trade agreements in Africa is far more valuable than short-term financial interests.
Posted by: Surferket | Apr 16 2023 5:43 utc | 116
Thank you as well.
The specter of “Evil Communism” lives on in your mind like an evicted tenant in a shanty squatting not paying rent.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 16 2023 5:52 utc | 120
Part of the problem is that ‘communism’ was wrapped up in a bankster-led worldwide conspiracy to take over everything. So there was quite a gap between the theory and what actually happened. Another problem is that pretty much by definition communism involves excessive centralization which is the most efficient way of governing but also highly prone to corrupt capture, the prize dangled before their gaze so tantalizing as to engender multi-generational organizations to effect such capture, organizations which over time develop far greater depth and skill than the official organs in place by whatever system, in this case ‘communism’ which is in many ways easier to capture than more messy ‘democratic’ systems. That said, they are all capturable. And once captured, the terrain becomes extremely confusing both to see and to discuss because of course one of the sine qua non techniques of such capture is deception both in word and deed. Gradually everything becomes both opaque and confusing.
When all is said and done, all systems depend upon mutual good will between rulers and ruled, government and people. If too much evil intent enters the mix, it is very hard to spot, contain, reveal or expel. This is why how a society is structured culturally is as important as how it is structured systemically/administratively. This is where old methods like royalty, church, aristocracy came in. Having been largely expunged in most modern polities, they don’t come in much any more. So the challenge Russia and China (and others) are meeting these days is how to fashion societies where good will is a bedrock value permeating all levels of their society without those old institutions which seem no longer suitable for the much larger populations we enjoy today.
In Chinese philosophical terms, everything boils down to Heaven, Earth and Man, an experience-based trinity principle far older than the one proposed in the New Testament but essentially similar. Heaven is the over-arching context, Earth is the terrain complementing it, the relative elements we navigate through under the sky of Heaven, and Man is the navigation process, how good or bad a job we do, what sort of individual and collective world we make in the process of making our way through the journey of life. In a successful, good society, the Heaven aspect includes some sort of basic reverence for the fundamental goodness of life, including all creatures and terrains where life manifests, both visible and invisible. If the society as a whole generally enjoys a shared sense of such reverence, or respect if you prefer, than all the human elements in that society will generally row in the same direction, which will foster goodness and good life journeys for all involved.
In other words, there is no such thing as a purely secular political system that can create multi-generational peace and prosperity without some sort of spiritual component that features societal ways of fostering respect for the basic goodness of this collective dream world we all share.
The problems with communism – at least as practiced early on – was that being materialist par excellence – pure materialism in practice one could say – it tended to obfuscate fundamental appreciation of goodness under a barrage of materialist ideology emphasizing success, efficiency, equality, authority and so forth and in so doing lost its soul. It ended up compelling people to follow an idea-formed path, an abstraction. But living creatures and the dynamics they throw up on living planets do not fit into narrow ideology-based conceptual structures and a highly centralized set up that then becomes highly corrupt in service to such abstractions ends up creating totalitarian dystopias as they insist on controlling the outcome – including peoples’ individual and collective lives – to fit their preconceived notions which ultimately they never can do. This is why over-centralization is dangerous.
There was a grand struggle for over a century to take the best of European culture and eschew the worst. They called it ‘America.’ But by 1913 or so the struggle was over and the good guys lost. It has been all downhill ever since, even as the population and financial clout boomed. It has been downhill because the spiritual core, the appreciation of a basically good Heaven principle, became increasingly obfuscated by materialist mentality. Hopefully the next emerging civilizations will do better, but they will face the same challenges for that is what Man always has to do, sandwiched as we all are – and always shall be – between Heaven and Earth.
And so it goes.
Posted by: Scorpion | Apr 16 2023 14:39 utc | 164
@Scorpion | Apr 16 2023 14:39 utc | 164
My pleasure on the China data. Most westerners have no idea that China’s economy has been larger than that of the US since 2014, and is now some 6 times larger than the US by PP; that China’s infrastructure is half a century better than that in the US; that China (and India) have (each) produced more patents per year than the US since 2012; that China has already eliminated extreme poverty and expects to eliminate poverty before 2025; and that China has far more high IQ individuals and vastly better education than the US, meaning that it is highly unlikely that the West can hope to catch up.
Stalin (and I) disagree that “pretty much by definition communism involves excessive centralization”. Communism is defined by the fact that “the people own and control the means of production” .Stalin (and I) argued passionately that this had to mean direct democracy where everybody has a voice to propose, modify, split, join, table, support or oppose any motion at any time, to determine what happens and how, not some centralized body. My (minor) contribution is that voting needs to be weighted by proximity, involvement and competence (tested, with possible educational and experiential equivalences) to make the system fair and effective for everyone. I think that an AI will be able to do much better than humans at operating such a system in the medium term.
Stalin was murdered and his legacy destroyed* precisely because he wanted to replace the centralized power instituted.by the “revolutionary government of the people” with direct democracy. I am not sure it would have worked then, I think it took the development of accessible widespread computer communication systems to make direct democracy practical, but there is no longer anything preventing implementation.
As you know, I disagree with you on the alleged benefits of induced psychosis aka spiritualism. The more rational and realistic people are, the less likely they are to engage in judgement and UTism, both of which result in violence. It is worth noting that humans and their forerunners lived for millions of years without developing big gods, and even after that many cultures survived without them for far longer than any modern society has yet. Our technical proficiency at killing 9ne another and destroying things is such that we cannot afford wars – which means we have to do much better at remaining rational. I like Joseph Cambell’s articulation, “Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations. There is a real danger, therefore, in the incongruity of focus that has brought the latest findings of technological research into the foreground of modem life, joining the world in a single community, while leaving the anthropological and psychological discoveries from which a commensurable moral system might have been developed in the learned publications where they first appeared. For surely it is folly to preach to children who will be riding rockets to the moon a morality and cosmology based on concepts of the Good Society and of man’s place in nature that were coined before the harnessing of the horse! And the world is now far too small, and men’s stake in sanity too great, for any more of those old games of Chosen Folk (whether of Jehovah, Allah, Wotan, Manu, or the Devil) by which tribesmen were sustained against their enemies in the days when the serpent still could talk. ” Joseph Cambell (1960), “The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology”, Secker Warburg, London Accessed https://archive.org/stream/PaleolithicGods/paleolithic%20gods_djvu.txt 2017-08-19.
*See e.g. Furr, Grover (2011-05-03). Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence that Every “revelation” of Stalin’s (and Beria’s) “crimes” in Nikita Khrushchev’s Infamous “secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False. Erythros Press & Media.
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 16 2023 17:53 utc | 173
This would make the typically cited mesoAmerican numbers a severe underestimate, and I think this may he’s the fact that Western data has consistently and deliberately undercounted the indigenous population to minimize the scale of the genocide in which their forerunners were complicit.
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 17 2023 6:52 utc | 182
First, thanks for your other reply. I think if you read more into the quote you supplied by Joseph Campbell you will find that he was, as well as critiquing old ways and belief systems, also maintaining just how powerful the mind that perceives and incorporates myths is. Nowadays we have different narratives and ideas populating the myth folder, so to speak, but they are no less potent. For example, the widespread superstition positing that only the physical is real, aka materialism. You and I disagree about this so no need to go over.
I am too ignorant to have a full picture about communism, but I believe it is fair to say that – for whatever reason, and such things are always argued at infinitum – millions died as they came into being and the pure form, part of which you described (absence of private property, full democratic participation etc.) has never been fully realized. Not because they are bad ideas but because reality simply doesn’t work that way. This is why both Russia and China, two large civilization states, have weathered some of the negative aspects of the communism experiment and now include capitalist elements within their polities. Personally, I think the terms capitalism and communism are now past their due-by dates and other terms are more helpful. For example market economy is a healthy form of ‘capitalism’ expressed in more functional terms, ie people producing, buying and selling stuff in a social context that makes this as easy as possible and discourages fraud. Then you have state governance which has to balance authoritarianism (the ability to decide yes or no in a timely fashion) with responsiveness (being in touch with the people governed, either by voting or other means).
All systems have strengths and weaknesses and all boil down to whether or not the majority of the people have good values which come from the culture passed down within families and societies from generation to generation. The systems come and go, adapting to the times and situations – that which works well in a tribe of 500 may not translate to a multi-ethnic nation of several hundred million, as Genghis Khan’s life demonstrated in spades (his mission being to stop endless internecine tribal-ethnic conflict).
As to American populations, I believe you are on the right track. Generally, it seems, you are quite gifted with numbers (even if, from my POV, you are philosophically challenged!!). I read an account written by a Catholic priest in one of the first boats going down the Amazon, probably early 1500’s (don’t recall). In it, he tells how they would visit a large city (by then current European standards) and many were already dying from disease spread from the city they had just passed only a few days earlier. That’s how fast diseases from Westerners spread through those populations. So by the time they reached the next city a few days later there were already people ailing and dying. I seem to recall he was amazed not only by the ghastly, rapid spread of the diseases, but also the size and sophistication of the cities.
Some researches claim that the Amazon not only hosted many large cities, but that its flora and fauna were managed in that 80% of the species are edible-medical. There is evidence of widespread use of bio-char, a simple method which fertilizes the soil for centuries at a time, and overhead analysis shows clear outlines of large population zones and sophisticated canal networks connecting everything together.
This is similar to the early merchant traders from Europe once their sailing technology had advanced sufficiently coming into ports in India. I remember reading in Gunder Frank’s Reorient one captain having his mind blown by the size of the first big port in India. Their ships were bigger and better and he said there were more in that one port than in all the ports in Europe at the time, which he knew well. And then he went on to visit other ports, some larger. And then at some point he ended up in Chinese ports which dwarfed the Indian ones. Europeans at the time had nothing of value to offer Asian markets. All their goods were inferior, basically, be they foodstuffs or manufactures like cloth, furniture etc. This is why the Americas were plundered: to supply gold and silver – Asian currency at the time – to purchase Asian goods. The spinning Jenny was deliberately invented to provide a good from England that could be sold. Why? Because by the mid-1700’s the silver and gold were running out in the Americas (the California gold rush was years away) so they had nothing with which to purchase Asian products. The spinning Jenny undercut local Indian cotton manufacturing (women in homes, mainly). They could sell that cotton in India for gold and silver and use it to buy stuff in China. So the slave labour in the Americas funded the rise of Europe in many ways, not least of which was arbitraging relatively small numbers of armed men into being able to conquer relatively large amounts of resources due to their leg up on weaponry, a situation which last for a couple of centuries until recently that was finally put a stop to.
We are now in a rebalancing phase – long overdue. But we will never outgrow the need for societies to be well governed and for their essential culture to foster such good government by having good people learning how to be good whilst fending off the pirates which have always and will always exist in any human realm.
Posted by: Scorpion | Apr 17 2023 15:46 utc | 189
@ Scorpion | Apr 17 2023 15:46 utc | 189
That should have read “This would make the typically cited mesoAmerican numbers a severe underestimate, and I think this may be attributed to the fact that Western data has…”
I totally agree with you about Campbell, and have invested a ridiculous amount of time following up on this from the perspectives of cognitive neurology, evolutionary psychology and memetics. I even agree with you (and him) about the power of myth, fable and other stories. Who could not? If stories can pump you full of hormones, and we have shown that they can and do, they can.also alter what you think you know, how you feel and how you think as well as anything else you may experience. There is little more powerful than that. But like people, some myths are really harmful and others only moderately so. I’m more inclined to promote wholesome stories like those inherent to Studio Ghibli’s works than anything I have found in any religious works.
Our vulnerability to well told stories and other systems intended to modify our emotions and state of mind does make us extremely vulnerable to manipulation and error, which is why I have worked hard to separate the imaginary from the more than imaginary, the difference being that the more than imaginary possesses intersubjectively verifiable attributes which allow us to distinguish between them.
I may be more nuanced than you think. I do not pretend to know what the “material” or “real” may be, and suspect that they are imaginary. I do know that to assert realism, in a universe that is very likely holographic, would be delusional. 😉
I do know that my rejection of all belief leaves me remarkably good at changing my mind when confronted with new evidence. So far I would say that nothing I have ever experienced or any research I have performed, has suggested to me that there is anything which does not comport with our current scientific models, and given that we understand our universe at human scales well enough to be certain that any future discoveries will be compatible with the models we have already established, I’m not expecting my opinion to change.
Many people have died for all sorts of causes, but it is unlikely that communism per se underlies any of them. I assume you are alluding to the Russian and Chinese experiences, both of which began in rather messy revolutions, both of which aspired to communism and neither of which experienced millions of deaths because of communism. An excellent starting point is
Sousa’s Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union and my The USSR in a Nutshell: A Brief History of the Rise and Destruction of the Soviet Union and What Happens Next. For ridiculously well documented rebuttals of the massive communist death tolls see Furr, Grover (2019). Stalin: Waiting for … the Truth! Exposing the Falsehoods in Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. Red Star Publishers. I cannot produce a paper in fairly short order if one is needed to debunk the ridiculous lies about “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” common in the West. My post grad years studying Scientific Communism, Dialectic Materialism, Historical Materialism, Foundations of Scientific Atheism, Political Economics and Political Civics (all mandatory prerequisites for Military Medicine in the USSR) have to be useful for something.
Communism does not necessitate the elimination of private property in the way that propagandists portray in a way to terrify people with a little property and less education into rejecting communism unseen for fear that 5he ogres will take the little they hate permitted to own under other systems. The actual meaning of communism is very different. It is simply the means of production which are owned and managed by everyone, and that everyone receives according to their needs (think of a much better than basic income) and contributes according to their abilities (and there is nothing wrong with incentivising this) within a broad equality of outcome (which can be accomplished with taxes on capital owned or managed). One way to achieve this would be to convert all enterprises employing more than one person into cooperatives, with voting open to everyone weighted by proximity, involvement and expertise. I have suggested that a fair way to do this would be to value every enterprise at the moving average of the taxable income declared over the past ten years, extrapolated as needed, and pay this to the current owners using a small self-retiring tax on all transactions until the previous owners are compensated. Thereafter the profits made would return to the Treasury. Financing could be obtained from Treasury by public vote – a publicly funded go-fund-me.
Establishing, remunerating and diseatablishing the small and diminishing number of publicly funded positions should be voted on by the public, as should appointments and dismissals to these positions. This can be as simple as a web page per person and position with open voting. A preponderance of positive votes would maintain the incumbent.
Providing a way for everybody to participate and vote, directly or through proxies, on conversations about government resolves most issues, and I would recommend a fundamental ethical stance based on my Evaluism.
I’m not a fan of philosophy. See my On Philosophy which attempts to explainand contextualize my position, given that the sciences have achieved far more, for far more people, in the century it they have been disciplines, than philosophy (and the belief systems with which it is intertwined) in the past 5,500 years or so.
I do not agree that all systems have “strengths and weaknesses” (many are incoherent or nonsensical), some are all bad, others are all good (e.g. The Platinum Rule), while many are ethically neutral. I also disagree that the “majority of the people have good values which come from the culture passed down within families and societies from generation to generation”. This is a matter of morality, which is always relative, situational, learned and reflexive, not a good basis for living in a complex interconnected world. Imagine if you lived next to a family of anthropopagai. No matter how “good” their “values” and how ancient their recipes and culture, you would be an idiot to turn your back on them. Today, what we need are ethics upon which we can agree. Again I suggest my Evaluism where I discuss this. I do think that people living comfortable pleasant lives who have had at least four generations with sufficient to eat (to avoid epigenetic issues associated with hereditary malnutrition) tend to be rather good people to be around. One of the tragedies of humans is that we have fought and fucked too much for that to be possible. Which is why is we are to survive at all, we have to do better than that.
On everything else we are in wholehearted agreement (and apparently read similar books. Were you perhaps thinking of
the 1542 l of Captain Francisco de Orellana as documented by Father Gaspar de Carvajal in His Relación del nuevo descubrimiento del famoso río Grande que descubrió por muy gran ventura el capitán Francisco de Orellana [Account of the recent discovery of the famous Grand river which was discovered by great good fortune by Captain Francisco de Orellana]). What a pity that the Catholics burned and destroyed all of their books and records. It would be very helpful to understand their food forest management techniques.
Posted by: Hermit | Apr 17 2023 21:15 utc | 191
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