Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter
gatesnotes.com> A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything.
Like nuclear fission? Or how about solar?
Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won't help.
In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc...
The problem is corruption and safety. I've seen it in my wife's country - savings rates are generally high, there's lots of labour, a ton of entrepreneurial spirit and the barrier to entry is more or less zero. The problem is, the second you start any sort of enterprise, someone will rob you. Police will demand bribes. Politicians will demand bribes. If you don't give in, they'll send their criminal friends after you. Even if you do give in, they may anyway. Bandits will come rob you in the night, and if you're unlucky enough to be there at the time, they'll shoot you. If you're lucky, they just take some cash. There's literally zero incentive to do anything, lest you get robbed and/or killed. That's reality. You want to fix the 3rd world, you need to start with law and order. Nothing can happen until people feel safe, and feel like doing something will actually improve their life.
After that, it's infrastructure. Power, roads, emergency services, bridges, etc... Infrastructure enables travel, it enables businesses, lights, and so on. When you have infrastructure you can bring your products to market. And so on (most people know the economic benefits of infrastructure).
In my experience, families in the third world often have the equivalent of thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars saved. Witness how much money Syrians and Afghans pay to get smuggled into Europe. They won't invest that because they don't feel safe, but they have no qualms giving a smuggler thousands of dollars.
So much charity is just a band-aid, or worse, gets siphoned off to corrupt entities. You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new first world. But no, we give charity with one hand, and with the other are propping up horrible dictators, overthrowing democracies for choosing the wrong ideology, and encouraging corruption and oligarchy. Given what's happened in the world since I've been old enough to follow the news, I'm more convinced than ever that the developed world simply wants to keep the third world as dependent colonies.
tl;dr - long rant, something something corruption.
This rings very true to me.
My wife is also from a so-called third-world country. A stunningly beautiful one at that. Every time I visit I dream of moving there.
Once I found a Swiss guy, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, who had started a small farm and an operation dealing in a very specific kind of beef cattle, and esp. breeding. He even had an awesome little restaurant serving schnitzel and beer. I think he moved there for a woman, and had to figure out how to make a buck. He was living the dream!
A couple years later he was out on his ass, because as soon as his business was successful, local folks stole his cattle. I found a lawsuit he filed in which he explained that he could actually see the stolen cattle from his land. But the proper palms had been greased, and he was completely up shit creek. He made a pretty big stink, right up to the point where he'd be risking life and limb to go any further. But nothing was done, nobody was arrested, and he never got his cattle back.
And therein lies the rub: nobody feels safe enough to endure success.
> You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new first world
I like the sentiment, but in many countries, corruption and safety issues won't even begin to be addressed as long as the business of making/selling drugs for Americans is as lucrative as it is.
Thoroughly infuriating. Enough to make a man go John McAfee, I would imagine.
The best thing we could do for the “third world” would be to help develop a non-corrupt legal system. Until this is fixed then all other efforts will just go down the drain.
Can anyone recommend some introductory textbooks or review articles on how to design institutional structures that resist corruption?
The book `Just get out of the way' (http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=51...) addresses this topic. One point the author makes is that honest and competent government officials are one of the most scarce and valuable resources for a developing country, and thus institutions and laws should be designed to lighten their workload.
One example are insolvency laws.
In most countries, there are three options: creditors and debtors reach an agreement. Liquidation. And Administration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administration_(law)) ordered by court.
Administration is complicated, and requires complicated laws and competent and honest officials to administer the laws. So countries, especially poor ones, should not offer this alternative.
If the company is worth more alive than dead, creditors and debtors will come to an agreement. (Especially if you remove the alternative of administration, that gives the debtor an out, rendering the creditors threats toothless.)
Good link, thanks.
Hernando de Soto makes a similar case that societies need some cultural achievements unlocked before their market-based economies can work well. Stuff like property rights, fair and impartial courts, contract law, enforced regulatory authority, professional civil servants, etc.
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
Hernando de Soto (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Everywh...
I have friends that work in development who criticize de Soto: a good start, but as one would expect, the story isn't that simple. Alas, I don't recall their upgrades to de Soto's insights.
Exactly.
The thesis of the book I mentioned is exactly that you should very carefully economize on the amount of `cultural capital' required to run your economy. A mostly market-based economy is one way to do that, if regulation is chosen carefully.
Societies that have lots of cultural capital, like the Nordic countries, can get away with more socialism without everything becoming corrupt. (It might still be inefficient for them to go that route, but at least they can bear the costs.)
Relevant http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Medi...
"One of the most common stories about aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption. It is true that when health aid is stolen or wasted, it costs lives. We need to root out fraud and squeeze more out of every dollar....
"We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop trying to save lives?"
Moral change is so hard that people assume it's impossible. But if you can tackle it, it makes so many things easier or at least possible.
It's at the heart of the Baha'i approach, which has development as its goal, but starts by training young people in honesty & altruism and developing a community oriented around local service (it aims at adults too, but they're harder to reach unless they are already basically on board). It's a little weird to talk about on a technical forum, since the approach assumes a spiritual view of human nature -- the unifying power of prayer, we have a higher conscience, etc, but I think it's true, and I find it to be systematic and evidence-based.
I think people love being trustworthy, but they tend to develop cynicism about it. They want to be part of a trustworthy society, but they haven't seen it work yet. That makes me think it's possible to grow a society where honesty & justice are the norms, even embedded within a society that is corrupt & cynical, if a small critical mass of people support & encourage each other. They'll attract positive attention and grow, in part because of contrast, if the desire is there among the general population.
It's is a slow process though, and I often feel discouraged because it's the kind of thing that requires generational change, and which I doubt I'll see finished in my lifetime. But when I stop and think about what else I'd work on, I can't think of anything more solid in the long term.
I think the morality based approach is not going to work for the majority of society, as it didn't in the past. Instead, we should take an analytic approach and focus on maximizing integration (freedom to act) and differentiation (freedom to think).
Integration is the idea that we should all have the ability to leave our mark on society. In other words, it means to have access.
Differentiation is the idea that we should be free to be different, that we should not fear for our physical safety. Unless people have the ability to express their creativity without restraint, we will have a society like the old Communist block, and we are headed to that with the latest mass surveillance policies, unfortunately.
An example of a differentiated and integrated society is the Open Source community. Another example is the brain, which has an astounding number of components tightly integrated yet differentiated. A third example would be the free market, where each agent tries to differentiate its offering from the competition and yet also has to be closely integrated with the other agents in order to benefit from the opportunities they create. A fourth example: the ecosystem, where each species is differentiated in order to benefit from a niche yet they also need to be integrated and function as a complex whole.
If we have differentiation and integration in society then our minds can cooperate to build a better future, organically, from the grassroots. In such a society a person would be free to be creative and have a low entry barrier to the market. If we took these two core principles and try to optimize them in society and politics, we'd maximize happiness. A differentiated-integrated system has a superior ability to adapt and find solutions to its problems.
I don't know if there's much that Gates can do about corruption. That's something that might have to take it's natural course and weed itself out (like it has partly done in the US and other developed nations).
In the mean time I think Gates wants to do something rather than nothing and things like mosquito nets apparently do save lives. The people whose lives are saved may not be able to prosper, but they're most likely grateful for not dying of malaria.
I don't know. Corruption in Mexico is getting worse. I don't think it's going to work itself out.
Maybe Gates can create their own municipality complete with a justice system and law enforcement. Then they redirect all of their aid for that region to within those borders. If the other native cities can adhere to the same standards, then they become eligible for aid.
Corruption in the US seems to be getting worse too. Also other first world countries.
"Seems" is not the same as "is". In the US at least, I see not corruption so much as deeply entrenched dysfunctional incentives.
It's not malice or conspiracy or even stupidity. It's simply the way the US's political, economic, and industrial systems (alternately known as THE MAN) co-evolved.
First world corruption doesn't directly rely on bribes, people wouldn't experience it like they do in the third world. Here it is more advanced. It comes as crazy conflict-of-interest creating campaign contributions, as giving contracts to friends, as corporatism, lobbyists writing laws. A strong sense of plutocracy. Most contracts the public gives out these days seem to have insane costs.
Yes I wrote 'seem', not 'is', because I can't prove it.
Yours is such a tangential comment, it doesn't remotely relate to anything in the Gates's letter. You have just repeated the same old blah about corruption, safety, and infrastructure. All that Bill and Melinda are saying is that solving the problems they classify as energy and time will make the world a better place.
> In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc...
I don't even know where you pulled that out of. It would be more credible if you could cite some evidence.
There is a paper from IMF, whose authors are current Reserve Bank of India Governor - Raghuram Rajan and India's Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramaniam about How Charity does not work.
I never liked the word corruption because it lends itself to too many interpretations. I see the problem as tribalism. In most third world coutries, the poitical set up is a couple tribes that share power, control industry, and insulate themselves from the problems of the rest of their country. Everyone else not part of the tribe has to fend for themselves. A tribe is more than a collection of people/families, it is an institution that can impose social mores on its own kind.
What foreign aid does is insulate these tribal systems against change. It often supports repression, but also does provide needed medicine or food to people you would otherwise die. That, to me, is the problem.
Adding to your point: in a tribal culture within a "state" that began as some convenient lines drawn by westerners, when your tribesman gets into political power it will be expected of him to reward his tribe with jobs and/or monies from the public coffer.
When a common person needs help from above, he or she turns to the tribe strongman rather than a bribe-seeking policeman or bureaucrat.
While this may look like "corruption" to westerners, it is understandable in places that have different political histories than the west.
Society is built on trust, and if you don't have trust in the energy company, or the justice system, or even your neighbours, then that sets a limit to how high functioning the society can become.
Aspects of these issues can be observed in pretty much every country, no matter how rich or developed. For instance, it is quite clear that because people in the US has no trust for social insurance systems, that puts a cap on how efficient their workforce can get. That doesn't matter economically as long as there is a lot of unskilled labour, but it leaves no possibility for the whole workforce to get skilled and well educated. That could matter at some point in the future.
Isn't this a chicken and egg problem? Corruption generally thrives where people are poor. In the normal course of their daily lives the government cannot save them from starving or from disease. So with no legitimate safety net you may have to fall to crime to keep your family healthy and fed. Maybe you rob someone, or maybe you take bribes at work. If a charity comes in and provides what you need it is no longer an easy choice to fall to crime. I'm not naive enough to think it's this simple at all, but you do have to start somewhere.
Is it people are poor, or poor in comparison to the appetites of the ruling class? I look at Russia - not rich, per se, but not exactly Third World - but corruption there is as open as it can be. But even if Russia has a majority "First World" middle class, the appetites of the ruling class are in the billions of dollars. The difference between the middle class and the oligarchy is probably more dichotomous than in third world nations.
Born and raised, and currently still living in a third world country. What you say is true, except for education. At least, I don't see how you lower corruption as a cultural value without increasing the quality and pervasiveness of education. Where 'having a little on the side' is pretty much a cultural norm, how do you change it, if not via long term improvement of the educational system as the base for all other efforts? I'm actually asking this question, because I don't know of anything that is more important than education. Everything else helps, but unless you change the culture of accepting corruption, and of being a little corrupt, it won't do. And yes, I did say 'being a little corrupt', because it pervades the culture. Whereas big shots steal thousands or millions, the average Joe also tries to get away with not paying taxes, tries to not really work when he gets his government job. This all happens in my country, you'd be surprised how corruption is not something that happens just at the top, but everywhere. The person who takes home the school cafeteria lunch out of greed, just because he can and it is paid by the government is just as guilty as the business man who bribes his way out of paying thousands in taxes. How do you change this culture?
You need to
a) Pay people well enough to not feel the need to take bribes
b) Create harsh enough consequences that everyone thinks twice, and apply it universally. This doesn't mean a police state or even jail, but enough consequences that being corrupt isn't a worthwhile enterprise
My wife's country actually elected a government that isn't too terrible and is trying to change things, but the backlash caused by giving civil servants raises was fairly big. And the old government was undoubtedly corrupt, but prosecuting your political foes can cause issues, even if it's entirely just.
Education can help, but then again, it's not everything, and if there's no demand for educated labour, people drop out anyway.
People need to look at the least corrupt states in the world - we may bitch about it, but our politicians are paid very well, and while some are still corrupt, most aren't, and the scale of corruption here is far less than most countries.
It sounds like you live next door :). The problem is indeed deep and complex. Educating the young is not nearly enough. IMO, there's a whole issue about educating the educators. I had a teacher in school who would give us the answers to a national standardized test as we were taking it! And I went to a 'good' private 'catholic' highschool! I'm kind of hopefull about initiatives like Kahn academy et al. However, we need to produce much more content in local languages, give access and teach how to self-educate responsibly.
Yes, yes and yes. That's exactly the "secret" of Chinese economy boom miracle: despite all the issues in this country, it's people feel safe enough to invest time and money in some activities that may improve their life, and usually does.
And notice that while still useful in some cases, charities and NGOs didn't play a major role in taking a billion of Chinese out of poverty. Mostly they were given a stable enough environment and did it themselves.
[Edit] And infrastructure, yes again. That's very stunning, when comparing China and, e.g. India.
improving education,awareness will help reducing corruption too. enable them to fight for themselves.
Corruption is a world-wide problem and that includes all nations.
Corruption is Legal in America [Video]
Nuclear Fission? Safe?
As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima).
Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for themselves. Make it a for-profit company, they’ll try to get around every regulation and save money.
No matter what you do, you end up with a potential disaster.
> Nuclear Fission? Safe?
Nuclear power and uranium mining is far cleaner and safer than coal, oil/gas, even hydro. Coal mining, hydro accidents, and the various deaths from oil/gas extraction, power plant accidents, etc..., far outstrip deaths from nuclear power plant accidents. Not to mention the health costs that coal has inflicted on the world, the amount of people displaced and ecosystems destroyed by hydro, and so on. Nuclear power gets a bad rap, but statistically speaking, is rather safe.
For the people who end up having to live with contaminated tap water and only learn about it decades later (see Leukämiecluster Elbmarsch for example) it ends up having similar, or worse, results than coal, though.
And especially the waste issue isn't easily solvable.
> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima)
And don't even get me started on the rapacious capitalists running Chernobyl...
Just because — as I mentioned in the original comment, which you would know, if you could read — a state-owned solution is even worse doesn't mean a company omptimizing for lowest quality and highest profits they can get away with is a "good" concept.
> which you would know, if you could read
We ban accounts that repeatedly post uncivil comments to Hacker News, so please don't do this.
Could you please clarify how I should answer when people ask questions that I directly, and obviously answered already?
Especially when multiple – in this case 2 (!) – people ask the very same question, again and again.
Asking redundant questions is also discouraged in the guidelines.
Anything that can be said with an insulting implication (I.e., you are illiterate) can be said more effectively without the personal abuse.
When multiple people miss the point you're trying to make, it's safe to assume that you haven't made your point as clearly or convincingly as you'd hoped.
In which case it's perfectly fine to respond and further develop your point, but your point will carry much more weight if you're polite and respectful in the way you phrase it.
Empirically, nuclear is the safest form of energy generation we have. I don't doubt that we have government regulation to thank for that, but the system as a whole currently working better than all the alternatives.
Do you think other forms of energy are immune to this?
Yet, in the actual world Nuclear power kills so many fewer people than any other kind of power - solar included - that's it's not even in the same ballpark.
And on the other hand we have ten thousands of people directly dying slow deaths due to nuclear power — the leukemia regions in the Elbmarsch, or in southern Bavaria, or around the Asse II come to mind.
Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.
Just counting direct deaths is misleading.
Are you deliberately being misleading, or do you not actually check your info?
There were 6 cases of leukemia in Elbmarsch, and it's not clear if they have anything to do with the reactor. Asse II has not hurt anyone. Southern Bavaria is not specific enough to google.
6 cases, and no one died as far as I can tell.
> Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.
What areas?
> Just counting direct deaths is misleading.
Go for it. Count leukemia if you like - Nuclear still comes in far ahead.
Ultimately, I think one fundamental "problem" with nuclear power is the worst case scenario at the plant level.
Big picture wise, I'm sure it is statistically be safer than fossil fuels (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process). But looking at the power plant itself, and focusing on the worst case, the only other form of power I can think of with the potential to create a Chernobyl type disaster is hydro (as dam failures can create pretty widespread destruction and kill hundreds of thousands -- see the Banqiao Dam disaster). Coal / oil / gas plants that explode kill people too, but generally only within the plant boundaries.
Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable for 200-300 years, ala Chernobyl. The only comparable thing I can think of in the energy realm that comes close to that is coal mine fires (ala Centralia PA), and that's at the extraction level, not the plant level.
I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar... peer reviewed estimates of Chernobyl vary between 4,000 and 25,000, is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?
(Sorry for replying to your points out of order.)
> is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?
And that's exactly the problem! Solar (and coal, etc) kill people slowly, here and there. No big disasters. Nuclear is always a big very public disaster.
Yet the other energies kill in total way more people, but the perception is less. As evidenced by what you wrote.
That makes people think incorrectly about the pros and cons. You have to force yourself to use the numbers, not the perception, if you want to logically make a decision.
> I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar.
You have to calculate deaths per Watt. Solar just hasn't made much energy, yet had a disproportionate amount of deaths (relative to nuclear), roof falls mostly. Nuclear has generated something like half the power on this planet, so proportionally is not as much.
> (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process).
Actually, nuclear is better even without counting the environmental problems!! (But yes counting extraction.) If you count pollution, even ignoring global warming, youch, it's not even close.
> Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable
You'd be surprised at how much land is uninhabitable because of open face coal mining - it's way more than nuclear. And river acidification, and entire areas of land poisoned and basically useless because of 75 year old mines?
Don't forget Chernobyl still has forests and lots of animals. It's just useless for people. It's the same with coal mining - there are plants and animals, but the whole area is useless for people.
Even by this metric nuclear still wins over coal.
> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima).
Counter-point: See Onagawa - http://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant-...
> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere
Right, because government never cheaps out on massive infrastructure projects...
> Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt
From my original comment.
So, please learn to read.
And how many people have died or been injured from private companies running nuclear reactors. There should be some good examples, right?
Fukushima proved we can’t trust companies to run reactors;
Chernobyl proved we can’t trust states to run reactors.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
It's the safest form of power we have.
I worked in energy development in sub-sahara Africa. Attempted several solar projects, all of which would have sold electricity at a price considerably lower than the utility's avoided cost from imported petroleum. We were unsuccessful because the country was concerned that by contracting with us they might jeopardize the possibility of a grant from the EU. Law of unintended consequences. Or, great example of compassion disrupting a free market doing more harm than good.
There's a whole body of poverty work devoted to these kinds of issues, called Institutionalism. My own experience in poverty reduction was working in Microfinance (in Kenya, Uganda and Philippines). I got disillusioned when I realized that even when our loans helped someone make some additional income there was always some group above them in the food chain who would find some way to leach the additional profit from them. The issue wasn't access to loans, our entrepreneur's work ethic, intelligence or creativity - the issue was systemic corruption. Fixing that though wasn't something the free market or bottom up entrepreneurship can solve.
Sometimes I think the 3rd world population most view the western powers as Schizophrenic. On one hand you have some westerners trying to help with micro lending and free solar energy initiatives, fresh water ... (the list goes on). On the other hand, powerful corporations and western governments do everything to counter any efforts by: meddling in local politics (outright financing coup d'etats!), installing their local strongmen to further the profits of the western world and keep the dysfunctional social fabric intact ($$$).
On the other hand when more wealthy countries don't meddle some people claim apathy, not caring, like with the Sudan or Georgia, etc.
It's not that simplistic and whatever happens, there is a significant voice against interventionism, except when another faction wants it.
Microlending counterpoint
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/microcredit-muhammad-yunu...
I'm not against micro lending. I just don't think they'd need it if 'we' didn't put them in the miserable position they are in now. It's like cutting someone's leg off and then offering them a small fragile cane ...
This seems like a great opportunity for African countries to build on their energy infrastructure which would both generate revenue for governments and provide a stable industrial environment for development. It sounds like a critical missing component in Africa's economy. Although this would also depend on the public's ability to pay for monthly/yearly energy fees which might depend on subsidies.
I've read a few articles mentioning how Africa has been inspired by China in recent years who focused on infrastructure as a base for domestic growth instead of just exports or raw materials.
I can't imagine the struggle it must be to survive without access to energy and clean water. Our household recently had our pipes burst from freezing and were nearly at a breaking point after three days without water. Worse yet is the occasional black out. So I'm very sympathetic to this cause.
Bill and Melinda are doing some great work.
Sidenote:
> Changes in weather often mean that their crops won’t grow because of too little rain or too much rain. That sinks them deeper into poverty. That’s particularly unfair because they’re the least responsible for emitting CO2, which is causing the problem in the first place.
Is this really true? I thought farms were responsible for the most generation of CO2 and pollutants? At least in North America livestock accounts for something like 50% of the pollution (aka "cow farts"), even more so than oil/coal. The worlds obsession with meat is actually more harmful to the environment than cars/gasoline... but this is never popularly advertised thanks to efforts of the livestock industry and willful blindness by government agencies.
> Is this really true?
Well without going into the specifics of which industry outputs the most CO2, I think it's a fairly uncontroversial statement to make that (particularly on a per capita basis), the poorest people on the planet output the least CO2. Whereas we, the richest, output the most CO2, but will not be hit as hard (at least in the short-medium term) by climate change.
I think that's the gist of his statement.
In places like Mali or Malawi, the CO2 emissions are roughly 2 orders of magnitude lower than some of the highest places like Qatar or the US, in China it's roughly one order of magnitude. And that doesn't even factor in that China doesn't 'consume' a significant portion of the end products that generate the emissions. i.e. it emits a lot, in part, because it produces for consumers in the west, meaning they're really our offshored/outsourced emissions.
In Nigeria and Ghana, important projects are left undone by the ruling parties because they are long term projects.
Because, the opposing party would be the ones to reap the rewards, and praise from the populace.
They'd instead focus on building new roads instead of maintaining existing ones, building new schools instead of improving existing ones, starting new high sounding schemes instead of continuing projects the previous regime begun.
And btw plants convert CO2 to O2.
That's how government works everywhere, to some degree.
The planning horizon does not stretch further than the next election. For long term projects, private entities do much better.
What about China?
Or old-fasioned kingdoms and monarchies. A number of English kings underwrote the wool trade; in general, the smarter sort of king tended to take an interest in improving his country's manufacturing and agriculture.
They do have different planning horizons.
The lack of accountability in a dictatorship might offset that. I have no way of evaluating that.
Where did you get that 60% figure from? The EPA gives very different numbers.
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.htm...
http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.htm...
I originally heard it in the "Cowspiracy" documentary".
UN and IMF say it's around 18-51%:
>I thought farms were responsible for the most generation of CO2 and pollutants?
That's true for intensive farming with machines and powerful fertilizers and so on. Many people in Africa practice subsistence agriculture which is much less efficient.
In Brazil, the greatest amount of CO2 emissions come from deforestation.
Bill's focus on new tech still seems odd to me.
Maybe he's thought about it, and as a famous geek thinks that the number one thing he can do is champion tech innovation.
But he specifically talks about increasing energy efficiency. An obvious opening to talk about carbon taxes that bake efficiency decisions into everything we buy (and provides a ready made market for new, low-carbon tech).
Or he talks about coal, again a great opening to talk about removing subsidies from that industry and getting the workers retrained in something else.
And he seems dismissive of solar, like those will only help African farmers when the sun is shining and so are barely worth even thinking about.
In general he seems too focussed on getting carbon to 0, and not enough focussed on the low hanging fruit which, if solved with todays existing tech and policy instruments, would extend the runway we have to find breakthrough tech before our world descends into anarchy and global warfare.
Just swapping natural gas for coal gives us much ability to burn fossil fuels, since it halves the carbon per energy output. Might not be as cool as a fusion reactor, but every carbon molecule counts.
Gates doesn't govern any countries and he's not in charge of any global policies. Also, he is not superman and he doesn't have infinite resources. He's just trying to find niches where a rich geek can make a difference. Child vaccination was a good example.
Significantly, he's trying to do practical things to improve the lives of poor people in the third world, as opposed to founding libraries or building more William Gates computer buildings at elite universities.
It's fair to judge what he does against what he could do, but it's unreasonable to judge him for what he can't do.
I don't think anybody would judge him badly for not doing what he's unable to do. Of course not, just go back to Hume's "ought implies can".
I do think, however, that it does make sense to question whether he might be wasting resources and effort.
Agreed, and that is exactly what he does: the foundation has an annual Fail Fest to try to learn from its mistakes.
The website says: "Some of the projects we fund will fail. We not only accept that, we expect it — because we think an essential role of philanthropy is to make bets on promising solutions that governments and businesses can’t afford to make. As we learn which bets pay off, we have to adjust our strategies and share the results so everyone can benefit."
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Informatio...
I think the point is that those sorts of smaller innovations can be a trap. As he says at the start, even reducing CO2 emissions by 50% isn't enough. By focusing on low hanging fruit, we might feel like we're making a difference, and lose the urgency to search for more innovative solutions.
I'm sure Bill supports anything that can reduce CO2 emissions, but I expect his feeling is that we don't need more encouragement to look for little efficiencies; rather we need to find a big solution. Or maybe we need encouragement on both fronts, but he didn't want to dilute the main point of this particular essay by focusing on existing tech.
(That said, he does talk also about improved energy storage and power lines and such, things that would build on existing clean energy sources.)
While I commend this, there's still also a clean water/pollution crisis that plagues the world. And in this sense, I don't mean air pollution, but as in trash - tons and tons of trash. While the US has its fair share of pollution and clean water issues, other countries like the Philippines, Brazil, and African countries allow mass amounts of garbage and pollutants into the waterways and ocean. Huge amounts of toxic waste are being exported to Africa and seeping into the oceans and ground water, or dumped into the ocean. Everything in the world is connected, so pollution on the one side of the world will eventually make its way over to the other. Another reason why this is a huge problem is that a few drops of the right(or wrong) chemical can contaminate hundreds of gallons of water, so when there's tons of pollutants being dumped illegally or stored irresponsibly, just think about the damage that can do.
And don't forget that the developed countries like to export their most pollutant industries. So great part of China pollution is for producing things for USA and Europe.
"Poverty is not just about a lack of money. It’s about the absence of the resources the poor need to realize their potential."
Sounds nice but poverty persist when governments do not respect private property rights. For many of these countries a strong and partial judicial system will be needed.
Paul Graham would disagree with you on that definition of Poverty. In his world poor people can wake up one fine day and start a business.
Aaron : What drove the decision to go start a business? Paul : Poverty. Aaron : Poverty. Paul : I was tired of being poor. I was working as a freelance programmer, and it was this sort of boom/bust thing where I would get money and then I would run out of money, and then it would be a disaster, and I just got tired of it. And then I thought, “I’m just going to work until I won’t run out of money.”Thats not what I think of when I think of poverty.
Paul got tired of being broke. When you're tired of being broke, but you're educated, young, healthy, and/or from a privileged class-- you go to school, open a business, hustle, whatever.
People living in poverty live the lives they do for various reasons-- born into poverty, low education, mental illness, substance abuse, poor health, elderly, single mothers raising children, or some political or historical context (e.g. slavery, discrimination, unequal access to education/healthcare, language/cultural barriers, recent migration).
Poverty (in my mind) means you are stuck on an island where every nation around has guns pointed at you so you cant leave and there are only dirty cookies to eat.
Its scary how a gatekeeper like PG doesn't even have the basic understanding of poverty.
He used "poverty" instead of "broke". What's the drama?
One is a systemic condition that requires changes from society, the other is a temporary condition caused mostly by factors under your control. Confusing the two encourages ineffective 'solutions' for poverty to be created like 'we just have to make it embarrassing/uncomfortable/illegal to be in that condition'. These rely on motivating the poor person to fix themselves, instead of attempting to fix the surroundings that are the actual cause and address the symptoms that the poor person is unable to fix on their own, and then dismissing the ones that don't bootstrap themselves out as lazy and undeserving.
I think your mind is the only one that has that definition.> Poverty (in my mind) means you are stuck on an island where every nation around has guns pointed at you so you cant leave and there are only dirty cookies to eat.
When an engine idles, it is burning fuel & venting exhaust without creating any force. It is consuming itself & providing no value. What is worse is that it's polluting while it's doing nothing.
Idle thought is when a human spends time thinking to no end purpose.
This thread is about Bill & Melinda Gates' opinions on how to fix things. You're here speculating on Paul Graham's opinions & then slamming your carefully constructed strawman. It is thought pollution.
You (and some of the children of this thread) should scrutinize your personal values and evaluate just what you think you are hoping to achieve by proposing up this kind of unsubstantiated tangent.
gp quoted a definition of poverty from the article. I am contrasting it with how it differs from how (some?) rich and powerful people like PG have a different definition of poverty.
Its neither a strawman nor an unsubstantiated tangent.
I don't care about your free advice about my personal values.. You should examine your own narcissistic Holier-than-thou messiah complex that makes you think that you go around giving random strangers advice about "personal values". You are nobody to me to give me advice, isn't that just common sense? Has nobody mentioned it to you ever?
Paul Graham's job is now something very similar to providing "the resources the poor need to realize their potential".
What about nuclear power? Isn't that pretty much the cleanest, most efficient power source we know of today?
He's working on it: http://terrapower.com/
With just a few "minor" issues with safety and waste.
With just a few "minor" issues with safety
History shows that nuclear power is very safe as long as you don't build the plants in tsunami-prone seismic zones, operate them for decades beyond their intended service life, or allow a bunch of unhinged Russians to play "Hold my vodka and watch this" in the control room.
...and waste.
We've also learned that disposal of radioactive waste isn't a problem as long as you mix it with carbon-combustion products and spew it into the air, like coal plants do. Out of sight, out of mind appears to be the optimal way to deal with deadly pollution.
On nuclear safety, consider that France runs on something like 80% nuclear power. Hardly anyone knows this, because French nuclear plants are run well, and haven't had any disasters.
A few years ago you could have said the same about japan.
I can't remember where I read it, but Japan apparently has a history of playing fast and loose with nuclear stuff. Their safety record prior to Fukushima was far from spotless.
After a nuclear accident in France you will be able to read the same about the "safety record" in France. The safety record of eg. Fessenheim does not sound reassuring.
Regardless, it would take a pretty bad nuclear accident to do as much harm as existing carbon-based power plants do when operating as designed.
Not all harm involves glowing green blobs of radioactive doom on CNN.
How is being the safest way to generate power an issue, wouldn't that be a benefit?
False premisis: it's not the safest method (see SSREN, the IPCC's study of carbon-neutral energy generation). It is safer than fossil fuel generation, but not solar and wind, nor, in Europe and America, hydro (India and especially China have had some spectacular hydro failures).
More specifically, when nuclear works well, it works very, very well. When it fails, however, it fails especially spectacularly.
That's not accessible.
As I said: IPCC's SRREN gives mortality/GWh statistics, and nuclear is not the safest, by that measure. Data included Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but not Fukushima.
Actually, I've previously discussed both here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/267e5e/what_are...
NB: Conca is a rather partisan pro-nuclear advocate. I've found his credibility wanting and bias quite evident in past.
The IPCC's report: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/
Risks are in one of the appendixes (I'm not on a device which makes sorting this out trivial at the moment).
the report is 1088 pages and has appendices everywhere, can you point out where you found the risk comparison? A ctr-f for risk finds 511 uses
Starting at p. 993: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Annex_II.pdf
And p. 745: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10.pdf
One of the appendices is risks of differrent generating methods. Should show up in the table of contents.
And yeah, I know it's long....
And high cost (relatively speaking to wind in windy areas, sun in sunny areas, and natural gas in North America)
Great letter, totally agree with the 'Clean Energy Crisis'. I'm glad Bill Gates stepped into the cause as it will get more lime light now. As an aside, I wish there was a way to turn off/on those side note in his blog, it was bit of distraction - that is why I prefer Safari's reading mode.
Hear, hear! I agree with my esteemed colleague on HN. Clean energy is important. After 60 years of warnings, let's be happy that Bill Gates has stepped up.
Now back to that Reader mode thing. Firefox and IE have them too.
Can anyone guess why clean energy hasn't been solved? Look at the chart in the 1950's and 1960s. We were barely doing any damage compared to today.
Why it hasn't been solved ? Little political will arriving just recently(mostly due to economics i think). Further more many of the energy technologies have slow improvement trends, we didn't work until recently on nuclear innovations due to political and economic reasons, and even with that replacing everything that emits co2 is a huge project.
It's nice knowing that a powerhouse like the Gates foundation is working on clean energy. In my view, that's the most important problem that society is facing right now.
Anyone care to do a back of the napkin calculation on whether there is any scenario where mercenaries could offer "law and order as a service"?
Well, that's usually what happens in 3rd world countries.
Private Security is an extremely established service in countries such as mine (Uruguay), and even bigger in others like Brazil.
One link mentions 4 million security guards in Brazil alone (compared to less than a million policemen).
Other links speak of 1.5 million of legally registered security guards.
Compare to 600.000 security guards for the entirety of Europe.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/flavie-halais/spe...
https://www.oas.org/dsp/documentos/Publicaciones/PUBLIC%20SE...
But you would want private security that is willing to engage in serious shootouts with roving bands of warlords, but make those warlords fearful of doing that because they expect the security to win decisively.
Whenever I see smart geeks talking about tons of CO2, I always wonder what percentage of them know whether the Arrhenius effect (temperature forcing as a function of CO2 concentration) is exponential, linear, or logarithmic.
Answer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...
Oh Bill, oh Melinda...
There is so much wrong with their thinking it's sad. Here's one example:
"If you’re an American, three out of four moms at your school have a job. Your father probably does at least some cooking. There’s a 35 percent chance you live with one parent"
She mentions these things in passing and goes on to claim how women do more 'unpaid' work and that that needs to change.
Really Melinda?
You think 'equality' is more important than not having the choice to stay at home and raise your children?
You think 'equality' is more important than the alarming number of single parents?
How many Americans are obese? Are they really happy with themselves? Not for long if they are. Where is that in your letter?
When you can't get the 'best country in the world' to stop eating itself to death, have failed marriages and constant fear of unemployment which causes financial ruin, not to mention absence of free education and health care - do you really think the priority is 'unpaid work' between men and women?
Unbelievable. Who raised these people? Rich people are so out of touch, even when they try to 'help', it's simply insulting to your average brethren.
I see marriage failures or catastrophic divorce rates bandied about a lot in these types of societal decay rants, and it bothers me. The divorce rate has been dropping for decades[1]. A proposed reason for that actually has to do with more equitable opportunities in career, in that women are more free to pursue a career of their choice, and so value systems have realigned to where marriages could be based more on couples being partners, with similar interests and ambitions.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/upshot/how-we-know-the-div...
You must be confusing me with somebody else - I'm not pointing out decay so much as abysmal state of affairs.
Whether things are decaying or not - you can look up how much the prices for the basic human necessities like housing and food have gone up in relation to wages. From what I recall there's no question the middle and lower classes are getting screwed right?
Anyhow one can be wrong with 1 instance out of 10, the overall picture remains the same.
What you're doing is referred to as nitpicking :)
How did you so thoroughly miss their point and intent?
Passive aggressive rhetorical questions huh...
On forums and in real life, it is best to avoid inviting a punch to the face. You must have grown up without getting hurt, like Bill and Melinda Gates :)
See how perhaps it is you missing my point but thinking I am missing theirs?
Now one way to settle this is for you to tell me what you think their point and intent is, that way we can move past me explaining your privileged arrogance and lack of manners.
Personal attacks will get your account banned on HN, so please don't do this again.
prawn's comment wasn't helpful, but the whole sorry subthread was started by a rant that you shouldn't have posted here in the first place. HN is for civil, substantive conversation, not overwrought outbursts. Please don't post those either.
I gave you a rhetorical question assuming that it might help you re-read both the link and your comment to see why you were being downvoted. If you read what they wrote and instead raise obese Americans, I'm not sure how I can encourage you to see the point.
For one thing, Melinda was talking a lot about technology and even just proximity to clean water as being a huge opportunity for people in Africa to save time and spend it on education or health.
I'll leave this conversation there. Not sure that comments about punching people in the face having any place on Hacker News.
Please skim this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
The way it relates to you is you think I'm wrong, see that 2 more people think so too, and make an arrogant remark that questions my reading comprehension. Many people thinking the same thing does not make it so.
Melinda was not talking about technology a lot - please re-read what she wrote.
Furthermore, even if she did focus on technology (it was actually Bill who did) - technology is not the solution to human happiness, as is shown by the obesity statistics in the USA.
Does that clear it up? If the goal of humanity is human happiness, technology has failed in the USA - the answer lies elsewhere clearly.
I don't see that elsewhere, whatever they think it may be, addressed anywhere. Melinda addresses feminist notions - is that going to fix obesity and the myriad of problems USA citizens face? I don't think so.
So where is the answer?
You'll say 'they're focusing on something else right now', to which I'll say before you go and mess with another country's infrastructure and economy by introducing foreign aid - maybe make sure a third of your own people are not miserable first.
Priorities are important - leaving your own citizens obese with no free health care while helping those half across the world is wrong. Do you see why?
"...I feel very lucky and blessed that drstanleyspelltemple@hotmail.com were able to turn my marriage around like this with his powerful spell. My husband used to spend as much time as he could away from home with other women. Since he cast the love spell on him, My husband is now so in love with me and committed to our marriage than before. its so funny that my husband had not go out for weeks now!"
I'm surprised Gates, for all his work in this field, has failed to recognise that we're burning up more food growing cattle and farming animals, than if we were to just eat the plant resources we use to feed the animals.
It's mathematically crazy that, during a mass shortage of food in some parts of the world, we're feeding a net loss of food in order to eat animal produce.
He's even insane enough to support getting more meat, dairy and eggs to Africa, instead of just bringing the nutrient filled crops.
With his attitude about energy and carbon footprint reduction, there's no way, India, China and Africa live sustainably on a meat filled diet.
We will not solve the problems of the meat industry by convincing people to eat less meat, asceticism never works as public policy.
The way forward on that issue is to develop synthetic meat products that can out-compete animal meat on economical/ethical/environmental dimensions.
You just have to put a sin tax on it like we do with (for example) cigarettes.
This is true. If the US stopped giving tax breaks, money, to the corn guys, the hamburger would be a more expensive meal.
Tax-payers are currently paying for people to get cardiovascular diseases.
> We will not solve the problems of the meat industry by convincing people to eat less meat, asceticism never works as public policy.
This is exactly what Bill Gates seems to want to do.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Should-We-Eat-Meat
The arguments for why he wants to do it are in the article to one of the repliers to my OP.
> ?—one solution would be to ask the biggest carnivores (Americans and others) to cut back, by as much as half. -- Bill Gates, the pink glasses guy
Other solutions are miracle agricultural and technological breakthroughs. He's ignoring scientific facts when it comes to energy conversion from sun to plants, the long time of investment return of \w+ponics technologies and transition costs. The largest energy and efficiency gains can be made by improving logistics, everything else is set in stone by the laws of physics.
Yeah, I'll praise the synthetic meat, but really, 2048 - year of massive oceanic ecosystem collapse, due to pollution and the number of species going extinct directly because of the animal agribusiness is heavily increasing. Not to mention Amazon rainforest and similar issues. The damage is already done, there's no turning back. What Bill Gates is doing is just more damage and accelerating the process. This problem cannot be solved in 20 years time, it might be the case that it should have been solved by now to avoid the catastrophic side-effects.
> asceticism never works as public policy.
Yeah, me the first-world ascetic not eating meat. This statement makes no sense. Asceticism can in no way be compared to removing products from animal sources.
Let's ignore the first world, let's concentrate on the developing India+Africa.
India would have a food crisis if 40% of its population weren't vegetarians.
Why not encourage plant-based diets instead of pushing, through his Foundation the meat, dairy and eggs?
The guy is irrational. There's nothing more about it.
I'm inclined to agree here -- the energy inefficiency of meat is really quite astonishing when you look into it [1].
Not to mention the global environmental benefits, etc.
[1] http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-mi...
I think he's wise not to tackle this issue.
Food is more than just a means to an end, it's also a core part of human culture. We can't expect to fix cultural issues with money alone, even if philanthropists made it very easy to live a vegan lifestyle there would still be people who chose to eat meat regardless. It has to be a cultural change to stand a chance in succeeding, it's up to us as individuals to make this change.
Okay, I can definitely agree that this issue shouldn't be tackled by him -- there's too much emotion linked to diet and people seem to think their behavioural changes consisting of recycling and saving water are enough. But he, as the richest man in the world, could just say that he's on a plant based diet (he's currently not).
I believe a lot of people would quit the luxurious flesh eating habits if someone as Bill Gates says he's a vegan and just states his reasons.
Yes, it would be a pretty hypocritical statement since he's probably having a bigger footprint than most of the people on the planet but still, he shouldn't force his meat-dairy-eggs culture onto the impoverished nations of Africa. He's doing exactly that, stating also that there are enormous health benefits to eating meat - being surely wrong.
From just energy perspective it's level-2 diet. Level-0 would be picking berries, trees, hunting animals etc., Level-1 is raising plants, level-2 is raising plants to raise animals.
From an energy perspective it is entirely irrational of him to support this in developing world.
>> stating also that there are enormous health benefits to eating meat - being surely wrong.
No, Bill knows what he's talking about. Animal-based foods are the most nutritious foods for humans. Beef liver, for example, is one of the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat, outclassing vegetables in every way save fibre content.
Animal consumption is an evolutionarily and culturally significant behaviour. Arguments about energy usage aren't enough to overcome these things.
How much food does a cow need to filter to get that nutrient-dense liver?
My estimate is that it's probably equivalent to several families dining on protein rich, nutrient rich grains throughout the whole year.
Your arguments that appeal to tradition, history, and culture, cannot be considered rational arguments. They also aren't derived from morals (product of rationalism). They are empty.
I wonder how did the Chinese solve their food crisis, I guess it was raising billions of cattle to feed their hungry people beef liver?
It's a luxurious food, not necessary, and given Bill's arguments - he obviously is missing the point. Given the recent WHO report and thousands of papers, including the discovery of mechanistic-molecular processes, causal link to meat consumption and heart disease (LDL cholesterol), they are just papers away from finding the causal link between cancer and meat consumption (sugars found in animal flesh alone). Given the huge amount of evidence it is not rational to call it a healthy food.
Freedom of Information Act documents reveal that the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned the egg industry that saying eggs are nutritious or safe may violate rules against false and misleading advertising.
Same will happen with dairy and milk, for dairy there are also hundreds of papers linking consumption with iron and calcium deficiency.
Claiming that meat, dairy and eggs is good food for developing nations is irrational, incorrect and contrary to the majority of evidence available.
Linking cigarettes with lung disease was done decades before they decided to make laws to ban the marketing. Thousands of papers were written, and everyone was denying it, because cigarettes were the cultural thing of the first-world countries. Call to tradition isn't a rational argument.
> How much food does a cow need to filter to get that nutrient-dense liver?
Cows eat food humans can't. That's the entire point of having them!
In some places they feed them other things, but it doesn't have to be that way.
most of the USA cattle industry is based on dirt cheap soybean and corn, grass-fed beef is less sustainable and productive, you just cannot expect the same growth of cows body given that low protein intake, + the area needed is extremely huge and simple calculations dictate that one would have to grass-feed the cows using the whole area of North America and north parts of the South (assuming all of it is rich soil) to replace the environmentally destructive soybean-corn-based meat production. It isn't sustainable, it's hugely inefficient and isn't a solution.
But all the same, there's room for some meat (and more milk and eggs) in the diet, thanks to cows, chickens, and so on being able to eat things that humans can't. Eating meat every day is probably unsustainable, but veganism is too far the other way.
This repetition is irrational.
Given all the evidence there should be no meat, milk and eggs in the diet of developing countries.
How does a growing economy cope with costs of heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer?
WHO report said 50 grams of processed meat per day significantly increases chances of colorectal cancer (causation proof). 50 grams of red meat correlates with all-cause mortality (causation being published). White meat is filled with cholesterol which is the main cause of heart related diseases.
This is something that from an economic perspective shouldn't plague the developing countries, ignoring the energy needs.
50 grams daily is 350 grams weekly, about 18kg of meat per year per person. USA consumes ~100kg of meat per year per person. China is 50kg - and has just in the last 40 years risen from poverty. Just imagine India doing the same, Africa.
If you think people are being moderate, they aren't. This luxurious culture cannot be rationally apologized.
> WHO report said 50 grams of processed meat per day significantly increases chances of colorectal cancer (causational proof).
Go careful. WHO said we now know that processed meat causes cancer. But the risk was tiny, and the increased risk is still tiny.
Everyone is nitpicking bits and pieces of my answers. First the culture, then the sustainability, now health.
Yes, I'm quite aware of the results, and authors of that large scale study, and the paper, the same authors published the all-cause mortality study too (also based on 50 grams), which WHO decided not to reference. There's plenty of evidence, WHO is pretty much years behind that evidence, if not decades.
There's nothing to discuss. Yes, the increase is 17%, which given the low chance of colorectal isn't that much of a big deal but the increase is significant, although, cardiovascular disease increase is much bigger, obesity huge.
The moderate "healthy" amount is really vague.
If I were trying to positively influence the developing world, imposing energy/water/resource hungry animal agriculture business wouldn't be a first step. It's irrational to consider it.
> Freedom of Information Act documents reveal that the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned the egg industry that saying eggs are nutritious or safe may violate rules against false and misleading advertising.
When the evidence for meat and dairy ends up documented in 5000 papers, I guess the same will happen with them, same thing happened with cigarettes after thousands of papers. It takes time, but the evidence provided is sufficient now.
No meat, milk, or eggs at all means leaving a lot of potential nutrition on the table. Chickens (and goats) can eat vegetable waste and the like; cows can eat waste from harvesting, and of course can graze -- an activity that doesn't require significant human labor or expenditure on fuel and tools.
You skipped over everything I've referenced and introduced a completely new narrative which has a simple rebuttal.
We waste tons of grains to filter through cows' bodies. Cows produce waste, that waste is used to replenish the land with minerals needed for grain growth.
Now, wouldn't the same thing be possible without filtering that waste through animals, keeping the waste in high amounts, suitable for the grain agriculture?
Of course, there's absolutely nothing magical in cow's butt that produces the necessary fertilizer. You can fertilize land with vegetable waste, producing less pollution and less non-recyclable waste, needing less energy.
The animal component is completely unecessary.
If you're trying to find rationality of these industries look at this narrative.
People hunted animals, they survived because of animals, but why did they do it, instead of just picking berries, raising food?
It was a time-saving heuristic. The animals were free, the animals were collecting nutrients, packing them into their bodies, and all that time was saved for the human. Humans just "collected" the neatly packed nutrients and had concrete savings.
Today, we bring the food to animals, we center everything around their food filtering, from an energetic, sustainable, environmental perspective it isn't equivalent, it's not even close. It is irrational. This irrationality is closely linked with our desire of excessive luxury.
From all the given evidence, dropping this would save us billions if not trillions in environmental cleanups, health-care bills etc.
Currently, there's nothing magical in animals that necessitates our use of them. The magic has disappeared when we snatched the planet.
Even if animals can eat vegetable waste or graze, that may not be what's happening. I think if you're going to address the GP it's probably worth working with some of the source material behind the views. I suspect the GP has watched Cowspiracy, I'd recommend taking a look:
> "I believe a lot of people would quit the luxurious flesh eating habits if someone as Bill Gates says he's a vegan and just states his reasons."
I don't think you've understood Bill Gates' position in our culture. He's clearly admired as a businessman and as a philanthropist, but I don't see much evidence that people are seeking to emulate his lifestyle choices.
Instead of waiting for Bill Gates to become a vegan, focus your energy on positive changes you can make. For example, want to encourage people to eat more vegetables? Why not start a cookery channel on YouTube that you can use to promote vegan food?
I'm not really waiting for him to become vegan. I'm waiting for him to become rational - veganism follows from that. He doesn't have to promote it, he just has to live it.
I'm doing plenty of positive changes while waiting and pointing out his irrational argumentation over energy.
One is replying here with a unique opinion.
The other is applying my own engineering skills, tied very tightly to logistics (NP-hard optimization).
Bill Gates is a huge driver for startups and people reinventing the food industry. But his posts on energy never include the biggest luxury of all, the mightiest polluter, the strongest destroyer, the most prolific murderer - the animal agriculture industry. Without it + great logistics, the greenhouse gases emissions he's so eager to reduce would reduce immensely.
When animal agriculture footprint becomes smaller than all traffic combined, when it becomes smaller than all of the heating - then I'll concentrate on other things.
Anyone profiling a program would optimize the big percentages, not the small ones. Having a couple of thousand people watching my region centered vegan cooking videos is nothing.
> "Having a couple of thousand people watching my region centered vegan cooking videos is nothing."
You're wrong. That's what change from the grass roots looks like.
> "The other is applying my own engineering skills, tied very tightly to logistics (NP-hard optimization)."
Interesting. Is this related to promoting a vegan diet?
>during a mass shortage of food in some parts of the world
Do we have mass shortages at the moment? As opposed to some people being hungry because they are out of cash.
Poverty is not just about a lack of money.
Someone who was gifted $1 million on the day he was born preaching about poverty is like someone who has never written a line of code running an I.T. department.
Yeah, or like a doctor who has never had cancer running an oncology department. You know the old saying: "write what you know, and absolutely nothing else because empathy does not exist".