At 6:11 PM -0400 4/27/00, Jim Burnes wrote:
>Tim May wrote:
>>
>> At 12:42 PM -0400 4/26/00, Jim Burnes wrote:
>> >
>> >Starvation and privation in most of Africa is almost a stereotype.
>> >
>> >Stick with a minimal government and something approaching english common
>> >law and we have goods and happiness aplenty.
>>
>> There are some interesting issues normally neglected in the
>> traditional libertarian analysis. For example, the "ecotone." This is
>> a region of 50/50 survival, roughly speaking. A tideline is often an
>> ecotone.
>>
>> The fact is, in alluvial flood plains like Bangla Desh (formerly East
>> Pakistan), people move out onto the flood plains, where land is
>> cheaper than elsewhere, and breed as rapidly as they possibly can
>> (for various reasons). Every ten or twenty years, a cyclone (=
>> hurricane) arrives and half a million die quickly and another few
>> million suffer diseases and mold and all the stuff that too much
>> water brings. And the capital, Dacca, sinks deeper into poverty.
>>
>> Sub-saharan Africa is much the same.
>>
>> Capitalism vs. Marxism has little to do with things. The issue is
>> that these are regions of extremely high death rates (and hence high
>> birth rates, via the generation-recombination equation) and nearly
>> permanently "poor" living conditions.
>
>In interesting concept. While I haven't read any material on ecotones
>I'm familiar with the rough concept. In my mind there appears to be
>an intuitive correlation between the 50/50 ecotone and the boundry
>between chaos and order in the Mandelbrot set. It also makes
>sense within the certain predator/prey theories that I'm aware
>of.
Yes, these are all related. However, abstract theories about the
border between chaos and order are more suited to the Santa Fe
Institute folks (note: I attended the first Artificial Life
Conference in 1987, one of about 100 very interesting folks). The
nitty gritty of 50/50 survival odds is much more "in the present."
Vast numbers of the poor basically have little chance of survival.
Time we get used to it. All of our treasure (wealth) could be poured
into Chad, Somalia, Bangla Desh, Romania, and other Turd World
hellholes and it would all be for nought. They are living on the
ecotone, and that's there lot.
>
>An interesting analysis would be whether or not Weberian societies
>chose the temperate zones or the temperate zones made them possible.
>You may not be able to determine that.
Agreed, an interesting analysis. Did North America prosper, compared
to many other places colonized at the same time, because of its memes
or because it was so spectacularly well-suited to colonization? I
tend toward the latter.
>
>More interesting points....
>
>(1) Hong Kong isn't a swamp, but it is very hot and humid and has
>no natural resources. It may still have the most productive economy
>on the planet.
Well, it has a very significant natural resource: location.
Location in terms of trade with China, Japan, the West, etc. For its
size, location is vastly more important than whether it has a tin
mine or coal fields nearby.
And location in terms of a fine natural harbor.
Try declaring a similar-sized area in Mongolia or Siberia or Chad to
be a trading zone and see what happens.
(Hong Kong is thus carrying on in the tradition of
Rotterdam/Amsterdam, San Francisco, Seattle, Athens, and a dozen or
so other natural ports. Schelling points for commerce, as it were.)
>
>(2) Las Vegas has a burgeoning economy yet it lives right smack
>in the middle of a very forbidding environment. Certainly way
>over on the die-off side of the ecotone for humans.
I've spent time in Vegas, and this is not true. (Steve Schear, as I
recall, has spent even more time there.) Las Vegas has abundant water
and power, courtesy of the Colorado River, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead,
etc. This is why the suburbs are spreading north toward Beatty and
southeast towards Henderson and the dam.
It's also close to L.A. and easily reachable by air. Gambling and
entertainment change the ecotone equation dramatically.
The dry air and (usually) warm temperatures make it a popular
retirement and vacation spot. Few folks contemplate Dacca or Lagos as
retirement destinations.
>
>Maybe the ecotone is modified by economic/energy input/output
>conditions. That surviability is heavily modified by economic
>feedback loops would seem to be apparent and thus the expansion
>of the ecotone.
Of course. I thought this was self-evident. Los Angeles, for example,
is prospering. But without the technology to bring in water, it would
wither. Ecotones are what they _are_, the regions of 50/50 survival,
not what they were before Man arrived.
>
>> Those who live in dankness, in frozen wastelands, in fetid swamps, in
>> the shadow of sand dunes, in clouds of tsetse flies and
>> mosquitos...well, they fertilize the soil.
>
>Thanks, Tim. Very informative.
You're welcome. It's why we need to "harden our hearts" when we see
billions of Biafrans and Bengalis with flies ice-skating on their
eyeballs. There is no way that Dacca or Bucharest or Moscow or Ulan
Bator will ever compete with Palo Alto or Paris or Las Vegas in the
lifetimes of anyone now reading this list.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
