What Do You Call People from Madagascar?

[Zhong Lu + 845]

A "Madagascarian?" 

Also, how do you tell apart a person from Botswana from someone from Ghana? I mean, I can tell apart a Frenchmen from a English person and most of you can tell apart Chinese and Japanese.  But Botswana vs Ghana.  That's a lot harder.  In fact, off the top of your head, what can you recall to help you distinguish a country like Botswana from a country like Ghana? I know France has the Eiffel Tower and China has the Great Wall, and England has stiff upper lips and like to muddle through, and America has Hollywood, but what does Botswana or Ghana have? 

I'm joking around but I'm also trying to make a serious point: most of the African nations aren't "nations."  They only became nations out of European fiat.  But when oil companies pay these nations to drill for oil they pay the government of that nation because legally that's what they got to do.  Not their fault, I mean they're just following the law.  But the problem is whichever dude or tribe happens to be in charge at the time can take all the money for themselves and then USE that money to buy off any opposition.  There's absolutely no incentive to share it with the rest of your "nation", 'cuz why the f- would you give the money to some other random tribe that you hate, that will screw you over at the first available opportunity? 

So the oil money's not being "wasted," at least not in the sense like "Bob wasted his lottery winnings on beer and porn."  Some lucky dude and his family gets really really rich and puts it in a Swiss bank account and uses it to help his family and tribe, which is a pretty admirable thing to do.  If someone gave you a billion dollars, you'd probably do the same. Only problem is that everyone else stays poor.  

Edited February 3, 2020 by Zhong Lu

[James Regan + 1,776]

@Zhong Lu You are bang on about the oil companies and the tribes etc and I a agree if I was give a load of cash it would be me and mine I would be looking after ( depends how much I got also ) but what is your point?

[Zhong Lu + 845]

Point of post [in response to James Regan]: Attempts to evaluate countries using the same neural mechanisms that we use to evaluate people is ineffective and inaccurate.  If you want to get at the root of causes of why countries fail, you cannot think of a country like it's a "person with moral failings."  Examples of the above: sentiments like "Oh Nigeria, why are you a failure in life and why can you not succeed like Singapore?  Ooo la la." It doesn't work except as a joke because countries aren't people and thus cannot have moral failings.  Instead, you gotta try and dig deeper. 

This is just one post in a larger part of a sequence where the main idea can be summarized as this: flocks of birds don't fly because flocks are not animals.  What's happening instead is that each individual bird is flying in response to the flight of their neighbors, and consequently end up flying in a flock.  But because we can't properly conceptualize this, we subconsciously categorize the entire flock as one giant bird and talk about the behavior of the flock in much the same way we would talk about individual birds.

Hence: I'm making this post in reference to posts about Nigeria vs Singapore or US vs China from other threads. In those threads people are discussing these collections of people as if "China, Nigeria, US, and Singapore" were individuals with moral attributes even though they're obviously not.  

[Examples: "China gets caught."  "Countries that wasted their oil money", "Democrats are Evil" Etc. ]

Edited February 3, 2020 by Zhong Lu

[Boat + 1,315]

19 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

Point of post [in response to James Regan]: Attempts to evaluate countries using the same neural mechanisms that we use to evaluate people is ineffective and inaccurate.  If you want to get at the root of causes of why countries fail, you cannot think of a country like it's a "person with moral failings."  Examples of the above: sentiments like "Oh Nigeria, why are you a failure in life and why can you not succeed like Singapore?  Ooo la la." It doesn't work except as a joke because countries aren't people and thus cannot have moral failings.  Instead, you gotta try and dig deeper. 

This is just one post in a larger part of a sequence where the main idea can be summarized as this: flocks of birds don't fly because flocks are not animals.  What's happening instead is that each individual bird is flying in response to the flight of their neighbors, and consequently end up flying in a flock.  But because we can't properly conceptualize this, we subconsciously categorize the entire flock as one giant bird and talk about the behavior of the flock in much the same way we would talk about individual birds.

Hence: I'm making this post in reference to posts about Nigeria vs Singapore or US vs China from other threads. In those threads people are discussing these collections of people as if "China, Nigeria, US, and Singapore" were individuals with moral attributes even though they're obviously not.  

[Examples: "China gets caught."  "Countries that wasted their oil money", "Democrats are Evil" Etc. ]

I got one. the Permian is producing to much oil, like every other oil well in the world isn’t doing the same thing. How are one set of investors making a mistake and others not. I bet they have the same goal. Pocket money.

But yea, your right, nice post.