[tt] [wta-talk] Global Warming -- The Bush Administration Takes an Interesting Position

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> -----

From: Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:15:32 +0200 (MEST)
To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Subject: Re: [wta-talk] Global Warming -- The Bush Administration Takes an
 Interesting Position
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Stefano Vaj wrote:
> On 9/18/07, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
>> Historically, political instability has been *the* major cause of
>> starvation (due to poverty,  breakdown of civil society and the rise of
>> kleptocracies). Meanwhile democracies, even when quite poor, have
>> managed
>> to avoid starvation even when under stress. Similarly open societies
>> deal
>> with disasters far more flexibly and deftly than closed societies.
>
> Mmhhh. This sounds a little like wishful thinking. Care to offer any
> data?

I think I can. Looking at Wikipedias list of famines,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines the ones after 1972 have been
the following. I have added Freedom Houses country ratings for the
relevant years: higher numbers on the 1-7 scale denote worse political
rights and civil liberties.

1973 famine in Ethiopia		5,6
1974 famine in Bangladesh	4,4
1975-1979 Khmer Rouge. 		7,7
1980 famine in Karamoja, Uganda	6,6
1984 famine in Ethiopia		7,7
1996 North Korean famine 	7,7
1998 famine in Sudan 		7,7
1991-1993 Somalian famine	7,7
1998-2000 famine in Ethiopia	4,5–5,5
1998-2004 Second Congo War. 	7,6–6,6
2000-2007 Zimbabwe		7,6

The most free country was 1974 Bangladesh, which was a shaky parliamentary
government that then turned into a socialist one-party state.

The observation that famines mainly occur under dictatorship, colonial
rule or during war is not mine, it was developed by Amartya Sen ("no
functioning democracy has suffered a famine in modern times"). See Sen,
Amartya (1973). Poverty and Famines. Oxford University Press. ISBN
0-19-828463-2. (partially written as a response to the ongoing events in
Bangladesh) and Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines : An Essay on
Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982

Going back further, there was *no* other famine during the 20th century
happening in what looked like a democratic country. The closest was likely
the 1944 Hongerwinter in the Netherlands, due to the war and occuring
during nazi occupation. The really big famines were deliberate socialist
projects to wipe out certain groups.

The next thing to do would be to turn the list around and check whether
periods with political instability or oppression correlate with famines.
It is late in the evening now for me, so I leave that to the interested
list members or a later evening.

> The most flexible societies in this area are likely to be those
> of the hunting-and-gathering kind...

Actually, hunter-gatherers are often living risky and marginal lives.
Hurtado's work on demographics among remaining "true" hunter-gatherers
suggest that they might survive as tribes when famine comes, but lots of
individuals die. Even during good conditions hunger is often a problem,
and division of scarce resources a major matter (and contributing to the
frighteningly high rate of violence in such societies).

> Complexity brings along fragility, and "open societies"
> proletarisation and dependence on purchasing power for basic needs.

The closest thing we have ever seen of a modern society crashing is the
implosion of the East Block. Complex societies, like complex ecosystems,
have many alternate pathways. If the US wheat crop fails, it can buy wheat
from elsewhere, it can replace it with other crops that would have been
used for other things, or it can get calories from alternate sources.
Subsistence farmers have no alternatives.

If an ice age suddenly hit, I would feel more comfortable being in the UK
or even Sweden than in any current equatorial nation.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University


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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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