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Comment by charleso | Hacker News Reader

The world has a severe shortage of opiate-based pain killers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy...

Opium poppies grow well in Afghanistan and farmers already know how to cultivate and prepare it for shipping in large quantities.

Potential mineral riches are spiffy and all, but it seems foolish to toss money at projects which require large-scale construction and worker training when an existing high-demand product already exists to productively employ the populace.

These folks don't yet have infrastructure capable of large-scale mineral extraction. Why not build upon useful agricultural exports and start from there?

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"but it seems foolish to toss money at projects which require large-scale construction and worker training"

I understand your argument to not abandon the poppies, but do you really think "foolish" is the right word to describe pursuing vast amounts of minerals that are in high demand? It's literally digging money out of the ground. Wouldn't the large-scale construction and worker training be funded by the profits from the minerals?

You're right. 'Foolish' was a poor choice of word.

When pairing mineral resources with a chaotic government like Afghanistan's, I can't help but picture kleptocratic scenarios like Nigeria, Congo or the like and that's what brings 'foolish' to mind.

If mining started there today we would certainly enjoy the fruits of the labour, but I'm not sure the people would see anything from it. A few other posters have mentioned 'The Resource Curse' and I think Afghanistan would end up more like Congo than Norway if minerals were extracted in quantity from their soil.

I think starting with agricultural exports and building slowly from there would provide a more stable economic foundation.

I agree, we need more iPads, dammit!

Agriculture may be wise in the short term, but as soon as the pathways are elucidated we will be able to produce synthetic opioids through recombinant DNA synthesis.

Have you seen the oxometer plugin for Firefox?

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