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Comment by flanked-evergl | Hacker News Reader

As an outsider looking in, I have to wonder why the rest of the world, and especially the western world sit by silently while countries run themselves into the ground?

Pakistan is one of the most poorly governed countries in the world. If the Netherlands or Japan for example was equally poorly governed, the relative human toll would be much higher than it is in Pakistan.

Why is every western government not warning Pakistan, and it's population, that if they continue to elect leaders who run the country into the ground that this will have dire consequences for their longevity and wellbeing?

I see similar problems coming in South Africa, also, it's quickly approaching crisis, but the population just keeps electing the most corrupt politicians that are not interested in good governance at all.

Who wins by letting these countries run themselves into the ground and then create problems for everyone else?

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> [..] western government [..] warning Pakistan, and it's population

People hate being told what to do/told that what they're doing is wrong.

Especially when the advice is unsolicited and coming from people from a different country.

I'm not saying whether that is or isn't rational.

> elect

Pakistan is and has always been run by the army. It sounds bad, but in 2024, radical populists such as Imran Khan sound even worse.

One option is to twist their arm into good economic policy using loans. Wold Bank has already attempted this and failed.

The other option is to intervene. Pakistan has nukes. You can't intervene.

Because people don't listen? We try and tried to warn (voice concerns I think it's called) for voting in a rasberry pi nano running a markov chain trained on a few pages of the redneck bible and dressed up in an orange baboon suit as president of the most powerful country on earth; considering how close the results were and seem to be again, it's apparently not the way.

If Pakistan and South Africa were even 1/10th as well governed as the US they would be beacons of hope.

Sure! The fact remains, people don't like to be told what to do.

Try the US after a few decades of trump-level 'leaders'; won't be very different from those places anymore. Probably won't happen if the constitution remains in place, but it can and does. That's what the warnings are for.

Do you think that Pakistanis don't know already that their country is poorly run and that their politicians are corrupt and incompetent?

It's pretty condescending to expect a lecture from a foreign government official to be well received and to tell them something they don't already know.

> Do you think that Pakistanis don't know already that their country is poorly run and that their politicians are corrupt and incompetent?

Given that the trajectory has not changed, I think they don't care to fix it. South Africans also know their government is corrupt, and they consciously vote for it. Whether this is similar in Pakistan I don't know, but clearly if they cared to change trajectory it would not get worse all the time.

Don’t care, or can’t? Here in the U.S. we have a high chance that the presidential race will be won by a convicted felon who tried to falsify the last election he lost and encouraged a violent attempt to change the results, shielded by a series of blatantly political court decisions, so I'm not sure we have much standing to criticize other countries’ governance.

Look at Hungary. It's pretty well documented, as the cuckoo in the big EU nest.

It's economy is stagnating (of course, because of all the legalized corruption and nepotism, the ruling elite meddling in everything, misuse of EU funds, and the usual), and we have very good data about this. We can even have a nice "natural experiment", because Hungary joined the EU in 2004, then the current regime was voted to power in 2010 with 68% of seats (by 2.7M ppl, 52% of voters)

and then again in 2014 (2.2M ppl, 45%), 2018 (2.8M ppl, 49%), 2022 (3M ppl, 54%). Every time with 67-68% of the seats.

Very methodically people were very nicely brainwashed. After 14 years in government with "absolute majority" around 3M people still think that bad things are bad because of the mystical others. Due to the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine we now have a live action 1984 black comedy where "war is peace" is basically the state motto.

Hungary is doing about as well as Poland, almost to the dot - It's GDP per capita is within a rounding error of Poland's. Not saying it's great, but if Pakistan was doing half as well as Hungary, it would be an awesome place.

> if Pakistan was doing half as well as Hungary, it would be an awesome place.

Of course, my point is exactly that, there's always scapegoats, and even though 1-2 percents over long term matters a lot, and people instinctively know that folks in richer countries tend to have it better ... hence why migrants did not stop in Hungary and went straight to Germany. And similarly, people risk a lot to get to the US, even though Mexico is amazing compared to - let's say - El Salvador 5 years ago.

So those 1-2 percents.

Poland's economy has been growing roughly 3times faster over the past year than Hungary's. (And before that Poland was usually 1+ basis points above.[0])

Poland's debt-to-GDP ratio is more than than 20 basis points lower than Hungary's.

Hungary's actual individual consumption is the last in the EU. [1]

But at least Hungary had the best inflation hump. [2]

It would be good to see Hungary springing back to life, but currently things are not great.

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/cf98cf45-...

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/e1be8012-...

Take up the White Man's burden—

  Send forth the best ye breed—

Go bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

  On fluttered folk and wild—

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

  Half devil and half child.

(...and six more verses)

- Rudyard Kipling

Not sure I follow. Running a country right off a cliff is not helping anyone in the country.

Is a well known racist poem praising colonialism.

Trying to bring the racist card to the discussion maybe; but "they don't help us because they are racists" is a dusty and very worn out argument at this moment.

> "they don't help us because they are racists"

That is not what i meant when posting the poem.

When someone asks "Why is every western government not warning Pakistan...", he is basically rephrasing Kipling and asking to "Take up the White Man's burden".

This has been attempted before, didn't go so well. That might give a clue, why we are in the current state of affairs.

> This has been attempted before, didn't go so well. That might give a clue, why we are in the current state of affairs.

Pakistan running itself off a cliff is not going well either.

> Pakistan running itself off a cliff is not going well either

I mean, it's not going terribly either. For a nuclear-armed nation, that is.

I mean, the current state of Pakistan is due to widespread support for corrupt politicians by US and other powers in 1950s and onwards.

I agree with your last paragraph but unfortunately I think you needed to provide that context with the original post. Many American and British conservatives use it non-ironically because they do see the condition of former colonial countries as proof that the people there aren’t fit to govern themselves.

> Why is every western government not warning Pakistan..

Because is not the duty of governments to teach science to other governments.

Science is a whole humanity project (not just a western one), and we publish our work for free, so is available to everybody, everywhere. Anybody can adopt this knowledge without asking to western countries.

Wisdom cannot be taught, only self-learned. Think about all the wisdom that people tried to pass down to you when you were young, how much of it you actually internalised at the time vs what you had to learn by yourself and then had an "a-ha moment" when you noticed someone years before had warned you of it.

There's nothing Western governments or societies can do to steer a whole other society/culture, and I think you haven't really experienced other cultures truly if you think you can steer the voting population into better decisions.

It requires a well educated population to understand what "good governance" even means, it requires a stable, out of survival mode, society to reason about long term consequences to society vs short term individual benefits. When someone is barely surviving they will most often vote for someone who promises them a better life, without critical thinking (stemming from my 1st point on education) there's no way for the individual to understand complex issues and why a populist won't solve it.

> Why is every western government not warning Pakistan, and it's population, that if they continue to elect leaders who run the country into the ground that this will have dire consequences for their longevity and wellbeing?

The current Pakistani administration is a product of an American-backed coup on Imran Khan because he was getting cozy with China.

No, it's not. It's a product of the Pakistani people.

Considering how Pakistan has been a military dictatorship with a foil of an ostensibly elected government ever since its formation, this is least credible explanation of three situation yet somehow this what you came up with

Foreign interference is only something other countries do to us. We never interfere in their politics. /s

I think you need to look into the CIA playbook. They're doing this actively, have been doing this for decades. Even lots of allied "democratic" countries are effectively just puppet states of the US: yeah people get to elect, but their foreign policy is solidly controlled by the US. They don't have real sovereignty, and without sovereignty they don't have real democracy.

Evidence of this: https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cyph...

Pakistan is a sovereign nation. For better or worse, they are in charge of their own destiny.

Do you really want to establish as normal foreign governments going mucking around in local politics based on their own sense of what is right?

Telling Pakistian they have to correct course if they are to avoid massive human toll is not "mucking around in local politics".

Ok, there are two ways to interpret that statement: (1) literally just giving them advice, with the explicit understanding that nothing is implied in doing so; or (2) an implicit understanding that "they have to correct course if they are to avoid massive human toll" ... OR ELSE.

(1) is hopelessly naïve;

(2) is mucking around in local politics.

A doctor saying "you need to fix your lifestyle" is not threatening someone. The millions of Pakistanis that are flooding into the west seems to suggests that most Pakistanis prefer the fruits of western governance to the fruits of Pakistani governance. What is missing is the assertion that the state of Europe is mostly a consequence of good governance in the western tradition.

I would dare to say that the Netherlands is poorly governed given the extreme time it took to form a government both in 2021-22 and 2023-24.

We also had something similar in Sweden after the last two elections.

Well, I would agree the Netherlands and Sweden are rapidly approaching total collapse, but it's still significantly better governed than Pakistan.

Sweden could be without a government for the next 5-10 years and the state would chug along just fine.

> Well, I would agree the Netherlands and Sweden are rapidly approaching total collapse

LOL? Despite variations, at least the Netherlands is one of the best run countries on this planet. When the Netherlands will collapse, everyone else will have been under water for many years, already.

Let's not even talk about Belgium.

Who?

I thought colonialism was a bad thing?

What exactly would you have the other countries do? What does "warn them" even mean? As if the only problem Pakistan has is that its politics arent sufficiently dictated by the West? I mean, thing would probably be better if that were something the West were actually capable of doing, but Afghanistan shows what that experiment looks like.

> What does "warn them" even mean?

Every western and really non-western government should publicly state that the trajectory of Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil, etc is concerning and that if these countries do not change trajectory the human toll will be catastrophic.

Instead we just have silence, and some effective pretence that what is going on in these countries is entirely acceptable merely because the people have voted for their own destruction.

I'm not saying the west should invade and replace the governments as they tried in Afghanistan, but the poor governance in Africa, Asia and South America is incredibly costly for the west. If the west has to pick up the tab when it all comes crashing down, it should have some say.

Some people think that the west (and others) are doing similar things, for example: focusing on some migrants rather than tackling climate change. This too will have a catastrophic human toll in my opinion, I think people are warned, and still the focus is on basically anything else.

To be honest, I would have a different issue with "the civilized countries" (whatever east/west/etc.). They should be a role model, and while they are a bit better than some on the list, they are quite far from what they could be.

So, probably, rather than worry about how bad has it someone hundreds of miles away, try to improve something in the local vicinity.

> They should be a role model, and while they are a bit better than some on the list, they are quite far from what they could be.

The endless stream of illegal aliens put the lie to this claim.

Illegal immigrants will go to "the better" at probably any difference between two countries. Is that all that "the west" aspires now to?

And the level of hypocrisy in many countries is astonishing. A lot of companies in said countries take advantage of illegal immigrant labor, but nobody thinks about blaming them for the huge number of illegal immigrants.

But I think this discussion is in favor of "some elites". Rather than asking also for industrial development, redistribution, environment protection people are "encouraged" to blame everything on the immigrants. Look at UK. They wanted out of EU to "control their borders", and check how well it went for them in living standards... Probably now they complain their neighbors don't fix the problem for them.

To circle back to the start, everybody has a different opinion about what others should do, so doubt someone telling country X something will improve a lot the outcomes.

I don't think that Brazil is on its way to a humanitarian catastrophe.

What makes you say that?

Brazil has been experiencing de growth since about 2011. The GDP per capita has been decreasing, unemployment has been increasing, corruption has been increasing, and governance has been getting worse.

If this continues the people of Brazil will necessarily be much more at the mercy of forces of nature than if they had a stronger economy and were well governed.

Pakistan itself is also a (historical) example of the same problem. It is like GP doesn't know why the European empires were bad.

Pakistan has had a western nation rule over it before and it didn't exactly go well. It's also not exactly a well-run nation that can tweak a few things to solve excesses like with antibiotics. Warnings about the overuse of antibiotics go back to the 1950s. This isn't something that will come to a surprise to anyone, and it isn't even an impossible challenge to overcome.

Here in the Netherlands, antibiotics usage in the meat industry was absurdly high until a bit over a decade ago, despite decades of warnings. And as a side note, I would classify the way the country has been run for all of my adult life as poorly governed, with elected officials constantly lying, government parties trying to work around the law rather than comply leading to several crises, and just general mismanagement. It's not Pakistani army bad, but it certainly warrants warnings from other countries.

As for Pakistan: If I were their leader, knowing about things like vaccination centres ran by the CIA to secretly hunt down and kill Taliban soldiers in search of Bin Laden, I'd be wary of warnings coming from the West. I wouldn't much trust foreign charities to install clean water infrastructure either, because that's far from the only time they've been used as a front.

Are your leaders listening to the warnings coming from Bejing, Brussels, Israel, the Kremlin, and Washington? Would you even trust what they say is in your interest? I wouldn't exactly put it past foreign intelligence agencies to spread typhoid in areas of interest just so they could come in and "help cure" everyone.

> Pakistan has had a western nation rule over it before and it didn't exactly go well.

I don't support colonialism, I think it's morally wrong. It's not an argument about whether there is some hypothetical upside or downside, it infringes on the freedom of a people, which includes their freedom to run their country off a cliff.

That being said, if you ignore the morality of it, as is fashion in the west, I'm not sure if it went relatively worse in a material sense than it's going now.

Western countries and sometimes Soviet, and now China used Pakistan for their own greed in 1970s to 1990s. Now, they suffer.

Because then you get outcry that West colonizes everything.

Get some outcry and no superbugs, not a bad deal, huh? I mean this has a potential to be another covid-19, but much worse.

We (the rest of the world) are not omniscient. Its always possible that we are wrong, and they are right.

Our assumption that the only valid way to happiness is a capitalist democracy, and we force it on everyone with our military strength, then thats just a crusade.

> We (the rest of the world) are not omniscient. Its always possible that we are wrong, and they are right.

I would care less if the collapse of Pakistan did not have consequences for the west, but it does.

And Pakistan and South Africa are far from Communist utopias, and regardless, continuing as they are will have massive human toll, regardless of how much you hate capitalism.

That sounds like a problem the west has created for themselves.

By adopting the ECHR?

I’m not sure what you mean by that, your post was about the wests dependence on Pakistan, I assume you mean economically. ECHR is important, but I don’t see the relevance in the context of a powerful nations dependence on a less powerful one.

The west does not depend on Pakistan.

> I would care less if the collapse of Pakistan did not have consequences for the west, but it does.

> As an outsider looking in, I have to wonder why the rest of the world, and especially the western world sit by silently while countries run themselves into the ground?

Because last time they did something it was "outside interference CIA black OPS are the devil". And before that "colonialism".

So good luck to the people of those countries but the change has to come from within. And if they don't have enough people who want the change, well... Inch'Allah.

> So good luck to the people of those countries but the change has to come from within.

Agreed, but do they know change has to come? When was the last time this message was clearly proclaimed to them?

I don’t know, look out the window?

The reality is, people there are trying as hard as they can to survive, and it’s shitty and hard, largely due to sociopolitical factors + economic factors which interrelate with their identity.

So good luck changing that without it getting much worse.

For a US comparison, check out the gun control and abortion ‘debate’.

> The reality is, people there are trying as hard as they can to survive, and it’s shitty and hard, largely due to sociopolitical factors + economic factors which interrelate with their identity.

Repeatedly voting for the most corrupt politicians imaginable that mismanage a country into crisis, as the South African electorate does, is not "trying as hard as they can to survive". It's, in fact, doing everything possible to put make surviving more difficult.

> For a US comparison, check out the gun control and abortion ‘debate’.

I'm not really talking about the US, but if Paksitan and South Africa was even 1/10th as well governed as the US it would be awesome.

And when those politicians are using industrialized propaganda and actively pushing everyone’s buttons in a way they can barely see straight, surely it’s the poor farmers fault?

That’s the sociopolitical side.

Why do you think Trump is a still a viable candidate (per the numbers)?

You can call them lazy idiots all you want, it doesn’t change what is happening.

When we can successfully pry the parasite that is what is going on with Trump from out ass, then we can be all high and mighty. Right now the only reason we aren’t literally in the same boat is momentum and capital.

> Why do you think Trump is a still a viable candidate (per the numbers)?

I don't know why you are talking about US politics. I'm not an American, I'm not interested in the US other than for the fact that their rapidly collapsing hegemony is quickly accelerating the world into global conflicts, but even so, the world is not entitled to global peace guaranteed by an American hegemony.

If you think places like Pakistan will get better in this respect if the US goes this way, then I wish you luck. That’s my point.

>> Because last time they did something it was "outside interference CIA black OPS are the devil". And before that "colonialism".

And after that, "two drone strikes a week, every week, for 14 years".

> do they know change has to come?

If they don't, then it doesn't. "Change is needed" is a basic sense a human being is able to feel and express by the time they turn 3.

> When was the last time this message was clearly proclaimed to them?

It's not something that needs proclaiming. Again, this is obvious to them. What's missing is motivation and coordination.

What would be useful is to have a positive example of what the changes needed would lead to. Unfortunately, modern West is doing its best to provide the opposite externally, all while spinning apart internally. Even though the life here may be objectively better to life there, oppressive regimes and rebel wannabes all get plenty of rhetorical ammunition to say otherwise.

Hello??? Colonialism much? Did you forget the last ~600 years? Nobody wants to do that anymore.

The Brits used to run the place until 1947 but we were asked to leave.

I am not sure if this is satire or not.

The west is rapidly losing any kind of credibility and moral leadership due to its hypocritical stance where on the one hand they denounce the invasion of Ukraine, but on the other hand simultaneously support/enable the Gaza genocide. "Warn them" — why should they trust that western governments are being sincere rather than yet again just feigning humanitarian concern while having a political agenda? This extends to outside just central Asia: African leaders have been complaining for some time now that while every time China visits, they get a bridge or a hospital, every time a western leader visits, they only get a lecture (on how $COUNTRY is bad, how $STUFF is bad) and nothing ever gets done.

Frankly it concerns me that so few people know that the global south is rapidly losing trust in the west because of our own hypocritical, politicized, insincere behavior. Western media pretty much never talks about this sort of stuff and so most people are still in lala land.

Not sure it's that hypocritical. The basic western principle is people should be able to live in peace. If some actor starts killing them, be it Putin or Hamas, it's ok to fight back.

Except that's not at all an accurate representation of Gaza. They have been repressing/killing Palestinians way before Hamas, and in the past year they bombed hospitals, killed thousands of children and other innocents, etc. Not to mention that most of the territory was stolen from Palestina in the first place. There is even damning evidence that the IDF kills Israeli hostages just so that they can bomb Palestinians!? The very myopic insistance on "but Hamas" while also ignoring everything else about the context, is exactly what the global south recognizes as hypocritical.

> African leaders have been complaining that while every time China visits, they get a bridge or a hospital

And China gets wide unlimited access to African raw matters for decades, all-you-can-eat style.

This is not a gift; Is African countries receiving something but losing control over their fisheries or wood. And if there is an environmental disaster, bye. The African country will keep the mess.

https://globalvoices.org/2021/06/07/belt-and-road-initiative...

The Nigerian writer Tade Ipadeola wrote on X: "The dust at the Lagos-Ibadan rail station is silica dust. Respirable and a known carcinogen. Every building within 100m of this site is currently covered"

"Jack Straw, remarked that what China was doing in Africa was much the same as what Britain had done 150 years ago.”

Is much better than American Indians receiving crystal bead collars, but the underlying system is the same. Both part benefit, but one benefits much more than the other. Is just a soft type of Early Colonialism, not really different than the European trading companies slowly eating India in the past.

This is such a weird take. Of course it's not a gift. It's a trade. But it's a beneficial trade, just like how having a bakery near you is beneficial. Just because the bakery wants something in return doesn't mean that having a bakery near you isn't beneficial to the community. Just think about how weird it is to accuse the electric utility company of "not being there for altruistic reasons" or that "they are plundering your bank account". Like, is your life really better off if you save on utility bills while not having electricity?

Nobody is forcing Africa to give China access to minerals. China is not coming with guns. African leaders have said multiple times that when they say "no" to China, then China says "okay here's another proposal". They don't return with an army to force you to sign. If African nations signed a bad deal then they ought to take responsibility for that. These are countries that are supposed to be accountable for their own decisions, not toddlers. The onus is on them to do their homework before they enter a deal.

If you dislike the fact that Africa voluntarily makes such business deals with China, then maybe you ought to give Africa better business deals, or perhaps even gifts (as you seem to imply that only gifts are beneficial/valuable).

Unfortunately, western countries are doing neither: they keep lecturing about not working with China while also not providing any alternatives. Why do you think Africa deals with China in the first place? Because dealing with China — even if China's deals are not always problem-free — is still more beneficial than inaction and the status quo! Africa benefits more from having roads, bridges, schools and hospitals than from hoarding minerals.

Is really a friendly trade or just plounder?

https://dialogue.earth/en/pollution/741-china-s-environmenta...

The Chinese oil company Sinopec has been charged with mass pollution, dynamiting areas of a National Park in Gabon and carving roads through the forest

According to GlobalTimber.org.uk, China is sourcing huge amounts of wood from forests in Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Liberia. What is worrying is the illegal nature of this trade

Half of all wood imported from Cameroon into China is harvested illegally. In Gabon, 70% of wood exports to China are illegal. In Liberia 100% is illegal

The case of Nigeria and its Niger Delta oilfields is well known as an environmental disaster area

Due to the scale, of course there are problems. Of course there are actors that are not well behaved. But that doesn't mean that these incidents are representative of the whole.

Put it another way: if on the whole China's business is not net positive, then why does Africa continue to do business with China? Nothing prevents them from kicking all Chinese companies out. Nothing prevents them from giving fines to companies that violate the law. Nothing prevents them from renegotiating. African leaders have been saying for years that China's contributions are still net positive despite problems existing.

I am puzzled. Why are you still pointing out problems? Why are you ignoring everything else I said? This is so non-constructive. Africa does not need the west to give another lecture (pointing out problems only). It needs the west to walk the talk: instead of smearing, offer Africans a better alternative than both China and inaction. Offer solutions, and actually deliver them.

>> 100% of the wood in Liberia is exported to China illegally.

> doesn't mean that [100%] are representative of the whole

Liberia is not the only African country. Liberia also exported significant amount of illegal Timber to other countries, including western countries, so framing this as a uniquely China problem is misleading and disingenuous.

Now stop dodging and answer the other parts. Of is that too uncomfortable?

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