OT: Idiot Power

Krw likes that word. What it means is that he can't see the relevance, which is less meaningful that it would be with someone with any demonstrated capacity to get his head around new ideas.

Very little makes sense to krw. He has zero capacity to process ideas that weren't programmed into his brain at his right-wing re-education camp, and routinely writes them off as "lies".

How about days when it doesn't operate?

They still get paid!

They are as irrelevant as the three-millimeter segments of Cat-6 cable that don't have the specified low crosstalk between pairs. It's just ONE SMALL ELEMENT of a bigger system. You don't solve one-day-at-a-time, you just solve at the decade timescale, to pay out the construction bondhol ders.

Alternate answer: reexamine the "25%" number.

DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno wrote in news:n8pd4g$jeq$1 gioia.aioe.org:

ISTM Vietnam turned out rather well. They've got Kentucky Fried Chicken,

We won. ;-)

As for working for 30 cents an hour (or whatever their area offers), they wouldn't do it if it weren't better than their alternatives.

In Africa I saw men working at hard labor for $3/day, roughly $0.30/hr. They were considered prosperous, respected in their communities. And proud. Taking that away ain't compassion.

Cheers, James Arthur

It didn't look much like it at the time.

Making their labour more productive and better paid wouldn't be a bad idea either.

a either.

Making their labor more productive might be a bad idea. Say now a building contractor hires 10 men to dig a ditch. That means $30 a day into the loc al economy. If you make the labor more productive by using 1 man and a bac k hoe. And say the back hoe operator gets $6 a day. So now you have 9 un employed and $6 going into the local economy.

Dan

r.

dea either.

ng contractor hires 10 men to dig a ditch. That means $30 a day into the l ocal economy. If you make the labor more productive by using 1 man and a b ack hoe. And say the back hoe operator gets $6 a day. So now you have 9 unemployed and $6 going into the local economy.

The Depression version of that thinking was encapsulated by someone complai ning that a back hoe was replacing a hundred men with shovels, or a million men with tea-spoons.

If the ditch was worth digging, there are probably other ditches that might have been dug if the process were cheaper. You dig a ditch because - in th e long term - you are going to make money out of it. If the cost of digging the ditch is reduced, several ditches that wouldn't have been profitable a t the old price now look profitable, and there will be more of whatever it was that the ditch facilitated.

Your grasp of economics isn't all that strong.

r.

dea either.

ng contractor hires 10 men to dig a ditch. That means $30 a day into the l ocal economy. If you make the labor more productive by using 1 man and a b ack hoe. And say the back hoe operator gets $6 a day. So now you have 9 unemployed and $6 going into the local economy.

people had the same complaint when the combine harvester was invented . . .

-Lasse

ht have been dug if the process were cheaper. You dig a ditch because - in the long term - you are going to make money out of it. If the cost of diggi ng the ditch is reduced, several ditches that wouldn't have been profitable at the old price now look profitable, and there will be more of whatever i t was that the ditch facilitated.

Maybe my grasp of economics is not all that strong, but it was good enough to pass a course Kenny G taught.

All the ditches I needed was one ditch per house for water , and sewage. I f the cost of digging was reduced, I would not have had several ditches per house.

Your grasp of ditches isn't all that strong.

Dan

And

d idea either.

lding contractor hires 10 men to dig a ditch. That means $30 a day into th e local economy. If you make the labor more productive by using 1 man and a back hoe. And say the back hoe operator gets $6 a day. So now you have 9 unemployed and $6 going into the local economy.

That misses part of the picture. You also have people paid to make & ship b ackhoes, build factories, machinery, mine iron ore etc.

laining that a back hoe was replacing a hundred men with shovels, or a mill ion men with tea-spoons.

ght have been dug if the process were cheaper. You dig a ditch because - in the long term - you are going to make money out of it. If the cost of digg ing the ditch is reduced, several ditches that wouldn't have been profitabl e at the old price now look profitable, and there will be more of whatever it was that the ditch facilitated.

to pass a course Kenny G taught.

If the cost of digging was reduced, I would not have had several ditches pe r house.

If ditches are cheaper, houses are cheaper and more get built. And money sa ved gets spent on other things. And god knows there are plenty of other thi ngs needing money spent on them in the 3rd world.

Industrialisation is short term disruptive to incomes, but long term it tac kles poverty in a major way, as it has done for us in the 1st world.

NT

ight have been dug if the process were cheaper. You dig a ditch because - i n the long term - you are going to make money out of it. If the cost of dig ging the ditch is reduced, several ditches that wouldn't have been profitab le at the old price now look profitable, and there will be more of whatever it was that the ditch facilitated.

h to pass a course Kenny G taught.

Who is Kenny G? Most US economists teach economics that sounds good to rich industrialists - they endow chairs.

That's two ditches. If you are going to put the water and the sewage into s eparate pipes (which is recommended) you can put them both in the same tren ch, and bury them both, but you've already moved upmarket from ditches.

Ditches also have agricultural applications, but your economics course woul dn't have covered that.

per > house.

If you were planning to put water and sewage in the same ditch, your own ne eds work.

Yes you do, but those paid to make backhoes are not in Africa.

Dan

That's one heck of a snip!

NT

I left in everything pertinent.

Dan

te:

hly $0.30/hr.

heh. not really. When machinery is used in China & India, it's frequently m ade there too. That that is less often the case in Africa is the result of less industrialisation, plus other factors. There's no denying that industr ialisation has had a huge positive impact on poverty in much of the world.

NT

Let me know what I left out and I will try to do better in the future.

Dan

They weren't in Japan either when the process started there.

Somebody designed a car with a wooden chassis for manufacture in Africa. I never heard that it became a commercial success, but we still support "Practical Action".

Faint hope.