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Musings of a technologist & undergraduate political scientist/sociologist

Global South should auction energy fields

December 4th, 2007 · No Comments

The distinctive feature of a commodity auction is that all the suitors are sophisticated corporations, so there are no bargains. Auctions of this sort have the potential for misconduct, so they would need to be internationally verified.
Each key decision could be guided by standards. Citizens would then know what to demand of their governments. Those [...]

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Some notes on The Bottom Billion

August 21st, 2007 · 1 Comment

Some notes I’ve made on Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.
The problem
Five billion people in the world are living in developing and growing economies. One billion people in the world are living in conditions no better than in the preindustrial era, in areas [...]

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Colonialism still alive and well on Wikipedia

July 9th, 2007 · No Comments

I had to make an edit to an entry on trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) which claims that the loss of colonial authority is responsible for the resurgence of the disease, rather than the forced evacuations of habitable land by the British and their rather disastrous conservation policies.
I notice this days after talking with Mamading Ceesay, where [...]

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