Whole Earth Discipline: Urban Promise

[james_davis_nicoll]

Brand's annotations



This entry should have been done by Randy McDonald

This begins with an examination of the benefits modern technology of the sort that can send middled-aged SF fans into fits of rage can have for people in developing nations. Cellphones don't require landlines to be strung before they can be used and apparently people have been rather cunning about coming up with ways to use them to replace services they otherwise would not have access to:

Some people carry just a card and borrow a phone when needed. Safaricom, in Kenya, has a service called M-Pesa that lets the cell work as an ATM; to send someone money, you text-message the appropriate code to them, and they get cash from a local M-Pesa agent. Cellphone minutes are traded by phone as a cash substitute. Credit card payments are made by cellphone. Remittances from relatives overseas come by cellphone. [...]

It's like the Street finds its own use for technology.


[Speaking of the cyperpunk writers, have any of them reviewed this book?]

Note that I have not used a cell-phone in years so I don't know what Western cell phones are used for.

There's a crapload of money to be made in developing nation markets like this: Brand mentions Grameenphone but Mo Ibrahim's Celtel has also found riches in the African market.

There follows a somewhat infuriating (to me) discussion of population. Brand talks about the fears of overpopulation that his mentor Paul Ehrlich contributed to with statements like

[Ehrlich's] book begins: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” It concludes with Ehrlich recommending “compulsory birth regulation,” including government-provided sterilants in water and staple foods.

As I recall Ehrlich was also in favor of using threats to cut off foreign aid as way to blackmail developing nations into implementing the birth control policies Ehrlich favoured.

By the 1990s, it was clear to people like Brand that these population bomb models were incorrect. As Barry Commoner apparently predicted out in the 1970s, birth rates have in general plummeted. In fact, a useful model that Ehrlich and his ilk could have used could be found in the work of Warren Thompson, whose earliest papers on demographic transition date back to the 1920s!

Well, we all make mistakes and it's not like the population control people were the only ones eager to offer unsolicited advice, sometimes backed up with blackmail or bayonets, to developing nations. The people on the right will always have Chile and Argentina's disappeared to be proud of.

He then goes on to discuss some implications of current trends, which can be summed up with "even prosperous and peaceful populations can shrink alarmingly quickly under the right conditions". See discussions over on Demography Matters for more detailed explanations as why this can be bad for economies.

He then talks about solutions should falling birthrates be deemed undesirable but even the most successful of the methods he mentions (France's) only gets the rate up to just under replacement rate. More work is suggested.

The annoying part is that he still tries to salvage some dignity from the horrifically, nightmarishly wrong models he and Ehrlich used in the 1960s and the subsequent inhumane, colonialist policies that were proposed by Ehrlich and his ilk by suggesting that promoting the error-rotted models at least made people aware of the problem. Pardon me while I go scream in an empty room. Population rates would have fallen whether or not the west talked about forcing the third world to embrace condoms.

He doesn't mention Romania's decree 770, which just as a matter of clarification he had no hand in the creation of, not least because it would have been diametrically opposed to the policies he would have favoured. Here's wikipedia:

However, even at the start, reproductive freedom was severely restricted. Wishing to increase the birth rate, in 1966, Ceauşescu promulgated the decree 770 restricting abortion and contraception: only women over the age of 45 who had at least four children were eligible for either; in 1989, the number was increased to five children.[9] Mandatory gynecological revisions and penalizations against unmarried women and childless couples completed the natalist measures. The birthrate of 1967 was almost double the one of 1966, leaving a decreţei cohort who suffered because of crowded public services.[citation needed]

Despite the failure of decree 770 to accomplish its stated goals, expect panicky people to demand similar measures and by expect, I mean I can find examples in google already and by people I mean this is mostly going to be promoted by men (Note that I would count religious efforts to limit female autonomy as being in a different category).

He's bullish on the potential of what he calls the South (although it's really more the Equatorial than south, given the deplorable lack of land in the southern hemisphere). I think he's a little unclear about the limits of convergence: we've seen other underdeveloped economies experience impressive growth rates but they don't keep that growth rate up once they become developed nations. That said, a 22nd century world where everyone is roughly making the same amount per capita is one where the planetary economy is centered on Africa and Asia, not Europe and North America.

The chapter ends with a rather Jane Jacobian paean to the creative potential of urban life, even urban life that falls outside the usual sanctioned borders of behavior.

Comments

Decree 770

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

A little digging suggests that the Romanian birth rate doubled in 1967 but then declined over the next decade back down below replacement levels. Ceausescu's main achievement was tripling maternal mortality rates and creating well-stocked, spectacularly inhuman orphanages.

Re: Decree 770

[(Anonymous)]

Decree 770 seems to have had some effect, but it was a temporary, one-time bump. Basically there are more fortyish Romanians today than there would have been otherwise.

It's impossible to say what difference it made in the long run, but comparisons to Romania's neighbors suggest that by the 1980s its demographic effect had dwindled to not much.

That said, I'm not sure it's good practice to take the absolute worst example of pro-natalist policy anywhere ever as a stick to beat pro-natalist policies with.

I note in passing that Russia seems to be having some success with a (mostly) incentive-based model. Recent (like, last 18 months) projections suggest it may be elevating the Russian birthrate from "catastrophic, apocalyptic, nobody left to turn the lights out in fifty years" low to merely "well below replacement level" low.


Doug M.

Re: Decree 770

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

to beat pro-natalist policies with.

Not all pro-natalist policies. Just the ones based on forcing women to have babies against their will.

Re: Decree 770

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've heard recent European experience suggests that abundant child care and support for working mothers help somewhat. Apparently Germany has a problem with this.

Re: Decree 770

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but is anybody doing that any more?

There are still societies where there's intense cultural pressure on women to have children. But coercive natalism as a tool of government policy? Don't see that much these days.


Doug M.

Re: Decree 770

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

I was about to say "absolute second worse" thinking, of course, of the nazi's natalist policies, but Stalin's had to be worse than Chivechesku's.

so...fifth? possibly?

Re: Decree 770

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That said, I'm not sure it's good practice to take the absolute worst example of pro-natalist policy anywhere ever as a stick to beat pro-natalist policies with.

It sounds like a good idea to me, in large part because I find the entire idea of pro-natalist policies to be deeply wrong-headed. If we want a world where everyone can have a high standard of living and we can simultaneously maintain a reasonable level of biodiversity, then having a somewhat lower population than we have now is not a bad idea. It's not necessary, but it would make some of this a bit easier.

If you want more people in a particular nation, immigration works quite well to accomplish this. Anyone who prefers to increase local birthrates because they don't like immigration had better have some answers as to why they aren't simply being a racist.

Re: Decree 770

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There's a problem if the population is falling too fast to support the economy, which sucks so hard that nobody wants to immigrate. My understanding is that this is approximately the situation Russia is facing, though it's maybe not as bad as it was recently. We think of declining birthrates as a problem of prosperous Western democracies, but Russia is a different story.

Re: Decree 770

[(Anonymous)]

"I find the entire idea of pro-natalist policies to be deeply wrong-headed."

...I'm guessing you don't live in a country with a TFR of 1.5 or lower.

There are places where population is scheduled to halve in the next forty years, producing violently skewed population pyramids -- crazy stuff like a third of the population being sixty or older.

If a country doesn't want this, you're saying the only correct policy responses are (1) nothing, or (2) immigration!

This seems... not well thought out. (Also, kind of smug and obnoxious, but let that bide.) In a country with a rapidly declining population and little tradition of immigration, why would non-coercive pro-natalist policies be "deeply wrong-headed"?


Doug M.

Re: Decree 770

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure wanting to preserve local culture (e.g. feminism and gay rights and secularism, never mind other quirks) is "racist". One might feel native child-raising propagates culture better than immigration, especially massive immigration from rather different cultures.

Re: Decree 770

[yorksranter.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I put it to you that trying to blame Stewart Brand for Ceausescu is over the line, and the sort of trick I'd expect from Canadian institutions like Mark Steyn and Conrad Black. If you weren't trying to suggest that, I apologise in advance for the offence no doubt caused, but in that case I feel the prose could have been clearer.

Re: Decree 770

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else think Brand was being blamed for Ceausescu above?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Logistic/sigmoidal curves were often used to describe population growth in the 1920s. Raymond Pearl used it as his basic mathematical model in his 1925 Biology of Population Growth in 1925. It fell to the wayside for complicated sociological reasons in a very small field (i.e. people not playing well with others and little institutional memory).

Ehrlich returned to the more primitive Malthusian model, which suited his ideological preferences.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

As with this Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper from 1920 (warning, 1.3 M PDF):

The upper asymptote given by (xviii) has the value 197,274,000 roughly. This means that according to equation (xviii) the maximum population which continental United States, as now areally limited, will ever have will be roughly twice the present population. We fear that some will condemn at once the whole theory because the magnitude of this number is not sufficiently imposing. It is so easy, and most writers on population have been so prone, to extrapolate population by geometric series, or by a parabola or some such purely empirical curve, and arrive at stupendous figures, that calm consideration of real probabilities is most difficult to obtain.

Of course the authors were off, and there is a love for the curve for its own sake, but they understood why they might be:

So that unless our food habits radically change, and a man is able to do with less than 3000 to 3500 calories per day, or unless our agricultural production radically increases, it will be necessary when our modest figure for the asymptotic population is reached, to import nearly or quite one-half of the calories necessary for that population.

As it turns out, agricultural productivity skyrocketed.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I recall seeing sigmoidal curves in educational films about population growth in elementary school in the 1970s. The leveling out of the sigmoid was, however, described as happening when population growth started to outstrip resources--in other words, not a situation you wanted to be in.

People amazingly frequently continue to describe human population growth as exponential to this day. I've caused several people vocal surprise by telling them it's not.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

At the level of the individual, the demographic transition happens when people -- families, women -- decide to have fewer children for pretty much that reason. It's an economic decision in the root sense of that word: household management.

So the 1970s explanation isn't wrong per se, except the interpretation is completely hostile.

Anyhow. It's a little weird that birth and death rates level out so closely after the demographic transition. I suspect it's strongly cultural.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That said, a 22nd century world where everyone is roughly making the same amount per capita is one where the planetary economy is centered on Africa and Asia, not Europe and North America.

Where, if Canada maintains its share of the world population, Canada has the same relative economic throw-weight globally that Phoenix Arizona does with respect to the United States. No seat at the G(pick a number) then, I think.

Convergence

[(Anonymous)]

is harder than it looks.

First World a hundred years ago was Western Europe, the US/Canada, and Australia/NZ. First World today is the same group plus Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. Bully for offshore East Asia, but that's not a lot of new members per century.

Africa has several countries which are contemplating the jump from lower income to lower middle income. That's awesome. I mean it's really, truly great. But that's still a very long way from a globally flat income distribution.


Doug M.

Re: Convergence

[heron61.livejournal.com]

True, but from what I've seen, China is no more than 20 years from being a first world nation. It's likely to be a somewhat sucky first world nation for the poor, but the US is currently this sort of first world nation. The addition of China will mean a really large percentage of the world's population lives in a first world nation.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but ... circumstances change. Nothing ever "goes on like this".

Look at the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the Mongol Empire: Austria and Mongolia are footnotes. But it works the other way, too -- ca. 400, a ragged group that lost a civil war in what is now Heilongjiang Province, and had to hit the road or die -- a thousand years later, their descendants were breaching the walls of Constantinople. Who knows what Canada will be even a Century from now.

History moves sideways.

TSM_in_Toronto

M-Pesa

[(Anonymous)]

"Safaricom, in Kenya, has a service called M-Pesa that lets the cell work as an ATM; to send someone money, you text-message the appropriate code to them, and they get cash from a local M-Pesa agent."

I just gave a presentation on this. A firm that I work with wants to sell cash demand prediction software to M-Pesa. (You want your agents to have enough cash to handle demand. You don't want them carrying around too much because that causes cash flow problems and is also a security risk.) There's very good software that's used for ATMs -- it can be programmed to include stuff like, ohh, the professional sports schedule, for machines around the downtown stadium -- and it can probably be adapted for M-Pesa.

There are tricky bits. You want reliable network coverage over most of your country. You really don't want a sudden system crash, never mind a major security breach. To set up the system in the first place you have to persuade two elephants, the telecoms regulator and the central bank, to dance a duet.

Every country in Africa now wants to cut-and-paste this system. Not all of them will be able to. You need a minimum level of technical chops -- Botswana, Senegal and Ghana will probably be able to manage, but I have my doubts about Niger or Burundi.

And you also need... how to put this? Regulatory systems that are not totally corrupt, FUBAHOR and/or totally dominated by rent-seekers. So, Nigeria totally has the technical chops, and its large population could make this a serious money-making proposition, but I'm not sure Nigeria's telecom sector will be able to let it happen. (On the other hand, Kenya pulled it off, and Kenya isn't exactly Norway. Other-other hand, it sort of happened while nobody was paying attention, and before the incumbent players quite realized just how great it would be.)

Anyway, yeah. Next big African thing: windmills and photovoltaic cells.


Doug M.

Re: M-Pesa

[yorksranter.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

As this is actually in my own field of specialisation; MPESA actually started off as a Vodafone Group CSR project part funded by the UK Department for International Development. Safaricom is a VF partner network, though they don't own it.

Safaricom rolled it out, and then indeed, the street found its own uses etc. But it started off with a bunch of besuited OSS-BSS systems consultants, Vodafone executives, and international-aid civil servants. It just looks favela chic - inside it's British and Swedish SQL monkeys all the way down:-)

It probably will get deployed in Nigeria with success; Vodafone owns a network there, as it does in South Africa and Egypt. If they can roll it out on a largely independent local partner network, they can surely do so in an actual Vodafone Group division.

France Telecom/Orange is deeply keen on this market in their West African markets as well (like, Niger, Senegal etc), although they aren't using the same technology. Valista does a white label solution. Zain (Celtel as was) has been deploying a system with a different business model and their own technology; Tanzania now has three competing systems. (I'd say more but you could buy our strategy report;-))

Mind you, apparently things aren't so good at Zain since Mo sold up; a lot of the pioneers have quit and been replaced by people from the Kuwaiti PTT. good luck with that.

Re: M-Pesa

[(Anonymous)]

I have a nodding acquaintance with the Nigerian telecoms regulator. Not encouraging. But I would be very happy to be wrong.

(The interconnectivity issues alone are fascinating. If I am using Provider A, and Mom in the village uses B, should I be able to send her money? And if so, how much should A charge B for the trqnsaction?)


Doug M.

Re: M-Pesa

[(Anonymous)]

"inside it's British and Swedish SQL monkeys all the way down"

That one made my day.

--Stewart Brand

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Note that I have not used a cell-phone in years so I don't know what Western cell phones are used for.

On my BlackBerry? Email; banking when on the road; air port check-in and digital boarding pass; stock, commodity price and exchange rate monitoring; camera (video and still); voice recorder; sometimes gaming device; could be used as a media player, but I don't; taking quick notes at meetings or for shopping lists when I'm on the road; emergency flashlight (there's an app for that that cranks up the screen brightness and the LED); sometimes document reader; GPS and mapping unit; alarm clock; portable memory device; and appointment calendar.

I used all of those functions on my last business trip (yes, even the flashlight). Due to some incidents I've been involved in, I also use it at home as a documentation device when I'm on an emergency medical call so I can snap a picture of the scene and record some quick notes if it looks like it might be necessary.

On rare occasions, I actually do talk to someone on it.