tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-266865392024-03-18T22:59:58.865-04:00NemozenNemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-70222926869419697982023-11-11T07:53:01.441-05:002023-12-24T03:26:07.287-05:00Startups in Ethiopia: 5 obstacles the government should remove<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">"Addis, we have a problem."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br></div><div style="text-align: left;">According to one report, the total venture capital invested in Ethiopia in 2022 was $4M. Less than a single startup does on average in a "series A" VC round:</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://fintechnews.africa/41556/fintechafrica/fintech-retains-crown-as-investors-favorite-startup-sector-in-africa/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="1144" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJwoptzKzOww2bpw-2cvuzY-FSj_X5wvSb4yiBiWn2ebj9SM_mmjvSRGN3d7cjO5-9hNAaetXbXW1IOpZdKNVmMHCMY6tqW-YuXNbGT2G_95hs0ewpxaRmJOsaFBf9D1T9AWqS7ienPuLTxd1YecDivejnPZ1EdvncU3t9z9j-vHH-aMGK9fsqFw=w320-h238" width="320"></a></div><div>Lest you think this is an unfair comparison with the rich world, in Africa, there are 21 countries with a smaller population but larger amount of venture investing. There are 15 countries with a smaller GDP and more investment. Within Africa, while Kenya, Senegal and Ghana are punching above their weight, Ethiopia is so far below it literally falls out of the picture:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1692" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg60y99wBGJbBPQ1WYkU0ovow_ht4-d4po6EQplzMh8e0Vp1UjANneKdRSuIIYW6aQgIFhVT8UDJpqtlM1qN8ESKheQXuj5aNAq50C4xPb5PqlXVasTr2xrKFtuwST-qN4rJKg3m1QXMv3Q5oKTzkkxiFs11Xni1qRogVvB680u3p91gIDmykXmA/w264-h320/Frvao-XWwAA3kRS.jpeg" style="color: #0000ee; text-align: center;" width="264"></div><div>To be sure, total VC investment is not the most important metric. Only a tiny minority of companies ever need professional early stage investment. Still, the absence of venture capital is a symptom of the broader reality. Another indicator is that all of the companies in Ethiopia with more than $1B/year in revenue are state owned (Ethiopian Airlines, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Ethio Telecom and Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise, etc.). More than three decades after the end of communism, there's still not a single company that began as a startup and ended up very big. </div><div><br></div><div>There are many problems, like the <a href="/2023/06/the-mother-of-all-distortions-ethiopias.html" target="_blank">foreign currency regime</a>, <a href="/2021/11/what-happened-in-ethiopia-simplistic.html" target="_blank">war</a>, <a href="/2021/11/ethiopia-and-ethnicity-rat-race-part-2.html" target="_blank">politics fubar</a>, and<a href="https://addisinsight.net/devastating-results-only-3-of-ethiopian-students-score-above-50-on-national-exit-exam/" target="_blank"> education</a>, that go much beyond startups. Still, the <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD?end=2022&locations=ET&start=2013" target="_blank">GDP is growing</a>! And you can't spend one day in Ethiopia without noticing huge opportunities for startups to address. There are so many things to do. So what is wrong when it comes to startups? Any entrepreneur in Ethiopia knows the answer first hand: Ethiopia is extremely unfriendly to startups.</div><div><br></div><div>Here are few examples, based on my experience, of obstacles the government could eliminate. I'm sure you could come up with a lot more. The key feature of my examples is that none of them require money or new technology or new powers to solve. They are just bureaucratic problems that in principle could be eliminated with the stroke of a pen.</div><div><p><b>Simplify company registration</b></p><p>To formally register a company you have to register the name at the Ministry of Trade. Then you to do a "Principal Registration". And third you have to do a tax registration. While these are not the biggest problems, it could easily be made into a single step instead of three. </p><p>Furthermore, in the registration process, the company address is a surprising complication. In most countries you can legally start a company with pretty much any valid address. It could be your house, your friend's apartment, a corporate agent or lawyer's office, a post office box, whatever. Google started in a garage. Dell started in a college dorm. The vast majority of technology startups don't get a long term office until they have at least gotten some traction with a product or customers. Nowadays, with the growth of remote work, it may be a long while before you need a traditional office. But in Ethiopia, you have to have a formal commercial lease in the company's name, and it can't be a residence. You have to make a legal long term real estate deal before you can do anything, even if the business doesn't actually need it nor can afford it.</p><p><b>Document authentication</b></p><p>Not only that, the lease has to be authenticated by the government. If the lease is signed by a building manager, you have to prove the manager has a power of attorney from the landlord. If the building has more than one owner, each owner must provide the power of attorney. If one of the owners is outside the country, the power of attorney must go through the "apostille" process, involving the ministry of foreign affairs of the other country, the Ethiopian embassy in the nearest country, and the Ethiopian foreign ministry in Addis Abeba. The process takes weeks or months. </p><p>The same process is required for many other company documents, like shareholder agreements, investment agreements, etc. It's hard for people from normal countries to even imagine this. It's absolutely insane.</p><p>In most countries, business agreements are mainly up to the parties involved. Whether they write their agreement from scratch, use templates, hire lawyers, notarize etc. it's really up to the two parties to be as formal as they need. If there's a misunderstanding or dispute, the two parties negotiate a common understanding of what the agreement was and settle it. Very rarely, the dispute goes to court. But even then the court can interpret business agreements even if they weren't authenticated by the government. There's almost never any <i>a priori</i> authentication or approval by the government of a simple business agreement.</p><p>But in Ethiopia, one spends countless hours at the "Document Authentication and Registration Authority". This government office is often praised for being relatively well managed and efficient compared to most bureaucracies. So this is not a criticism of their performance. The issue is that too many other government functions require you to go there. Even the simplest deal that you could document on the back of a napkin has to be treated as if it's the last will and testament of Croesus. Why do so many business agreements have to be verified and approved by the government, even when the parties involved don't need that? This is ridiculously time and effort consuming. A burden that startups can ill afford. </p><p><b>Business license </b></p><p>A bigger issue is that every business requires a business license. In most countries, you can just register a company and get to work. You may need a license if you sell alcohol, or weapons, etc. You need a license to drive a car or to perform surgery. But those are activities where there's a specific concern for the safety or health of others, and that justifies preemptive government control of that particular activity. Outside of those, in a normal country, by default things are allowed unless explicitly forbidden. In Ethiopia everything is forbidden unless explicitly allowed. You must get a license in a predefined category. If the right category doesn't exist, tough luck. If you are expanding vertically, you need to get another license instead of just doing it. When you are doing something new, or growing, this is a real barrier.</p><p><b>Investment license </b></p><p>There's a concept of "investment license". You need to ask permission from the government to invest! If you are used to a relatively free economy this is bizarre. Why? There's already criminal law to prevent or punish specific things. Why should the act of investing in a completely legal activity require permission? Everyone will tell you investment licenses are very important in Ethiopia, but almost no one can explain why the concept exists. Like in the parable of the <a href="https://www.excitant.co.uk/gorillas-bananas-hosepipe-embed-behaviour/" target="_blank">gorillas in a cage</a>, that's just the way it's always been. </p><p>If you are lucky enough to find a rare person who can explain it, you learn it was intended to <i>encourage</i> investment. And licensing was meant to regulate who can get tax breaks and other incentives. So it was supposed to be an optional positive incentive mechanism. But it has evolved into a barrier, you have to overcome it whether you want the incentives or not. Random government agencies routinely say: show me your investment license or else you can't do this or that.</p><p>To make matters worse, there are state and federal level investment licenses, and maybe a dozen different commissions who give them. Which one do you go to? It is surprisingly difficult to get the answer. It depends on whether you are classified as foreign or domestic investors, and on where your operations are. What if they are in more than one state? What if you are a person of Ethiopian origin but established abroad, are you domestic or foreign? It all depends. And making the wrong guess can be very dangerous. You have minimum investment amounts, in some cases it's US$150K, in others US$200K. If you invest US$149K, could you be breaking the law? It is very hard to make sense of it all.</p><p>To get an investment license, the company has to pass an audit by the ministry of revenue. Even if your company was founded yesterday and has zero revenue, you have to do this audit which can take weeks. In a normal country, you pay taxes once a year. If the government suspects the payment is incorrect, it does an audit after the fact. The principle is: If you cheat, you get caught and pay the penalties. In Ethiopia, investors are treated like they are cheating before they get started. Imagine if the police arrested you every morning because you might decide to commit a crime that day. And then you prove your future innocence and they let you go to work.</p><p>By the way, is the license for the company or for the investor or both? Most people can't even answer that. It's very difficult to even find the right rules, let alone understand and obey them. </p><p>Far from being a positive incentive mechanism, the investment license has become a Kafkaesque bureaucratic weapon. And when such a weapon is available, it creates a pockets of bribe-seeking criminals in government.</p><p><b>Unrealized valuation increase may be taxed</b></p><p>Say you found a startup. You register the company with shares divided between you and your co-founders, with a nominal value like $1 per share. After some progress, an investor comes in with a $500K investment for <i>new </i>shares of the company at $10 per share. On paper, your founder shares increased in price from $1 to $10. But this gain is not "realized", no shareholders received any cash. The $500K goes to the company's expenses to help it grow. Of course, if there are salaries, every employee, founder or not, pays ordinary income tax. But no one pays capital gains taxes yet. It's only if the company succeeds and you sell your shares for more than the original price ($1 for founder, $10 for the investors) that you pay capital gains tax. If the company fails, there are no gains and no capital gains taxes. This is how it works in most places. </p><p>In Ethiopia too, in theory, capital gains are only taxed when realized. But apparently the tax authorities sometimes demand that, when investors buy new shares for $10, the company pay 30% tax on the capital gain from $1 to $10. And this payment is required up front. So $150K goes to the government, and the company only gets $350K to work with. Obviously no one wants to make an already risky investment where you lose 30% on day 1.</p><p>One solution is to simply not increase the share price. Keep it at $1. But that means the most basic mechanism of tech startups, which is that founders and employees get most of the value through their "sweat equity" doesn't work. </p><p>What if you don't ask the government for permission? Investors could just do the stock purchase agreement and simply wire the money to the company? In the US, there is no government involvement, you just do it. It doesn't mean anything goes of course, you have to make sure your investors are accredited and that you are not misleading them or committing fraud. But all these are things that you can just do. There's no prior approval. In Ethiopia, that is very risky. If the investment money is given to the company without a government license, it may be treated as corporate income and taxed at 30%. Or worse, you could be accused of some kind of financial crime.</p><p><b>What is to be done?</b></p><p>Entrepreneurs love to take risks, to solve hard technical problems, build products, serve people, improve the world, make a small dent in the universe. And in Ethiopia, God knows there is so much to be done, it should be an entrepreneur's paradise. But what you end up working on are these pathetic artificial problems created by bad government. No one grows up dreaming of getting a license from the government or a letter from this bureaucrat or a stamp from that office. The striking thing when you talk to entrepreneurs in Ethiopia is how often you encounter dreams ground to dust.</p><p>But here's the silver lining. Solving these problems does not require any money. In fact, nothing here is asking for help or any favors from the government; every single idea here is about something the government should <i>not</i> do. Specifically </p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Delete the requirement for an office lease and combine the trade and finance ministry process into a single step. Let startups be startups. </li><li>Delete the requirement for document authentication for business agreements. The government has no business getting involved in private business agreements. </li><li>Abolish investment licenses. Convert the investment commissions into consulting bodies that the private sector can go to voluntarily for help. They should provide service and not have any power to license, to permit or forbid. If that means tax incentives go away, so be it. Don't let the tax tail wag the business dog. Real entrepreneurs don't do stuff for tax breaks. They do it because they want to do the thing.</li><li>Abolish business licenses as the general case. Licensing should be limited to areas where there is a clear potential for harm to the public or third parties not involved in the business. The government should be forbidden by law from imposing licensing requirements unless they can prove this potential harm.</li><li>Eliminate pre-emptive audits, taxation, clearance etc. The tax authorities already have plenty of power to catch cheaters after the fact. There is no need to involve them in any aspect of gate keeping investment.</li></ol><p></p><p>It's simple. But it is not easy. It requires a lot of courage and wisdom. The wisdom to understand that the government needs to do less and get out of the way. The courage and skill to implement reforms where special interests who benefit from inefficiencies will resist. <b>DELETE</b> is the missing key in Ethiopian bureaucracy.</p><p><i>P.S. Thanks to Tessema Getachew and Henok Assefa for feedback on a draft of this post. And to Addis Alemayehu and others for previous discussions (e.g. <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1618130832757252096">here</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1638442360471277568">here</a>). All inaccuracies are my own. Comments and feedback welcome!</i></p></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-52826423029484527712023-06-03T07:04:00.049-04:002023-06-06T01:54:55.639-04:00The mother of all distortions: Ethiopia's foreign currency peg<h4 style="text-align: left;">Check your ideology at the door</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Perhaps the biggest economic topic in Ethiopia today is foreign currency. Sadly, much of the discussion around it is low quality. Instead of reasoning<span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;"> from first principles, people drown in jargon and misunderstood theories: inflation, socialism, neoliberalism, colonialism, IMF, China, bla bla bla. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Whether the motivations are naivete or special interests, t</span><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">he result is many strongly held but incoherent beliefs.</span><span color="inherit" style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;"> To navigate this, let's be guided by this (perhaps apocryphal) quote from the great physicist Richard Feynman: "</span>If you can't explain something to a child, there's a chance you don't understand it well". So don't let any expert tell you: "it's too complex, don't try to understand, just believe my prediction". In that spirit, dear reader, please leave your isms and schisms at the door and join me in this <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/eli5" target="_blank">ELI5</a> version of the problem of foreign currency in Ethiopia.</p><div><i>Notes: </i></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><i>In this post, we will talk about US Dollars as the "foreign" currency, but all of it applies equally to Euros or any freely exchanged and widely used currency.</i></li><li><i>Feedback is welcome. If there are factual errors, please let me know and I will correct them. If you have a solid counter-argument to any point made herein, feel free to comment here or contact me on Twitter, and I will respond and update the post (with credit!).</i></li></ol></div><div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Two markets</h4></div><p>How much is one US Dollar worth in Ethiopian Birr? Officially the price is pegged, currently at around <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=usd+etb">55 ETB per USD</a>. But if an ordinary person, let's call him Abebe, simply goes to his bank and asks to buy 1 dollar for 55 birr, they will say no. There is a limited supply of dollars. Ok how about 56, 57, ...? Nope. Now what if at the same time, another customer, let's call her Berhane, has a dollar and she's willing to sell it for 56? Naturally, the bank should be happy to buy that dollar at 56 and sell it to Abebe at 57. The buyer, the seller, and the bank would be happy. Problem solved! Actually no, by law, the bank is not allowed to do that. It must sell only to approved buyers at the official price and if that means those two customers go home unsatisfied, so be it. </p><p>So what is the alternative? Abebe and Berhane could meet privately, find a mutually agreeable price and exchange. This is called the parallel market (also known as the "black" market). Of course, even though it's a private transaction, just like when people buy and sell eggs or bread or whatever, information gets around and a market price emerges. These days it is apparently around <a href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/34091/">105 ETB per USD</a>. No one is forcing this price, it's just a rough average of a lot of private transactions. In each case, the buyer and seller get what they need. Problem solved! Actually no, by law Abebe and Berhane are not allowed to do that.</p><p>So we have two markets: the official one where the price is pegged by law, and relatively few people can transact. And the "parallel" market where the price is voluntary but it is illegal. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Mind the gap</h4><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRWqEwufv1eesizhka9hZu9YcOaDOqk24Lthmv9Jkf-nebeVoQ5nYUngC_rJVBsYpPKeyketL4syY0l/pubchart?oid=663078837&format=image" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="600" height="198" src="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRWqEwufv1eesizhka9hZu9YcOaDOqk24Lthmv9Jkf-nebeVoQ5nYUngC_rJVBsYpPKeyketL4syY0l/pubchart?oid=663078837&format=image" width="320"></a></div><p>Having two markets would be no big deal if they were reasonably close. Even in free market prices, there are gaps due to distance, convenience, time delays, etc. But in this case, one price is almost double the other! This is an extreme gap by historical standards, a structural gap created by a legal barrier between the two markets. Let's examine how this barrier affects different people. </p><p>There are two groups, buyers (who have birr and want dollars) and sellers (who have dollars and want birr). </p><p>First consider the sellers. What brings dollars into Ethiopia? Roughly: </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Remittances: $6B/yr</li><li>Foreign investment: $4B/yr</li><li>Exports: $4B/yr</li><li>International aid: $3B/yr<br></li><li>Tourism: $0.4B/year</li></ul>So anyone involved in those activities using the peg is getting 55 instead of 105. If an exporter sells coffee abroad, and brings back $1, they are getting half as many birr that trickle back to pay farmers, transportation etc. In other words, it's like there's a 50% tax on exports. Similarly if an investor wants to bring $1M into Ethiopia they are getting the equivalent of 50% tax on their investment before they even hire their first employee or lay the first brick. Ditto for remittances, if a diaspora Ethiopian sends money to family in Ethiopia at the official rate, 50% tax. For visitors, it's like they are paying double for everything they consume in Ethiopia. Of course, it's not literally a tax. But with the peg, the only choice is to pay 50% or not do the activity at all. In other words it's just like a tax. And whenever something is taxed, at the margin, the tax can be the difference between an activity being feasible or not, which means the volume of that activity is less than it would be without the tax.<div><br><div>Now, having left ideology at the door, we won't assume taxes are automatically good or bad. Instead, let's ask what are the costs and benefits. We know the cost: it reduces legal exports, investment, remittances and to a lesser extent tourism. What or who does it benefit? <p style="text-align: left;">The buyers of course. Those who get dollars at the pegged rate. To get legal dollars, you need a "letter of credit", which allows the bank to take your birr and give you dollars to use abroad. This permission goes to the government itself and to private imports prioritized by the government.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Debatable priorities and the problem of central planning</h4><div><p>This leaves the Ministry of Finance the unenviable task of deciding the relative importance of hundreds or thousands of things, and deciding which ones should get higher priority for letters of credit, lower priority or none at all. Last October, the government decided to <a href="https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/MTIwNDU1Mzk5Ng">ban letters of credit for 38 items</a>. </p><p><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht55gNzrOCPDEMI-A5a_sBnh7PDSurQsaHhhT09E81gpKlzCpe2wMSOWI5E9G9Cc_tFH5QQm04yMHZG7BM791VCeH25GyPOOHVioCMpcviobdS1IjUn6sN0dPywB-kKj9vCUrfIBEpkE09J6yO0UrXxAnmM2bnCx2K9dwwDErVekstHGc0vtI/s320/FfE70hkagAIUMnJ.jpeg" width="30%">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj78Axj6UaQnCzT6FogEoSf5r6-zU_P4ckUNiR46QvECYQD-22QAUWoX790G3TdqmLNGr2QSTvNM8cWNojlrW3JxGqjQhzSEUCNXVewSEOjlid6tcmIhy-2WCMfKdbhHHcMDTDeUU2xLAVmp4KfgNhIDmsVO2qMkh9YJzelzWlcRQ-4ZOR_jzs/s320/FfE70hhaYAAiR9j.jpeg" width="30%">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBozWTxR6hbobe6BKXlfX7_WGGy_YvVVMCnk5WZw8VYChHAjCDODQGcku-Waf7ZkOIoKgyy69iRBifdcPKrvl5_Va2LD2H-mrN_am1DvPRQQgVwu3y9e34xjp5K3NrlbcVbloVSHDHqPIT4UBYzdCIKHdtq4x3KYZopbZvD8gz6kpOh7YGM4g/s320/FfE70hgaMAEmn51.jpeg" width="30%"> </p></div><div><p>The list includes oddly specific items like "Vimto", impossibly vague categories like "Different games", and hilarious ones like "Artificial and Human hairs" and "tiaras". Comedy aside, some choices are really sad. "Bicycles"! That one really broke my heart. </p><p>Oil gets a double subsidy: first from foreign currency priority, and second from getting explicit subsidies of the price at the fuel pump. Believe it or not, in Ethiopia which doesn't produce any oil, has a foreign currency crisis, and where less than 1% of the population has cars, the price of gasoline is half of the price in neighboring Kenya! Fuel subsidies may be one thing that is even crazier than the foreign currency nightmare, but let's leave that for another post.</p></div><p>Meanwhile, businesses are suffocating because they can't get foreign currency. If you make electrical equipment, you can't get the dollars to import copper, so you stop and wait. If you are constructing a building, you can't get dollars to buy steel, so you stop. <a href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/31424/">Over 200 business ceased operations because of lack of foreign currencies. Manufacturers are getting less than 15% of the foreign currency they need for raw materials</a>, according to the Ministry of Finance. A common sight around Addis Abeba is unfinished buildings, sitting half-built for months or years, a constant demonstration of wasted land, wasted capital, lost opportunities. If you talk to anybody in manufacturing, you will be overwhelmed with stories of dying companies. Companies fail all the time of course, that's the nature of business. But the heartbreaking thing is they are not failing for business reasons. Imagine you have the right idea, you invest lots of money, hire the right employees, make the right product, find the right customers. You are willing to pay for inputs at market value, but, understandably, you don't want to go to the black market. So you just sit and wait for permission to buy your inputs. And eventually close up shop. That is the tragic fate of many many businesses that could help the livelihood of millions, dying because of this foreign currency policy.</p><p>Perhaps the starkest illustration of the failure of this central planning approach to prioritization is: "<a href="https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/33756/">Lack of forex to import fertilizer threatens agricultural output</a>". Nothing is more important than agricultural production, and the government understands that. So they planned ahead and allocated $1B for fertilizer, much more than last year. But due to global market changes, the need is $1.2B. So here we are with a shortage of fertilizer. </p><p>In short what we have is the classic "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem">economic calculation problem</a>" which forever plagues central planning. The problem is not that the planners have bad intentions, nor that they are not smart enough, nor that they don't have the right data, nor that they need more powerful computers. It's more fundamental. In a large economy, the full information to make the optimal allocations simply does not exist in one place at one time no matter how much you try. You cannot sit at a desk and decide for 100M people whether steel is more or less important than copper, or whether aspirin is more important than fertilizer. The information is distributed in the subjective values and decisions of thousands of different actors, and when they act locally on their specific problems, their collective intelligence is much greater than even the best possible central planner.</p><h4>Inefficiency of indirect subsidies</h4><p>Further, even if we assume the priorities are perfectly correct and everyone agrees, there is another basic problem. Who pays for them? The cost is of course being born by the sellers we identified above: exporters, people receiving remittances, etc. And the benefit goes to specific imports. Which raises the question: why should coffee exporters or remittances carry the cost of gasoline for car owners? Why shouldn't plumbers, teff farmers or real estate businesses share the burden? A society may decide the rich should subsidize the poor, or some things should have punitive taxes, etc. But implicitly making one sector pay for another specific sector is unfair and inefficient, and leads to many unintended consequences. If the society wants something to be subsidized, then it's better for the government to spend money directly on that thing, using money that it collects through normal explicit taxes. The optimal mix of taxes (VAT, duties, income tax, etc.) is a separate debate the society can have. But whatever the specific combination of taxes, explicit taxes are better than an implicit tax via currency controls.</p><h4>Corruption</h4><p>Another problem is that access to foreign currency becomes an exorbitant privilege, so there's an extreme incentive for corruption. Common sense says that when there's a magic way of doubling your money, there's bound to be some cheating. The people who are most adept at playing the privilege game will get more of it, while those who are politically naive get less. To think otherwise is to ignore human nature. Cronyism and corruption is rewarded and productive work is penalized. This is of course extremely damaging to the economic and moral health of the society.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">The grey zone</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Inevitably, many of those who can't get this privilege resort to the parallel market. Indeed, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-21/black-market-currency-trade-thrives-in-ethiopia-as-economy-tanks">the black market has become mainstream</a>. Increasingly this is not just individuals like Abebe and Berhane in our story above, but also in business. Research shows that <a href="https://cepheuscapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ethiopia-Macroeconomic-Handbook-2023.pdf">prices of imported commodities are tracking the parallel market rather than the peg</a>. Banks too are flirting with the black market, by adding <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/ethiopias-informal-currency-exchanges-validate-or-veto">transaction fees as high as 60% </a>to bridge the gap. Even parts of government are resorting to the black market. For example, earlier this year, there was a huge <a href="https://borkena.com/2023/02/19/buses-procurement-sparks-disputes-among-metropolitans/">public bus procurement scandal</a>. The Addis Abeba city government paid 19 million birr per bus, which according to the peg, is about $350K. Critics screamed that those same buses cost less than $150K internationally, so surely someone pocketed the difference! But an alternative explanation soon emerged: the<a href="https://twitter.com/princeMesfin/status/1628087325828820992"> importer had to get their foreign currency at the parallel market rate.</a> Using that rate, and adding the cost of shipping etc., the price seems more reasonable. Should you praise the importer for creative problem-solving (after all the city does need more public buses!), or condemn them for price gouging? You decide. It is a bit like the debate about "illegal" vs "undocumented" immigrants in the US, but much worse. Exploiter and exploited start to blur into an unhappy grey zone. Huge swaths of society are operating outside the law. The hypocrisy is staggering. People will publicly defend the peg and privately use the black market. That's not only legally risky for everyone involved, it's deeply corrosive to the rule of law. Ethiopia is becoming a mafia state.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">The solution</h4><p style="text-align: left;">The polite economist word for this nightmare is "distortion". And while the consequences are very wide and complicated, there is a simple and narrow solution. The government could simply revoke the law that says Abebe, Berhane and the banks are not allowed to exchange their USD for ETB at whatever price they agree to. That's what is meant by jargon like "float" or "unification", "liberalization", etc. Just let the two parties agree on a price. No other laws need to change. Any product that is illegal can remain illegal. Banking licenses don't need to change. Just decriminalize voluntary price. That's it. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And, surprise! That is actually the current Ethiopian government's position. Don't take my word for it. It said so in 2019: <a href="https://www.mfw4a.org/news/ethiopia-central-bank-announces-floating-exchange-rate-regime">Ethiopia: Central Bank announces floating exchange rate regime</a>. And again in 2020: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-28/ethiopia-sees-new-benchmark-rate-floating-currency-after-2023">Ethiopia Plans New Key Rate, Floating Currency to Boost Economy</a>. Even now in 2023, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/1/19/ethiopia-deputy-financemin-rumour-of-fx-devaluation-unfounded">exchange rate unification remains the goal</a>. But the policy is "gradual", and 4 years in, the peg remains and the gap is growing. So what are we waiting for? Why don't they just waive this magic wand today? </p><p style="text-align: left;">The reasons for this inability to execute the change fall in two categories. First, this inefficiency benefits some special interests, even if it hurts the majority. And multi-billion dollar special interests, both within and outside government, are tough get rid of. The second set of reasons is many sincere but misguided fears, both within and outside the government, of what would happen with such a change. Let's examine them.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Inflation: the map and the territory</h4><p>The most common fear is: if the currency is floated, inflation will go up. But this is due to a misunderstanding. Let's say the international price of copper is $0.10 per gram. And the local competition is such that importers can't make more than 10% profit. If copper is a priority and importers get letters of credit allowing them to buy dollars at 55 ETB/USD, they can import it for 5.50 birr and sell it to you for 6 Birr. Ok great. But if the importers can't get foreign currency, what is the price? It's as if the price is infinity. You could go bankrupt while waiting for copper to be available. Or go to jail buying it from smugglers. Now suppose the importers can get dollars at a market rate legally, they will bring it in at a cost of 10 birr and sell it for 11. The naive academic might say there is inflation because the price went up from 6 to 11. But people in the real world realize that 11 is less than infinity! Scarcity is a form of inflation. Focusing only on official prices while ignoring scarcity is mistaking the map for the territory, or mistaking the thermometer for the temperature. </p><p>Of course inflation is a serious problem so it's easy to fall for this fallacy. But would you trust a doctor using a broken thermometer who says: if we fix the thermometer, you will develop a fever? No, you want a practical one who sees the thermometer is broken and that you already have a fever. So while academics and commentators talk about potential inflation, people who provide real goods and services know that the inflation they fear is already happening. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Exchange rate</h4><p>A closely related concern is that if the exchange rate is floated, then the currency will rapidly lose value. There are three versions of this worry.</p><p>Some think that, by some unexplained law of nature, the black market has to remain more expensive than the official market. So if the official market is floated and ETB/USD goes from 55 to 100, then the black market price will go to 200. That is nonsense The black market responds to supply and demand. If there is a functioning legal market, then there's no reason for anyone to pay a higher price and also take the risk of doing something illegal! It's just human nature, people prefer to pay less, and people don't like going to jail.</p><p style="text-align: left;">A more sophisticated version of this worry is the following: in the black market, both supply of and demand for foreign currency are suppressed, and if you legalize free exchange, the demand might increase more than the supply so the market price will be higher. But this is also incorrect. Usually, when there's prohibition, supply is more suppressed than demand. Or to be technical, the elasticity of supply is greater than the elasticity of demand. Without prohibition, all else being equal, the price is lower.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Another variant of the same fear is based on historical examples. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/ec0n1st/status/1651646890335674372" target="_blank">recent discussion</a> on this topic this example came up: once upon a time, Sudan floated their currency. At the time of the change of policy, the USD on the black market was at 550 SDP. After the float, the market price rose to 600 SDP/USD. So proponents of currency control claim that getting rid of it caused the SDP to lose 10% of its value. But they should note that in the preceding decade, the black market price of USD had risen 5000%! The currency was losing value very fast. And floating it, if anything, slowed it down. Similarly in the case of Ethiopia, I wouldn't say that if the exchange rate is allowed to float today, the price of foreign currency will go down tomorrow! Most likely it will continue to rise but it will slow down. Here's a picture to illustrate the point (the dots represent real values of the black market as reported in news articles over the last 5 years): </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/e/2PACX-1vQJ7RPE5QAl7Cxvbu9toddnM3OZQ1lqjEtodBZ0Jz4mEFPxoH6o7iS5FSZ_b-iAr-fw0vdJfi7nuh8w/pub?w=466&h=236" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="466" height="161" src="https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/e/2PACX-1vQJ7RPE5QAl7Cxvbu9toddnM3OZQ1lqjEtodBZ0Jz4mEFPxoH6o7iS5FSZ_b-iAr-fw0vdJfi7nuh8w/pub?w=466&h=236" width="320"></a></div></div></div><div><p style="text-align: left;">In short, the black market price is the free market plus a risk premium. If it is decriminalized, the risk premium goes away. So the black market is an upper bound on what the natural market price <i>would</i> be. </p></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Speculative attacks</h4><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">A closely related fear is that if the currency is freely exchanged, international currency traders would swoop in and wreak havoc by "speculating". It is true that financial markets can be volatile but let's put that in perspective. That volatility is much less than the brutality of the practical forex market as currently experienced by Ethiopians today. The random shocks of getting or not getting a letter of credit are much worse. You can go for arbitrary length periods with an effective price of infinity and volume of zero! </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sure, if the currency was freely traded, the National Bank of Ethiopia (the central bank) and the Ministry of Finance may make monetary or fiscal policy errors, reserves might run low, etc. But all that would be child's play compared to the devastation the <i>current </i>currency regime is inflicting on the real economy. </span>That said, the government can and should shore up reserves. Two obvious moves: stop fuel subsidies; sell off non-strategic and poorly-performing state enterprises (of which there are many).</p><h4>Sequencing reforms</h4><p style="text-align: left;">A related point often made by academics and commentators is: yes the parallel market should be decriminalized, but first the economy must be strengthened, productivity must increase etc. This argument is a bit like sitting in a burning house and saying: yes the fire is bad, but first let's invest in non-flammable furniture and curtains. It's missing the burning issue. The currency not being freely exchangeable is suffocating the very things that make the economy more productive.</p><h4>Upside down tiger</h4><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Another argument given against free exchange is that some countries, like the so-called Asian Tigers and China, grew their economies while controlling their currencies. The irony is that in those cases, the control consisted of <i>under</i>-valuing their currencies, to promote exports and investments, while suppressing imports and domestic consumption. They essentially delayed the rise in standard of living in exchange for faster industrialization. But what we have in Ethiopia is the exact opposite: the peg <i>over</i>-values the currency, which subsidizes selected imports, while lowering investment, domestic production and exports! You might call this the "upside down tiger" de-industrialization strategy. No country has grown out of poverty this way. </span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Brace for media impact</h4><p style="text-align: left;">If the peg is abandoned, we can be almost sure that a lot of the commentariat will miss these two points:</p><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>they will compare the new free market price to the old peg, instead of comparing it to the old black market price, falling for the map and territory fallacy;</li><li>they will comment on the increase of foreign currency exchange rate, rather than the fact that the rate of increase declines. </li></ol><p style="text-align: left;">Even economics professors <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1635629033609383939">confuse a decline in the rate of change with an actual decline in the price</a>! So what are the chances journalists and social media activists will be rational? Low. They will probably scream bloody murder. And governments know that. Hence the "gradual" policy. To be blunt, the political cost of doing the right thing is very high. </p></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Deva!uyashun!1!?</h4><p style="text-align: left;">It's amazing how many people think the strength or weakness of a currency is determined by a government simply deciding on a price. And they talk about "devaluation" as if it is a matter of just typing in a larger number. Their concept is: the bad guys will force African countries to use a larger number! Oh no, devaluation! We must fight the IMF! Neocolonialism! Bla bla bla. I'm very critical of the IMF and the current international financial order, but this conception of "devaluation" is complete nonsense. But it is political dynamite and a <a href="https://twitter.com/EyobTolina/status/1615959175212810240">lot of energy is spent trying to defuse it.</a> Here's how I would respond to it. If you think "government type big number = bad", then ask yourself do you believe that "type small number= good"? If it's that easy, do you think that, tomorrow, the Ethiopian government could set the peg at 50 ETB/USD instead of 55 ETB/USD and all imports would automatically be 10% cheaper? If they peg it at 0.01 ETB/USD would imports suddenly be 5000 times cheaper, and the average Ethiopian would afford a Ferrari? Of course not. </p><h4>Root cause of currency strength or weakness</h4><p style="text-align: left;">From a policy making perspective, the exchange rate is an effect not a cause. It's an output signal, not an input variable. The real price (which is approximated by the black market not the peg) is a reflection of a basic reality: how many dollars are coming, and how many dollars are going out. This is called the balance of payments. The birr gets weaker if the economy is not bringing in enough dollars. Exports and foreign investments are too little compared to the consumption of imports. And this imbalance can only improve if a) the economy produces more things the rest of the world wants, and b) the country is more attractive for investment.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Now as we saw earlier, the first order victims of the peg overvaluing ETB are exporters, investors, and remittance recipients. The gap between the market and the peg is a de facto tax on them so it directly reduces their volume. Fewer dollars come in. At the same time, it's a de facto subsidy of specific imports, which means more dollars go out. Which makes the currency weaker. Which increases the gap. That's the death spiral of a weakening currency. The second order victims are manufacturers and producers more generally; even if they are not exporters, they help the balance of payments by creating products that would otherwise have to be imported. Plus they are part of making the society more productive which improves chances that the society will make stuff the rest of the world wants. Thus, by choking producers, the peg further increases the imbalance, another vicious cycle.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There is no solution that doesn't include facing reality. Recognize that 55 ETB is just not worth 1 USD. The peg doesn't make the currency stronger. A broken thermometer does not cure fever! The cure starts by getting rid of the peg, which will</p><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>in the short term, eliminate the risk premium, improve availability of consumer goods, eliminate an unfair de-facto tax and subsidy, reduce corruption, and stop a major cause of socio-economic rot;</li><li>and in the longer term, increase exports, foreign investments, and productivity of the society, which will help fix the structural weakness of the currency.</li></ol></div><p style="text-align: left;">People voluntarily exchanging things at prices they agree on is not a neo-colonial imperialist capitalist evil that needs to be forbidden. It's what humans have always done naturally everywhere, including in Ethiopia.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfBOXKkovCl0lituoiuKipt6nPvje8pIc09VfEWt2lOoqD4gmG3Bs2L92_pZT0vt51D3qNXgwS0AI181blyDTl2oFZp-pcWQb8__Njfm-lWIM69aYH3hrp0KicVD_kT6I7bW5mARd-irZdFz3V3ay3Gyo2V4q_2XwMdNjVj77BGv30yGRkbU/s4096/IMG_20230105_121940598_HDR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfBOXKkovCl0lituoiuKipt6nPvje8pIc09VfEWt2lOoqD4gmG3Bs2L92_pZT0vt51D3qNXgwS0AI181blyDTl2oFZp-pcWQb8__Njfm-lWIM69aYH3hrp0KicVD_kT6I7bW5mARd-irZdFz3V3ay3Gyo2V4q_2XwMdNjVj77BGv30yGRkbU/w400-h300/IMG_20230105_121940598_HDR.jpg" width="400"></a></div><br><div><br></div><div><p><br><br></p></div></div></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-43011208260774475172023-04-01T11:30:00.008-04:002023-04-04T15:16:43.224-04:00"Attention" and "Transformers" in Large Language Models<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</a></div>Everyone is talking about OpenAI's ChatGPT these days. Here's a very quick attempt to summarize the core idea behind large language models (LLMs) like GPT.<br /><br />"<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762">Attention is all you need</a>" (aka the transformer paper) published in 2017 by Vaswani et al from Google is still the mother of current LLMs, including GPT. "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.04025">Effective Approaches to Attention-based Neural Machine Translation</a>", an earlier paper by Luong et al from Stanford, was also quite important.<div><br />These are sequence-to-sequence models, i.e. their job is mapping an input sequence of text into an output sequence of text. Applications include translation from one language to another, answering questions, having a conversation, etc.<br /><br />They use language embeddings (made famous by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word2vec">Word2vec</a> in 2013 and later by <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805">BERT</a>, both also from Google) as the basic encoding/decoding building blocks, i.e. mapping text to vectors of real numbers in an "embedding space".<br /><br />The main new idea is in the architecture of the neural network between the input encoding and output decoding stages. The model uses the preceding terms in the current output sequence to decide which parts of the input sequence to pay more "attention" to for the next output term. A bit more precisely: the previous output is a "query" which gets used to generate a linear combination of "keys" from the input which maps to a linear combination of "values" also from the input. That in turn gets transformed into the next output term with a few more layers in a plain feed forward network (i.e. a bunch of layers of neurons, where each neuron is putting a linear combination of inputs into non-linear activation function). Each step has trainable weights. <br /><br />There are also clever tricks besides "attention". One is positional encoding to represent the order so the same input term in a different position has different effects even though, unlike in recurrent neural networks, in transformers the network just sees them as bag of words that could be in any order. Another is layer normalization to sort of keep the nonlinear outputs within a reasonable area in the embedding vector space.<br /><br />This architecture, as far as I know, was not derived explicitly from the way human brains work. The "attention" analogy is really useful, but there are no principles saying this architecture is more fundamental to intelligence, or more natural, than many others. It just happens to produce remarkably good results when the weights are trained properly.<br /><br />So that's the basic idea of contemporary LLMs. Of course in some sense, all computer neural networks are just a bunch of matrix multiplications and ad-hoc activation functions. But you can't just connect a large number of mathematical "neurons" randomly in a network and hope it learns something. The choice of architecture, i.e. how the "neurons" are connected, is key. On top of that, there is still an enormous amount of innovation/engineering to make the real world language models, not to mention turn them into a product like ChatGPT or Google Bard. </div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-2041392617777362152022-07-27T04:00:00.005-04:002022-08-07T12:28:14.382-04:00Nile basin mechanism design<p><a href="/2022/07/the-case-for-gerd.html">Part 1</a> made the case for GERD in the short and medium term. Now for the really big picture</p><div>The human population of the Nile basin will probably double in the next century. Even if the Nile's water flow increases (some climate change scenario models indicate that rainfall could actually increase in the Nile basin over the next 50-100 years), it seems inevitable that demand will grow faster. And as mentioned in part 1, 100% of the flow is already being consumed. But this doesn't <i>have</i> to cause conflict. Globally, <a href="https://htt.io/water-usage-in-the-agricultural-industry/" target="_blank">70% of water use</a> is for agriculture. So that's where the adjustments would have to be. From a natural resource optimization point of view, just like it doesn't make sense to grow almonds in California, or cotton in Kazakhstan, growing cotton and wheat in Egypt is probably not the most efficient use of water. </div><div><br></div><div>What do we mean by efficient? Imagine for a second the whole region was one country; if an allocation of water to different uses maximizes total benefit, i.e. there is no other allocation that has a larger total benefit, then that's an efficient outcome. To achieve this efficiency, obviously some water intensive agriculture should migrate to other regions. But of course, the Nile doesn't have one owner and we don't have perfect cooperation, so we can't expect individual players (a country or a farmer or a business) to sacrifice their immediate interest and give up some water use for the greater good. Game theory teaches us that an efficient resource allocation is useless if it is not feasible. And feasible means it's an equilibrium where each party benefits more from sticking to it than from deviating unilaterally. </div><div><br></div><div>What would such an equilibrium look like? It's not as simple as dividing it equally. For example, one issue is that if two people get the same amount of water, but one of them doesn't actually need it, that's a waste, i.e. inefficient. Even the notion of need, beyond bare survival, is subjective: you can argue about the relative merit of washing clothes, how often people should take a shower or bath etc. </div><div><br></div><div>Fortunately, there is a way to turn subjective values into an objective agreement: a price. What pricing mechanism might work in this scenario? For example, in a hypothetical v2.0 of the <a href="https://nilebasin.org/nbi/cooperative-framework-agreement">CFA</a> all the countries in the basin could agree on a uniform Nile water tax. Each country would be liable to pay the tax for its total usage yearly. Of course, it would be up to each government to determine how the cost is distributed in its society: as a tax explicitly passed on to water consumers, or paid by general government revenue, or something in between. Passing the cost on is not as hard as it sounds since in most places that matter (homes and factories with running water, and farms with irrigation) water usage can easily be metered or is already. And non-consumptive uses like electricity generation would naturally be neutral. </div><div><br></div><div>To keep each other honest, the countries could easily agree on verifiable data sources. Egypt doesn't have to trust the metering in Ethiopia and vice versa, they could rely on aggregate measurements of the water balance, a lot of which can be done using currently existing satellite data that is freely available from neutral sources.</div><div><br></div><div>The revenue from this would be collected in a common fund and automatically redistributed to member countries in pre-set proportions. The proportions are negotiated in advanced and fixed, and of course that would be the hardest part of the whole deal. One basis for this negotiation could be a share proportional to the present fraction of the total Nile basin population in that country (not the <i>total</i> population, obviously as countries have different fractions of territory and population falling within the basin). </div><div><br></div><div>Naturally the price would have to be adjustable, say yearly, with a protocol agreed to in advance, so it regulates annual usage at sustainable levels i.e. below 100% of flow volume with a safety margin. If total usage is too high, the price goes up. If a lot of water goes unused, the price goes down. And if the total usage stays well below the sustainability level for a long time, the price would keep going down all the way to zero. This too is not as difficult as it may seem, it's basically the same idea as a carbon tax to fight climate change but much easier: the set of players that need to agree is much smaller (it's "only" 10 countries not 200), the consequences of water are immediately felt by all participants every year (unlike climate change which plays out over longer periods), and the target quantity is much easier to compute (total flow is well known, unlike the effect of different levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which requires complex models with lots of uncertainty). (As an aside, the carbon tax itself is <a href="/2008/03/how-can-carbon-offsets-work.html" target="_blank">much better than cap and trade or carbon offsets</a>, as I wrote on this blog a long time ago). With a pricing mechanism like that, no need for arguments about cotton in Egypt or irrigation in Ethiopia. Instead we would see a graceful phasing out of sub-optimal uses of water, and maximize the benefit of this shared resource. </div><div><br></div><div>Finally to further solidify the positive economics and minimize the negative politics of the system, the countries should facilitate investments and trade across the region. If for example investors from each basin country were free to invest in other basin countries in farming and industry while still supplying the outputs to their domestic market, there would be less political friction around the natural geographic distribution of agriculture and industrial production. </div><div><br></div><div>There are many examples of more complex cooperative agreements between countries around the world today, so it doesn't seem infeasible for the Nile basin countries to reach this kind of equilibrium. And recall we have plenty of time to achieve this long term goal, as the short term issue of GERD itself is win-win as discussed in part 1. But the chances of achieving this outcome will be greatly enhanced if in the meantime, the region's economies grow and become better diversified across farming, industry and services. Which brings us back to the present. Electrification is the sine qua non of developing a diversified economy. And GERD is a big step in the right direction, one which is immediately beneficial to not just Ethiopia but also Sudan and Egypt. </div><div><br></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-56407468706148384172022-07-25T16:51:00.021-04:002022-08-14T16:30:58.199-04:00The case for GERD<div>As the third filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam" target="_blank">GERD</a>) goes ahead, we should expect what is now becoming an annual uptick in media coverage and geopolitical controversy. I've been thinking of writing a version of this blog post ever since the project started more than 10 years ago, but always ended up assuming this is adequately covered elsewhere. Years later, I'm still surprised by the frequency of incorrect assumptions dominating the discussion. Not just in the media, but also in countless conversations. So it sounds like there might be some value in exposing the basic facts.</div><div><br></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Power</h3><div>GERD will have the capacity to generate <b>6GW of power</b> at peak. However, due to seasonal variations, the average is expected to be about 40% of the peak. So on average, it should generate about 80 million GJ or <b>20 billion kWh of energy per year.</b> Electricity production in 2019 was about <a href="https://www.iea.org/countries/Ethiopia">15 billion kWh</a>, so GERD will more than double the country's capacity. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.iea.org/countries/Ethiopia" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Electricity generation by source, Ethiopia 1990-2019" border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="864" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsuZJh3tJAXmiZfF6NFXKcl39nwJOHGim98YewqCL3JGd4dCyHKIC-MGy0PrsZ0GceozYG2XNJF7AnmeDYMGNNH9HnWVEH4V0oc5iX0YWQf5z7FoTbkpvFTQMdoh6nmr6ftzCKRYTTmgGWIqVpNiLWqqzPWc3qWMznjemxspxUUeuuD4MapqA/w320-h227/Screenshot%20from%202022-07-22%2014-02-09.png" width="320"></a></div></div><h3><br></h3><h3>Economic impact</h3><div>What is the economic value of this additional energy? Note that we are not asking what is the cost to produce it, nor the price at which it is sold. We are asking what is the economic value of consumer and industrial uses that it enables. One way to estimate that is to look at the relationship between energy and GDP. From a widely cited paper, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2734493">"Energy and Economic Growth: The Stylized Facts"</a>, we can deduce that each Gigajoule of energy corresponds to about $100 of GDP: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://econbrowser.com/archives/2014/06/energy-demand-and-gdp" style="display: inline; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="589" data-original-width="923" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBlkkmcuSNsRI8X2SaG__YpcJJ0lUxENNpADztk-BGiX0bxK9u2r_E1bG2-MzB2b8snyOYasMD_mfB5h9IqpP80tKhS5aKDw9obLJHn3HyaW4MbrgwSparJ4u2bIs3L2ZIj-GyriB-N2_DgwtJcxk1keJ2KJ2CbV9_TauqOu1C2EiJZ4xsok/s320/David_Stern_1.png" width="320"> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Double checking with another source, "<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita-vs-gdp-per-capita?yScale=log&time=earliest..2020" target="_blank">Our World in Data</a>", gives us about $0.40 of GDP for every kWH. This data has the added benefit that it shows a similar relationship, not just across countries but also on the same country over time: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0000ee;"><u><br></u></span><a href="https://econbrowser.com/archives/2014/06/energy-demand-and-gdp" style="display: inline; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://econbrowser.com/archives/2014/06/energy-demand-and-gdp" style="display: inline; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-capita-vs-gdp-per-capita?yScale=log&time=earliest..2020" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="894" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj5Cqgnr102kHdQm3WMBktQHRQEPsx5aUX4YwHBlWb2cn0WRBZ1ZA-R1kmmerwJmH-YhiicYwPhdAfC7LB51c7FYxw0VxMVudXaMegLrL6SEMxXYgaGCp-9ORAM4iLNW_39exMKSskLvCsDZa7roVRoudauiYgJ8z6rECqnzgSgmyr7FuIuFI/s320/Screenshot%20from%202022-07-22%2014-31-45.png" width="320"></a></div><br></div><div>The two datasets are in almost perfect agreement. And they imply GERD's <b>impact will be about $8B/year, </b>or an increase of about 7% of GDP.<a href="#footnote-1">[1]</a> </div><div><br></div><div>Considering the cost of the dam is about $5B, a return of $8B per year is great. Of course it will take a couple of more years for it to reach it's maximum generation capacity, many years to develop the transmission and distribution of all this additional power to 100M consumers, and even more years for industries to grow that will take advantage of it. So the full impact is still far down the road, and depends on quite a few things happening correctly (not the least of which is finding ways to sell the "stranded" generated energy to finance the development of the distribution infrastructure, a topic which I will expand upon in the future). Still, the long term benefit is so large that there is no question the dam is a phenomenally good investment by Ethiopia.</div><div><br></div><div>You can also view it with a "social impact" lens if you are so inclined. Can you think of many projects where a one-time investment generates 160% return per year for many many years, increasing income by 7% for more than 100M people, most of whom are among the poorest in the world? Indeed <b>GERD is possibly the biggest and perhaps most effective poverty reduction effort </b>in the entire world today.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Climate impact</h3><div><div>Of course, hydroelectric power is 100% renewable, and outside of the materials used in construction, the on-going operations have zero greenhouse gas emissions. Less obvious but also important is the fact that this electricity will displace current sources of energy which are dirtier. For example, millions of people in Ethiopia today often cook with wood charcoal, which from an emissions perspective, is worse than oil, let alone gas, or clean electricity. The amount is tiny on the scale of global emissions and climate change, but still moving from burning wood to electricity is a positive transition from dirty energy to clean energy. Further, the wood comes from cutting trees. Thus, electrification helps combat deforestation, and trees take <span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;">CO</span><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 11.2px; line-height: 1; vertical-align: -0.35em;">2 </span>out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. For a good discussion on the relationship between electrification, deforestation and climate, I recommend the book "Apocalypse Never", which explains this same point in detail using an example from the Democratic Republic of Congo. (As an aside, I also recommend my <a href="/2020/08/what-is-good-for-environment.html">review of that book on this blog</a>). So GERD not only does not emit, it reduces other carbon emissions, and saves trees which take carbon out of the atmosphere, a <b>triple win in terms of reducing anthropogenic climate change</b>. </div><h4 style="text-align: left;"></h4><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Water balance</h3><h4 style="text-align: left;">Increased rainfall?</h4><div>An additional argument, articulated by Ugandan president Museveni in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvtp9avkJmo">this video</a>, is that saving trees helps rainfall, which is a positive for total water balance of the overall Nile basin (water balance is a crucial point of contention as we shall see below). </div><div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="157" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Qvtp9avkJmo" title="YouTube video player" width="280"></iframe>
</div><div><div>This particular argument is debatable since forests increase rainfall but trees also consume water. Here's a good paper on the <a href="https://forestecosyst.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40663-017-0124-9" target="_blank">links between forest cover and rainfall</a>. So it's probably a stretch to argue that water balance will increase. But hey, trees do enough for us even if they are neutral in the water balance equation. The overwhelming consensus is that preserving forests as much as possible is good, and electrification happens to help that.</div></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">No reduction in flow</h4><div>The bigger question regarding water balance is of course whether the dam itself will reduce water availability downstream. This is where there is the biggest misunderstanding. Egyptians are extremely fearful that the dam will reduce the flow of the Nile, and they view it as an existential threat. But the reality is that the <b>GERD will not reduce the amount of water that gets to Sudan and Egypt</b>:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Electricity <b>generation doesn't consume water</b>. As water, pulled by gravity, flows through turbines, the kinetic energy of the water becomes electric energy, and all the water comes out on the other side and flows downhill from there as always. </li><li>When there is loss of water from a dam, it is because it has a reservoir, a lake. The larger the area of the lake, the larger the loss due to evaporation. Indeed at the High Aswan Dam in Egypt, located more than a thousand kilometers downstream from the GERD in a flatter and hotter area, the reservoir (Lake Nasser) is large and shallow, causing a significant loss of water to evaporation. The GERD however is situated in a gorge, so the lake it creates is much narrower and deeper (about 1,900 km<span style="font-size: x-small; position: relative; top: -0.4em; vertical-align: baseline;">2</span> for GERD vs 5,250 km<span style="font-size: x-small; position: relative; top: -0.4em; vertical-align: baseline;">2</span> for Lake Nasser). It's also in a cooler area. Thus the evaporation impact of GERD is much less than Aswan's. Further, the purpose of the reservoir is to regulate the flow, like a battery. In theory, if you have a reservoir upstream, you can reduce the size of a reservoir downstream. So if we naively forget political boundaries for a second, and assume Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia were 100% cooperative, to manage the total flow optimally, they would achieve the same magnitude of regulation by reducing the volume of Lake Nasser by the volume of GERD lake. Since GERD has relatively lower evaporation, this would be a net <b>reduction in evaporation</b>. But to keep things in perspective, evaporation accounts for less than 2 billion out of about 90 billion m<span style="font-size: x-small; position: relative; top: -0.4em; vertical-align: baseline;">3</span> /year of water flow on the Nile, so it's a minor issue.</li><li>A much larger fear for downstream people is that the GERD might enable additional consumptive uses, like irrigation for agriculture. This is a legitimate general concern of course, and fairness and efficiency in consumptive uses is important. However, in the case of the GERD, its location at the most downstream point in Ethiopia, near the point where the river exits to Sudan, means that it would be infeasible to use any of the water from that point for agriculture, as you would have to pump it uphill to reach farms within Ethiopia. This effectively guarantees that <b>GERD cannot physically be used for irrigation or any consumptive activity in Ethiopia.</b> </li></ol><div>For more on this, see the seminar on <a href="https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/economic-impact-of-large-dams/">'The economic impacts of large dams: a comparative analysis of the Nile and Colorado Rivers'</a> . In particular the evaporation question and non-consumptive nature of GERD are addressed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H21JMk5gk-I&t=4163s">at 1:09:23 in the video</a>. </div><div><br></div><div>Bottom line: GERD will not decrease the net amount of water that reaches Egypt and Sudan. Regardless of what you think about the historical sharing of water, the fear that it can harm downstream people is just not supported by facts.</div></div></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Floods and drought mitigation</h3><div><div>In fact it's actually beneficial to them. As I <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1320057404978057216" target="_blank">tweeted</a> some time ago, this excellent paper entitled <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19089-x">'Understanding and managing new risks on the Nile with the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam'</a> explains it:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>"Sudan will clearly be better off ... because GERD operations will smooth Blue Nile flows, <b>eliminating flood losses,</b> increasing hydropower generation, decreasing sediment load to the reservoirs and canals, and, most importantly, increasing water for summer irrigation in the Gezira Scheme and other irrigated areas along the Blue Nile". To get a sense of the magnitude of this benefit, consider that <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/7/sudan-declares-3-month-state-of-emergency-over-deadly-floods" target="_blank">flooding in 2020 caused over 100,000 homes to collapse</a> and Sudan to declare a 3-month state of emergency.</li><li>During droughts, it is expected that the existence of the GERD will cause "<b>decreased water deficits to Egypt</b> and increased water availability". <br></li></ol>It is also extremely important to note that, as the paper explains, these benefits to Egypt and Sudan do not depend on generosity and goodwill from Ethiopia. Keeping the flow steady by boosting it during droughts and throttling it during floods is also necessary from the self-interested electricity generating perspective of GERD, so it's a win-win-win proposition even without explicit cooperation. In other words, long term <b>incentives are aligned</b> between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, which should offer the strongest reassurance to back whatever political understanding is (hopefully) reached.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><br></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Filling</h3><div>Now besides the long-term incentives, there is a separate question of what happens during the initial filling of the GERD reservoir, which started in 2020 and is expected to last 4 to 7 years. Filling the reservoir obviously must temporarily decrease the downstream flow. But here two facts should be understood. First, filling takes place in the rainy season (July and August) each year, where typically there is "too much" flow, so there should be no detrimental effect downstream. Second, by chance, the first and second fillings took place during above average rainfall years 2020 and 2021. It's almost as if nature decided to be pro-GERD at this most critical time!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://app.gro-intelligence.com/displays/NdVMXvE9v" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="873" data-original-width="753" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisxzCRTttw243_z9xB18PHjGC4Y95vrx40meXI9CwURYZoRcP91LXasmCNNodvE5oASL_qRSUkHG3sx4LzhV4Ml1HrGgvZroa_RM48whx9awPe7vZYbzuaU61fgLXoAMaAq-VF8LRlnev_GiN-2APg_YB1_nPn-xsM2M9vGXVOA36u2RBg87w/w173-h200/Screenshot%20from%202022-07-25%2012-23-25.png" width="173"></a><a href="https://app.gro-intelligence.com/displays/NdVMXvE9v" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="752" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQXxFxFqMgMxnDTy5xHDyztylhXhOcaWCzFK0dhuoe6-zR7_g1NuI6ldyZdDV46CKfv9Kg2s-Baba_8HfKbKJOUVDKvUpl1kX_hhuuH-m0qGUrD7hgIvPanZqSsJvVvhiwb8Qt4L_J6le03W9hdicsqC9eutyYvW0HGx55wtNQqK3XAbPlSw/w173-h200/Screenshot%20from%202022-07-25%2012-23-48.png" width="173"></a></div>It's possible that the filling has already helped reduce the severity of floods in Sudan, although that effect may be limited by the fact that filling stopped as scheduled halfway through the rainy season (the Sudanese irrigation minister even complained that the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sudan-says-ethiopian-dam-made-no-impact-floods-this-year-2021-08-25/" target="_blank">filling didn't go fast enough</a> to help).<h3 style="text-align: left;"><br></h3><h3 style="text-align: left;">Geopolitics</h3><div>That is not to say Egypt and Sudan don't have any legitimate concerns. Future upstream uses of the Nile water could reduce their supply. The total water flow, while abundant, is currently almost 100% consumed: no Nile water actually reaches the Mediterranean Sea, except what's needed to push back salinity. So, even though GERD itself is a win-win-win, in the bigger picture, the Nile water use is a zero sum game. Currently, Egypt consumes 79%, Sudan 18%, and the rest of the countries combined less than 3%.</div><div><br></div><div>But there is international law and precedent on how to share rivers between multiple countries. The right way to deal with this case is the <a href="https://nilebasin.org/nbi/cooperative-framework-agreement" target="_blank">Nile Basin Initiative's Cooperative Framework Agreement</a> (CFA) which should be able to handle the issues of the next few decades at least. Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi and South Sudan are on board. Sudan and Egypt initially joined, then "froze" their participation, but from what I gathered at the aforementioned seminar, Sudan has recently rejoined. </div><div><br></div><div>The main problem is the recalcitrance of the Egyptian government. Given that their country consumes 79% of the Nile's water, perhaps they feel that acceptance of any upstream change jeopardizes this entitlement. The military government of Egypt has taken a hard line and it seems like they fear any compromise abroad might weaken their political power at home. This political trap has <a href="/2021/06/pay-any-price-bear-any-burden.html">far reaching consequences</a> for the region's stability and peace. Very unfortunate. Let's hope reason beats politics for once and things work out rationally, since GERD itself is actually beneficial to Egypt. </div><div><br></div><div><i><a href="/2022/07/nile-basin-mechanism-design.html">Part 2 </a>of this post explores the longer term sharing of the Nile beyond GERD.</i></div><div><i><br></i></div><div><i>P.S. This post is dedicated to my dear friend Ahmed Amr. A brilliant and hyper-informed Egyptian who during a conversation last year, was surprised by some of these technical facts. Sadly Ahmed passed away from a long illness a few months ago. Ahmed, wherever you are, I hope you enjoy this post and I look forward to chatting with you again in the afterlife!</i></div><div><i><br></i></div>
<p id="footnote-1">[1]Another way of getting economic impact is to multiply production by <a href="#">average price</a> to get the direct value of the energy, and then apply a GDP "multiplier" which estimates the downstream GDP impact (electricity enables goods and services, which in turn enable other goods and services etc.) The problem as you can imagine is that multipliers are very inexact. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1299569116114595841?t=s5egDngH_nqKLCJzHTK6TQ">tweet on this topic</a> a couple of years ago, I used the a multiplier of 1.6 which I now realize is too low. I also incorrectly used peak power instead of average. Coincidentally the two inaccuracies cancelled out and the GDP estimate was about the same.</p>
</div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-66671814848445537592022-06-03T14:01:00.017-04:002022-06-15T11:33:24.951-04:00The 4th wave of Bitcoin FUD<p>I just came across <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/05/why-this-computer-scientist-says-all-cryptocurrency-should-die-in-a-fire/">Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”</a>. I can't find any point in there that hasn't already been refuted many times. But it's relatively rare to find so many of them in one place, and it has been going around, so I thought I should make a little effort to rebut it. </p><p><b>Security</b></p><p>Though not the most important aspect of the article, the "computer scientist" in the title is a not-too-subtle argument from authority, so it behooves us to take a look. The computer scientist in question is Nicholas Weaver, who I haven't heard of before, though from a brief look at his publications, I recognize some of his co-authors. It seems like his expertise is network security. So his most important contribution as an expert would be if he could find an actual technical security problem in Bitcoin. But of course he hasn't, in fact no one has successfully exploited Bitcoin. This is a rarely appreciated aspect of the network. Even though it's the world's largest honey pot, with literally several hundred billion dollars there for the taking, the entire codebase is open source, and all the data is on the public blockchain, no one has actually technically been able to "crack" Bitcoin. There is plenty of theft of Bitcoin of course, because people make mistakes with their keys etc. A scary bug was luckily <a href="https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.msg9530#msg9530">fixed</a> in the early days. Still no one has exploited the system itself. For any computer scientist, or anyone who has ever written software, this is very remarkable. As a network security expert, you'd think Weaver would at least mention it. </p><p>Maybe he has motivation for not saying anything positive? Indeed, apparently he's been declaring the death of Bitcoin so many times since 2013 that <a href="https://www.bitcoinisdead.org/hall-of-fame/p/nicholas-weaver">Weaver has earned a place in the Bitcoin Skeptic Hall of Fame</a>. It seems like he has dug himself into an anti-Bitcoin emotional trap which is hard to climb out of.</p><p><b>Bubbles</b></p><p>Credentialism aside, his actual criticism consists of economic arguments. He points to the price of Bitcoin in USD and "bubbles" where it rose from $10 to $100 then "crashed". Then to $1000 and crashed. Then to $20,000 and crashed. Then to $60,000 and crashed. And confidently asserts that there won't be a fifth bubble, that <i>this</i> time it's really dead. But this only inadvertently points to the fact that he's been wrong so many times. Without any coherent explanation of why his previous predictions have failed, it's hard to believe him this time. A more honest view is to <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-price.html#log&alltime" target="_blank">zoom out and look at it on a log scale</a>, and notice that each "crash" bottoms out much higher than the previous one. So if one is going to reason purely from historical prices, then a reasonable observer would not confidently say that the last peak happens to be the final one before it goes to zero forever. That's like looking at a toddler learning how to walk and after the fourth time he falls down saying the kid will never walk. A more reasonable take is that if the Bitcoin price chart tells us anything, it's more likely the story of an emergent store of value. Of course, chart analysis to predict future prices is generally a fool's errand, and even more so with this unique phenomenon. There are not many analogues in history -- we don't have exchange rates of gold from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus#Coinage"></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croeseid">2500 years ago.</a> It's better to think about Bitcoin from first principles and think about long term adoption while avoiding short term price predictions. </p><p><b>Adjacent crypto: altcoins, blockchains etc.</b></p><p>To make matters more confusing, most critics (and Weaver is no exception) put Bitcoin in a bucket with all the other cryptocurrencies, ICOs, NFTs etc. But almost all of the other stuff around "crypto" is junk, much of it unethical or even fraudulent.</p><p>Leaving aside the many outright frauds, the whole "altcoin" space reminds me a bit of the history of the Internet. In the 1980s and 90s, TCP/IP had alternatives like ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). A lot argued that the IP network wouldn't scale, or wouldn't offer good enough QoS, etc. They argued that the net would never be used for serious things like the phone network or television. It's true that there are various trade-offs in the design of TCP and IP, even some arbitrary choices. You can argue for different ones in hindsight. And things do evolve, albeit slowly. Witness IPv6 getting deployed in a backward compatible way over more than 2 decades, while IPv4 continues to chug along. Even ATM was absorbed as a short-lived layer 2 protocol under IP. But there's only one Internet. That's the so-called network effect. If the protocol is good enough, early enough, it becomes the standard. </p><p>And that is where proponents and critics of "altcoins" are causing confusion and driving unjustified hostility to Bitcoin. Viewing Bitcoin as one of many "cryptocurrencies" masks a basic reality: Bitcoin is like the Internet of money and it is here to stay.<br></p><p>That said, I'm not against all other cryptocurrencies. For example a broader smart contract platform makes sense long term, and Ethereum may be the one for the ages. But there are significant technical hurdles remaining. And it's already so bloated very few people actually run a full Ethereum node. And that's all before the much delayed eth 2.0 migration, which if it succeeds may introduce a potentially fatal governance change called proof-of-stake. Building a "world computer" as it needs to be is much harder than what has been achieved to date. </p><p>"Blockchain not Bitcoin" is another common theme among "crypto" hopefuls. But without a real reason for decentralization, a blockchain is just an expensive and slow database. Most of the envisioned applications for blockchains can be more easily achieved with traditional databases.</p><p>Bitcoin's proof-of-work ledger for sound commodity money is to date the only real world blockchain use case.<br></p><p><b>Energy and Proof-of-Work</b></p><p>Speaking of proof of work, energy use is the most common and dangerous vector of FUD against Bitcoin, and Weaver recycles the usual points. He claims that Bitcoin miners are "wasting tons of electricity". This topic is deep and generally misunderstood. Here's my attempt to distill it in my paper entitled "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.06072" target="_blank">Dynamics of Bitcoin mining</a>":</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>Does mining use too much energy?</p><p>This question assumes the system requires some amount of computation to be done and that it ”wants” to minimize the energy to achieve it. That is indeed how most systems work. But not Bitcoin. Proof-of-work does the reverse of that. The system ”wants” a certain value to be spent on energy, and the amount of computation adjusts to achieve it. Of course individual miners compete by being as efficient as possible, but the resulting collective behavior is to achieve a certain cost of energy with variable amounts of computation, not to perform a specific amount of computation with variable amounts of energy. </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>This unusual combination – individual participants being efficiency-seeking but their collective behavior being efficiency-neutral – is very counter-intuitive and probably the root cause of much misguided hostility. It’s also worth emphasizing that the amount of energy doesn’t matter, only the cost. If the price of electricity relative to everything else in the world doubles, but nothing else changes, then Bitcoin would simply use half the amount of energy to achieve the same relative cost[...] The cost of energy is a feature not a bug, and ”waste” is impossible by design. All of the energy is ”work”. </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>And where there’s no ”waste”, the question of energy use boils down to a moral judgement. Can you argue that heating in the winter, even if perfectly efficient, is not justified and people should move to warmer climates? What about air conditioning, or electric clothes dryers, or ice cream? When is any purposeful energy use justified? Morally, as long as access to and the price of energy is fair, what it’s used for should be accepted as a subjective choice. Bitcoin offers the possibility of inflation-resistant savings, low-cost long-distance value transfer, and censorship-resistant money. For its users, these are important benefits which are no less justified than most other uses of energy.</p></blockquote><p>In the same interview, Weaver attacks the notion that Bitcoin "incentivizes green power", and goes on to misrepresent the incentives, and the supply and demand dynamics of electric power. I covered this too in the same paper:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">Many sources of renewable energy are highly variable: solar and wind power
depend on time of day and weather, hydroelectric power is seasonal, etc. In
general, these ups and downs on the supply side do not line up perfectly with the demand for electricity. Further, even with the largest possible batteries,
water reservoirs, etc., electric energy remains extremely difficult to store for
later use at a large scale. Thus there is often a lot of ”stranded” energy when
using renewable sources. Just like off-peak bandwidth in telecommunication
networks, or empty seats on scheduled airline flights, the cost of production is
already sunk, and so for the supplier, selling stranded power at any price is
better than letting it go unused. [...] The competitive dynamics of Bitcoin mining are
such that it shifts in time and space to the lowest available cost of electricity.
This occurs not just by deploying hardware to various locations, but also by
turning miners on or off instantly. This flexible demand-side support makes
mining the ideal customer to balance variable supply, and as variability tends to
affect renewable much more than fossil fuel sources, in effect, Bitcoin subsidizes
the development of ”green” electricity.</p></blockquote><p><b>Adoption</b></p><p>Finally, Weaver claims that Bitcoin will permanently fall apart <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Real+Soon+Now%E2%84%A2">Real Soon Now™</a>, when it runs out of suckers. But there's really no basis for his claim. He doesn't give any reason why the number of suckers is a particular fraction of the world's population and why that limit has been reached now. Why didn't it run out after 1M people? Or 100M? Why not 8 billion people? </p><p>Of course, the success of Bitcoin depends on widespread adoption. Why is gold used as money? You can try to explain it based on some key properties: it's impossible to synthesize, the supply is limited, it's fungible and can be shaped easily, it doesn't degrade... Those are useful, but we don't know if they are sufficient. The emergence of a monetary good is a fascinating topic, one that most people don't understand and don't even realize that they don't know. ("<a href="https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/" target="_blank">The Origins of Money</a>", an article which predates Bitcoin, is a good read). Ultimately, Bitcoin is just a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)">Schelling point</a> whose emergence is highly path dependent.That's just a fancy way of saying "we'll see", but every day that passes makes <i>the</i> ultimate success more likely, and it's been almost 5000 days already.</p>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-14616315748793299162022-01-22T21:52:00.022-05:002022-01-22T23:07:33.797-05:00Doomsday argument<p>And now for something completely different: a fun little probability puzzle. </p><p>What's the probability that the human race will end some time in the next 100 years? Surprisingly this question has a logical answer. And not because we have some magic crystal ball. In fact, our puzzle specifically assumes we have no information at all about the future. </p><p>Here's how it goes. Let's step out of time for a second, and consider the total number of humans who will ever exist. Let's say that number is N. If you are of the Abrahamic faiths, you can call the first one Adam. But we're just having fun so we'll just number them from first to last: 1,2,3, ..., N. Now let n be your number. So 1 < n < N, you are somewhere between the first and the last person ever. Since we have no information about the future, we have no clue if you are near the end or near the beginning or somewhere in the middle. You just happened to land at some random position in the long line of humans. So we have to assume that any position is equally likely, or technically that n is uniformly distributed between 1 and N. The chance that you are in a particular interval is equal to how big that interval is relative to the whole sequence. There's a 50% chance that you are in the first half and 50% chance that you are in the second half, there's a 95% chance that you are in the first 95% and a 5% chance that you are in the last 5% of people, etc. So <i>P(n < f*N) = f </i>and <i>P(n>f*N) = 1-f,</i> for any fraction <i>f </i>between 0 and 1. </p><p>We don't know N, but we can estimate n, because we can approximately calculate the cumulative population to date. This is more accurate than you might think because the parts really long time ago where we have poor estimates are also the times where there were very few people. The left tail is long but thin. Estimates now are around <a href="https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/" target="_blank">n = 117 billion</a>.</p><p>From the above, the distribution of N is <i>P(N<n/f) = 1-f</i>. That means there's a 5% chance that N < 123B i.e. that there are only 6 billion babies to go before the last one. If we translate that into time, using the current rate of 140M births per year, it means there's a <b>5% chance that we have less than 43 years left!</b> And a 50-50 chance that we'll be around for another 800 years. At the other end, a 5% chance that we have more than 16,000 years left, and so on.</p><p>I heard about this puzzle known as the "doomsday argument" about a year ago. Of course you can debate about whether this is a realistic model, but it's a cute way to provoke thought about all the minor risks we collectively worry about and the big ones we don't consider rationally. </p><p>Reminds me of a few scenarios discussed in this blog a long time ago: <a href="/2008/03/how-can-carbon-offsets-work.html" target="_blank">ineffective posturing on climate change</a>, <a href="/2008/06/laser-beam.html" target="_blank">the asteroid lottery</a> , <a href="/2009/08/do-you-feel-lucky-punk.html" target="_blank">political pandering in a pandemic</a>... Ouch ouch ouch! Sadly humanity doesn't seem to have gotten wiser in the decade (!) since those posts... 43 years seems like an awfully short time. At least math is eternal!</p>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-45581634479522136892021-11-24T11:00:00.012-05:002021-12-17T16:00:22.547-05:00What happened in Ethiopia? Simplistic narrativeMy previous posts were deep dives for readers already familiar with the basic facts. Today, I just want to respond to this request:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">I could use a simplistic Good Guys vs Bad Guys narrative on the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia — what’s on offer?</p>— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1463260285339414530?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 23, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
It's not very simple, sorry Matt, but the following is about as simple as it can be made:<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In 1991, the communist regime of Ethiopia was overthrown by a coalition of rebel groups led by the TPLF and the EPLF, and joined by OLF and others. This alliance masked a contradiction, EPLF was a multi-ethnic party fighting for independence of the then-province of Eritrea from Ethiopia, and TPLF was an ethnic party, while the two were led by members of the same ethnic group.</li><li>OLF sooned fell out with TPLF and became an armed opposition group and its leaders went into exile.</li><li>In 1993, under EPLF (renamed PFJD), Eritrea became an independent country.</li><li>The TPLF became the dominant party in Ethiopia and instituted a system of ethnic apartheid where different ethnic groups had separate regions and parties.</li><li>In 1998 the former allies had a falling out and war broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia. After 2 years the massive war ended in a stalemate and the two governments remained enemies for the next 18 years.</li><li>Economically, the formerly Marxist TPLF adopted a "developmental state" model, where the government had tight controls on many areas, but was much freer than the fully communist system that preceded it. GDP growth was very high in the 2000s. However, party affiliated businesses dominated the economy, cronyism and corruption were high and resentment of the TPLF elite grew.</li><li>The TPLF ruled until 2018 with an iron fist, within a coalition called EPRDF. In the 2005 elections, opposition parties made significant gains for the first time and TPLF responded with a massive crackdown, opposition leaders were imprisoned many receiving death sentences. In the following elections, the ruling party "won" 545 out of 547 seats in 2010, and 100% of the seats in the 2015 elections. Ethiopia often topped the world charts of number of journalists and opponents imprisoned.</li><li>Discontent grew to a boiling point and after several years of massive protests TPLF lost power in 2018. Abiy Ahmed a member of a junior party in the coalition called OPDO was chosen to lead EPRDF. Abiy dissolved the coalition and formed a new party called PP. All the constituent parties of EPRDF merged into PP, except TPLF which refused and retreated to its home province of Tigray where it continued to dominate.</li><li>From 2018 to 2020, Abiy started a series of reforms, liberalizing key economic sectors, freeing political prisoners, inviting exiled opposition politicians to return, legalizing banned opposition parties, and making a peace treaty with Eritrea, which earned him a Nobel peace prize. </li><li>Meanwhile, TPLF repeatedly defied the federal government, harboring individuals indicted for assassination attempts, corruption, etc. During this period TPLF still dominated the top ranks of the federal armed forces and the economy, and its regional militia was widely believed be larger than the federal army. TPLF used its considerable resources to instigate ethnic conflicts throughout the country. From the OLF, which was now a legal political party, a more radical group called the OLA split off and launched an armed struggle. For 2 years the federal government bent over backwards to avoid direct conflict with TPLF, attempted negotiations, sent groups of "elders" to mediate, etc. At the same time Abiy was working to reduce the TPLF's grip on the military. </li><li>In 2020, the independent Electoral Commission, led by a former opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa, postponed federal elections because of Covid-19. All major parties except TPLF agreed to the postponement. In September, TPLF held its own elections in Tigray where it "won" 100% of the seats, and declared that it no longer recognized the federal government. In October, when the government appointed new leaders for the federal military bases in the Tigray region, the TPLF rejected and turned back the appointees. </li><li>Finally on the night of November 3-4 2020, the TPLF launched what it called a "pre-emptive" attack and seized 5 federal military bases in Tigray (the Northern Command) which held an estimated 80% of the country's military hardware. As part of it, TPLF loyal soldiers in the federal army attacked their colleagues from within the barracks, murdering hundreds in their sleep, a move which was seen as a deep betrayal in the Ethiopian military.</li><li>In response, the federal government launched what it called a "law enforcement operation" to bring those responsible for the attack to justice.</li><li>On November 9-10, as fighting raged throughout Tigray, a TPLF group called Samri killed hundreds of civilians in a place called Mai Kadra. Mai Kadra is in a region which was annexed to Tigray in the early 1990s, but was previously part of Begemder (aka Gonder) province, which is now in the Amhara region. On November 29, following battles where control of the city of Axum changed hands from TPLF to the Eritrean army, Eritrean soldiers conducted house to house raids and killed hundreds of men they claimed were part of the fighting. </li><li>The federal army, with the help of Amhara region forces and Eritrean military, managed to regain control of the main cities and towns in Tigray region and declared the "law enforcement operation" finished by the end of November 2020</li><li>However the war continued, with accusations of war crimes being made by TPLF against Eritrean and Ethiopian military and echoed by mainstream media in the West. The Ethiopian government prosecuted a number of individuals for war crimes, but denied systematic war crimes. The Ethiopian government also said that it was supplying the overwhelming majority of the aid to civilians in Tigray affected by the war, while outside forces were using aid as a cover to provide military support to TPLF.</li><li>In June 2021, the postponed federal elections were held and the PP won a large majority. A few parties including OLF boycotted, and the elections were delayed to September in about 20% of the country. But overall it was the freest vote ever held in the country. In terms of popular mandate, PM Abiy is by far the most legitimate head of government the country has had in our lifetimes. </li><li>Meanwhile, the TPLF had regrouped and by June 2021, with diplomatic (and possibly covert military) support from the US, regained the military initiative in an operation it called "Operation Alula" throughout Tigray</li><li>The federal government declared a unilateral ceasefire on June 28 and withdrew from Tigray. </li><li>From July to November 2021, having regained control of most of Tigray, the TPLF went on the offensive outside of Tigray on three fronts going deep into neighboring regions: east into the Afar region, south into Wollo and south-west into Gonder in the Amhara region. The offensive was defeated on the eastern and south-western fronts, but successful in the southern direction, capturing the key city of Dessie and, with help from the OLA, advanced to less than 300km from Addis Abeba.</li></ul><div>I've tried to be as objective as possible, and left out speculation on motives and other analysis, in favor of just relaying facts. But it's probably obvious that my answer to Matt's question is the same as what the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians would say: the Bad Guys are TPLF. </div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-54838913429840908612021-11-14T23:34:00.019-05:002021-11-18T00:31:28.961-05:00Ethiopia and the ethnicity rat race - part 2: history<p><a href="/2021/11/ethiopia-and-ethnicity-rat-race.html">Part 1</a> looked at ethnic federalism in Ethiopia through a geographic lens, and showed it has a bug: that it's not feasible to geographically separate ethnic groups. </p><p>In this post, let's take the historical perspective. The philosophical foundation of ethnic federalism emerged in the early 1970s, as a solution to the problem called "Ethiopia as a prison of nations". Here's one summary:</p><div><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QNNSMGA5j70/YYL5VxHZRNI/AAAAAAAB_Xk/6OJ-aPtmExkNVtn0CraJDytnlJHs61C9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1254/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2021-11-03%2B17-03-45.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="1254" height="170" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QNNSMGA5j70/YYL5VxHZRNI/AAAAAAAB_Xk/6OJ-aPtmExkNVtn0CraJDytnlJHs61C9QCLcBGAsYHQ/w354-h170/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2021-11-03%2B17-03-45.png" width="354"></a></div><div><i>(Source: <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26586247" target="_blank">International Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 & 2</a>)</i></div><br><div>So, <i>the Ethiopian Student Movement, along with the ethnic nationalists it spawned, referred to Ethiopia as a "prison of nations". </i></div><div><br></div><div>This idea produced a number of ethnic political parties, often named X Liberation Front, where X is an ethnicity. The most successful of these is of course the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) founded in 1975. I guess they had to add the P because there was another group called the Tigray Liberation Front (TLF), the two apparently fought each other and TPLF eliminated TLF in the late 70s. The history of the XLFs is very complicated, full of isms and schisms, featuring different flavors of Marxism-Leninism and extremely violent struggles. The Marxist aspect is not very relevant to our discussion, however the Leninist strategy of "sharpening contradictions" has some bearing. I won't try to summarize that history here, for that see e.g. the excellent <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Ethiopia-1855-1991-Eastern/dp/0821414402/"><i>History of Modern Ethiopia</i> </a>by Bahru Zewde. Instead let's just focus on one basic assumption of this "prison of nations" concept, namely that ethnicity comes first and the country comes after. Does this assumption have any historical basis?</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Z35-dynG00/YZFc_SzTC0I/AAAAAAAB_mM/A35KtiBQrpEE4iufZFa7J34iDoFFJbWxwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/site_0015_0001-750-0-20151104173335.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="121" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Z35-dynG00/YZFc_SzTC0I/AAAAAAAB_mM/A35KtiBQrpEE4iufZFa7J34iDoFFJbWxwCLcBGAsYHQ/w91-h121/site_0015_0001-750-0-20151104173335.jpg" width="91"></a></div><div><a href="/2021/11/how-old-is-ethiopia.html">Ethiopia is 1,700 years old</a>. (The specific number doesn't change the point I am making here so I put discussion of it in a different post). What about the 80+ ethnic groups that exist in the country? Consider the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amharic">Amharic</a> language. During the Axumite period, Ge'ez was a living language. Many people believe that Amharic is a descendant of Ge'ez, which is not wrong but is an oversimplification:</div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"As early as the middle of the fourth century, military expeditions may have reached the area later known as Amhara. By the mid-ninth century, four centuries later, a distinctive Amhara region was recognized. The conquering Semitic-speakers spoke a language which was perhaps only four to seven centuries removed from the common origin with Giiz" </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>Source: <a href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/#">The origin of Amharic</a>, Ethiopian Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 1 No. 1 (1983)</i></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The oldest <i>surviving</i> written Amharic documents are 14th century praise songs in honor of the kings. In biology, there is no precise moment when one species evolved into another. Similarly, as cultures and languages evolve, it is hard to pinpoint a specific date when a new language or ethnicity is born. The consensus among the linguists seems to be that Amharic gradually evolved, not directly from Ge'ez but from a Semitic language related to Ge'ez, which got mixed on top of a Cushitic "substratum" (or base) which was a member of the Agew family. The Agew family includes the Qimant and Bilen languages, which are still spoken in the region today. But whether you consider the earliest or the latest time frame, it's clear that Amharic did not exist before Ethiopia. Certainly it doesn't make sense to think of the Amhara ethnic group as being "imprisoned" in Ethiopia. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Bete_Giyorgis_03.jpg/220px-Bete_Giyorgis_03.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="284" data-original-width="220" height="134" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Bete_Giyorgis_03.jpg/220px-Bete_Giyorgis_03.jpg" width="104"></a></div>Speaking of Agew (also spelled Agaw), a few months ago, in August 2021, something called the Agew Liberation Front popped up in a Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1390256075/posts/10227447756524826/?d=n">post</a> and a Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/KjetilTronvoll/status/1423911221460340742">post</a>. The first thing that comes to mind regarding Agew history is the Zagwe dynasty (1137-1270AD) and the amazing churches they build around Lalibela. Tradition has it that the first Zagwe Emperor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Takla_Haymanot" target="_blank">Mara Takla Haymanot</a>, married the daughter of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dil_Na%27od">last king of Axum</a>. One of the most fascinating characters in Ethiopian history is the insurgent Queen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudit">Yodit Gudit</a> (940-80AD). The information about her is from oral tradition, so it should be taken with a grain of salt, but apparently she was Agew, her religion was Jewish, when she reached Shewa she encountered Oromo resistance (more on that below), and according to one source, the Zagwe founder Mara Talka Haymanot was her relative. Though these details are far from proven, even if they are completely legendary, they show that the Agew are glorified and viewed as part of the continuum with Axum in Ethiopian history, hardly what you would expect if the ethnic group was a "prisoner". In short, you could say no one is more Ethiopian than the Agew. Back to the present... The first strange thing about the ALF is that the social media posts announcing its existence and alliance with TPLF were by people whose social media activities consist almost entirely of advocating for TPLF. Second, I did a thorough web search, and found no web page, no news article, no press release, nothing referring to this group before that week. Even after the announcement, no member or leader of the group could be identified. Now that a couple of months have elapsed, perhaps there's more info, I would love to hear who these individuals are, and their actions or thoughts before this year. But so far, it really looks like ALF was just manufactured by TPLF in 2021! A move straight out of the Leninist playbook. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Speaking of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), there's a puzzle there too. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigrinya_language">Tigrinya language</a> is <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tigray-central-Eritrean-people">Semitic intermixed with Cushitic</a>, it emerged in the middle ages, and the earliest known written examples date from the 13th century -- parallel with Amharic. And just like Amharic, Tigrinya didn't exist <i>before</i> Ethiopia. The people are found in a number of historical provinces: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agame" target="_blank">Agame</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akele_Guzai" target="_blank">Akele Guzai</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enderta_Province" target="_blank">Enderta</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamasien" target="_blank">Hamasien</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serae" target="_blank">Serae,</a> etc. But today we are told that there's an ethnic group called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigrinya_people">Tigrinya people</a> in Eritrea, and a different ethnic group called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigrayans">Tigrayans </a> (also known as Tegaru) in Tigray. Nobody seems to be able to explain the actual difference between them! Of course there are different accents, families, etc. But the distance from, say, Senafe in Eritrea to Adigrat in Tigray is less than the distance from Senafe to Asmara, physically, and even in the blood relations. The separation is political: they ended up on different sides of a border from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Ethiopian_War_of_1887%E2%80%931889" target="_blank">1889</a> to 1936, when Eritrea was Italian but Ethiopia remained independent. Other groups were also split by this border like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afar_people" target="_blank">Afar</a>, but nobody says Afars on either side of the border are different ethnic groups. Forty seven years is like the blink of an eye on the timescale of ethnic groups and language evolution. Yet, if you read the news today, you would think the Tigrinya speakers of Eritrea, and those who are in Tigray are different people, capable of committing "genocide" against each other. It's a category error. Eritrea is multi-ethnic like Ethiopia, and the majority ethnic group happens to be the same one as in Tigray. A naive outsider who has only been following the news of the past year would be surprised to hear that Isaias Afewerki (President of Eritrea) and the late Meles Zenawi (long-time leader of TPLF and Prime Minister of Ethiopia) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/13/ethiopia">were cousins</a>. Another example is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EritreanPresss/photos/a.219856768206925/1453736181485638/">Yemane Kidane</a>. The history of EPLF and TPLF is way more complicated than we can describe here (again I refer you to the book by Bahru Zewde as a starting point), but the bottom line for us here is that framing their current enmity as ethnic makes no sense. You can call it intense, brutal, horrifying, many things, but not ethnic, it's political.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Yohannes IV, Emperor of Ethiopia from 1871 to 1889 was from Tigray. Yet he <a href="http://www.tigraionline.com/Emperoryohannes.html">chose </a>Amharic as the official language of his government. Haile Selassie I, who today is cast by XLFs as the ultimate symbol of Amhara domination, was half Oromo through his mother. His wife, Etege Menen, was also part-Oromo. Her grandfather was Ras Mikael Ali of Wollo, who famously played a huge role in the battle of Adwa. The Yejju Oromo, from the area around Weldiya (a city which has been very much in the news in the last few months!), are well known as having dominated the politics of the empire during the Zemene Mesafint era (1769-1855). The picture that emerges when examining the last 300 years is of power alliances and rivalries as frequently within ethnic groups as across ethnic groups. In other words, the exact opposite of the idea of a "prison of nationalities". </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The 18th century, by the way, was not the beginning of the Oromo presence in what is now called the Amhara region: </div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"According to one written source obtained from the Yajju Oromo inhabitants of the Amhara National Regional State, these peoples are mentioned as inhabitants of northern Ethiopia already before the 14th century. This document deals with the rise and fall of the Yajju dynasty. According to this source, the Bokoji clan was the first Oromo settler of Yajju. Later on, however, the Muslim Oromo of the Yajju known as Warra-Sheih family took the territory of the Bokoji clan. From the early settlers of Bokoji clan in Yajju, the same document cites the names of the founding fathers like Kumbi, Marso, Shekka and Abba Dimbar. Maliye, Gammada and Ilman Oromo. At present, this region is found in southern Waldiya. The man named Abba Dimbar Maliye occupied and settled in the present region of Gubbaa Laftoo."</div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Source: "History of the Oromo to the Sixteenth Century", Alemayehu Haile, Boshi Gonfa, Daniel Deressa, Senbeto Busha, Umer Nure (2004) </i></p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">According to the same source, this time frame is corroborated by an Arabic account of the war of Ahmed Gragn entitled "Futuh al Habasha" which says that when he got there in 1533, the Yejju had been in the area for 6 generations, i.e 14th century, which also agrees with oral tradition from the region, and with the chronicle of King Amda Tsion (1314-44). Going further, from the same book, we learn that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekuno_Amlak" target="_blank">Yekuno Amlak</a>, the king who overthrew the aforementioned Zagwe dynasty in 1270 and established the Solomonic line that lasted until 1974, was from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagarat">Sagarat</a>, near Lake Hayq (another place that's been in the news a lot lately!) which was ruled by an Oromo Azaj named Challa. Still earlier, archeological evidence shows that in the Menz province of the Shewa region, the Oromo presence goes back to the 8th century, which, as we saw above, is right in the thick of the origins of Amharic. In other words, there has never been a time when Amhara and Oromo were not deeply intertwined.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Moving a bit further north, in the same book, we find this about Oromo presence in present-day Tigray:</div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"The present-day settlers of Wajirat named Dobba are difficult to identify whether or not they belong to Offla or Marawa Oromo, but they are known to have been old Oromo settlers of Northern Ethiopia. Igguy and Marawa Oromo are said to have been settled in Wajirat since ancient times and that they are prior settlers. This period preludes the reign of the renowned Christian King Amda Siyon (1314-44) and this king himself is said to have recruited Oromo into his army [...] At present Wajjirat is bounded by Afar in the east, Inderta in the west, and Rayya in the south. The settlement area of Rayya which begins from southern Wajirat extends southwards as far as Amba Alage or Endamehone. The southern part of Rayya territory is known as Rayya and Azebo whereas the southern territory is known as Rayya and Qobbo. The Dobba Oromo that settled over the mountainous highland territories is traditionally known by the name of Chittu-Ofa. There are several Oromo tribes known with the name Dobba that are living in Hararge, northern Shawa and other Oromo regions."</div></div></blockquote><p>It might surprise some readers to find ancient Oromo presence so far from present day Oromia. Further, how can you reconcile that with the common (mis)conception of Oromos as "invaders" who arrived in the 16th century? One possible explanation, from the same source, is:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">"Oral tradition collected from the Macha Oromo elders tell us that there are two groups of Oromo settlers in Western Oromia. One group consists of pastoralist Oromo that came and settled in the region during the 16th century organizing itself under a military leadership of the Gada system. Another group consists of sedentary agriculturalists that lived in the region long years before the advent of the pastoralist Oromo. The earlier group called itself "Orom-Duro." It means the ancient or prior Oromo. They used this term to make a distinction with the pastoralist Oromo" </p></blockquote><p>Note that the word "d'ro" means "long time ago" in Amharic. There are indeed many basic words in modern Amharic that are similar to Oromo words, which should not be surprising given all of the above. History shows that the Oromo culture is one of, if not <i>the</i> most successful in Ethiopia, in the evolutionary sense. It has been expanding, assimilating, and influencing others for over a thousand years. (Another source is <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Un_peuple_antique_ou_une_colonie_gaulois/fIooAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiA3OTv9Jv0AhUapXIEHTO0Dk8QiqUDKAJ6BAgFEAg">this book</a> by Martial de Salviac, a fascinating read for modern readers with a thick skin, I will post a review when time permits).</p><p>But XLF doctrinaires of the last few decades, e.g. in the OLF, tend to cast the Oromo as victims. A very sad misconception. Unfortunately it's a very effective strategy for ambitious politicians to exploit. I am reminded of this <a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2021/06/pay-any-price-bear-any-burden.html?showComment=1625510122699#c4924243589166036296" target="_blank">comment by Tigist Gemeda</a> on a previous post on this blog (see also her more recent <a href="https://twitter.com/walatekidan/status/1459584067222097922" target="_blank">tweet</a>). Her grandfather was a Balambaras, a high ranking Ethiopian during the reign of Haile Selassie I, but some of his family in the present day are key OLFites who "manipulate" people and exploit a sense of "persecution" for political ambition. Very courageous and powerful stuff. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYVH9Fe13pA/YZFzniQSpOI/AAAAAAAB_mc/2tWIIUBmCs0IZmO9y8kM0AI-D_IF_usuACLcBGAsYHQ/s1840/IMG_20211113_234807375_2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="997" data-original-width="1840" height="173" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYVH9Fe13pA/YZFzniQSpOI/AAAAAAAB_mc/2tWIIUBmCs0IZmO9y8kM0AI-D_IF_usuACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_20211113_234807375_2.jpg" width="320"></a></div>My meandering through history is very incomplete, I only mentioned 7 out of the 80+ ethnic groups, focusing, not coincidentally, on the areas at the heart of the current war. The point is not to give a complete history. Nor is it to debate whether there has been ethnic discrimination and conflicts. The answer is obviously yes there has! Nor is it an argument for centralization. I happen to believe in decentralization and localism, but not along artificial "procrustean" ethnic lines. Rather it is to show that the "prison of nationalities" concept of Ethiopian history is wrong. You can call it a melting pot, a chessboard, a game of thrones etc. But it's not a recently built "prison" of pre-existing ethnic groups yearning for separation. <div><br></div><div>And ethnic political parties and ethnic regions, i.e. apartheid, as a solution to this "problem" is a very recent phenomenon. It's a bug, which was formally implemented in the constitution of 1994. It goes against history and it doesn't work. The concept was invented by some university students in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And hasn't improved with age. But they mastered armed struggle and perfected the ideological tactics of Leninism, they were successful in co-opting thousands of people to their way of thinking, and passed it on to another generation of ideologues and political opportunists... Kudos to them I guess. They are still at it. Most recently with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Front_of_Ethiopian_Federalist_and_Confederalist_Forces" target="_blank">UFEFCF</a> (I think it stands for United Front of Ethnic Free Cash Flow) a pathetic collection of XLF puppets manufactured by TPLF masterminds in 2021. How long will this trick work? How long is the country going to be hostage to the bankrupt ideas of a bunch of unwise 20-something year old undergrads from 50 years ago? <div><p>I don't expect to convince any XLF true believers with this post. It's almost impossible to change someone's mind when their livelihood or public persona is deeply invested in an idea, no matter how wrong it is. But many well-intentioned people have fallen for this false solution. They think: "if only X group was free from Y ethnic group...", "X has always oppressed Y...", etc. So they buy into "solutions" based on the false conception, judging people by their ethnicity, ascribing collective ethnic guilt for political injustice, blaming present individuals for past sins committed by members of their group etc. They are like the poor old lady who, a few years ago, wanted to repair a deteriorated fresco in a Spanish church. She had the kindest intentions, and she thought it was a simple matter of applying a bit of paint here and there. But the more she did, the worse it got, and she tried to fix her mistakes with more of the same. The result was perhaps the "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/world/europe/botched-restoration-of-ecce-homo-fresco-shocks-spain.html">worst art restoration of all time</a>":</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kdLEhpMyo20/YZHH5XTu7HI/AAAAAAAB_mo/h2wC4CJbWN4CYR-gNqNRexU7u8yMLuvKwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/24christ-span-superJumbo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1051" data-original-width="2048" height="164" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kdLEhpMyo20/YZHH5XTu7HI/AAAAAAAB_mo/h2wC4CJbWN4CYR-gNqNRexU7u8yMLuvKwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/24christ-span-superJumbo.jpg" width="320"></a></div>Ethiopia is like that painting: old, damaged, but can only be understood as a beautiful whole.</div><div><br><div>In my previous post, I tried to show why <a href="/2021/11/ethiopia-and-ethnicity-rat-race.html">geographically, ethnic politics lead to doom</a>. Here I hope that I have shown the richness of our different languages and cultures is not fixed, it's a dynamic process. A country evolves. But a person can't change their ethnic identity. So if your politics are based on ethnicity, you are asking to be trapped in conflict. Reject ethnic apartheid! Don't support any political party that has an ethnic group in its name. Believe in politics as a process of learning from mistakes, of forgiveness, where good ideas rise and bad ideas sink. Be resolute in defense of an Ethiopia that transcends ethnicity, and magnanimous in victory. </div><div><br></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkOstq4GuLk" target="_blank">ለ ኢትዮጵያዊነት ቀን አለ ገና</a></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-12878489619262439102021-11-04T10:41:00.017-04:002021-11-16T16:21:44.629-05:00Ethiopia and the ethnicity rat race - part 1: geography<div style="text-align: left;">On the first anniversary of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_November_Northern_Command_attacks">start of this horrible war</a>, let's take a moment to examine the concept that bedevils the country. Obviously, there are much more urgent things going on right now, but this is something that's been bothering me for more than half my life, and my cup runneth over. For a simple minded engineer, if something is broken, you debug it. And like many many other Ethiopians, I think there's a bug in the operating system of the country, a bug which was introduced by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Constitution_of_Ethiopia" target="_blank">system update about 30 years ago</a>. And this bug made it vulnerable to infection by catastrophic viruses, which are now threatening a system crash. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm referring of course to the idea that the ethnic group, rather than the person, is the fundamental unit of society. In this design, the country is a collection of ethnic groups. The name of your administrative region, the name of your political party, your ID card, everything is based on ethnicity. That's a bug. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant, it just doesn't work. To see why, let's look at just one aspect: geography. In a follow-up post I will look at it from historical perspective. (Update: <a href="/2021/11/ethiopia-and-ethnicity-rat-race-part-2.html" target="_blank">part 2</a> focusing on history is posted)</div><div><br /></div><div>A few months ago, I tried to answer a basic question: <b>is it feasible to separate ethnic groups into different geographic regions in Ethiopia?</b> I gave it the fancy title of ethnogeography and posted a <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1381780482241744896">snippet</a> at the time. What follows is a more detailed explanation.</div><div> <br /><div><i>If you are not technically inclined, feel free to skip the next two paragraphs and go to Results.</i></div><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Metric:</b><i> </i>To make the point objective, let us introduce a precise definition of "ethnic diversity". For example, if region A has three ethnic groups each representing 1/3 of the population, and region B has 4 groups with 55%, 15%, 15%, 15%, which one is more "diverse"? You could say B is more diverse since it has 4 groups and A has only 3. Or you could say B is less diverse because there's a clear majority group. So what's a good metric of diversity? You could ask similar question about anything that is based on a probability distribution. For example for income inequality, they use the Gini-coefficient. Here, I decided to use the following metric: <b>if you take two random people from a population, what's the probability that they belong to the same group? </b>This captures the following intuitive idea: how likely is it that your neighbor, or your classmate, or a person you meet on the street is from another group? This metric has a simple formula, which is <i>1 - Σ<sub>i</sub>p<sub>i</sub><sup>2</sup></i>, where <i>p<sub>i</sub></i> represents the fraction of the population that belongs to group <i>i.</i></p></div>
<div><b>Data: </b>For the data, we can use the Ethiopian census of 2007 which you can find on <a href="https://www.statsethiopia.gov.et/census-2007-2/">statsethiopia.gov.et</a>. There are also copies on other websites run by the UN, World Bank and the US government. This data is not ideal (more on that below) but at least it's consistent, I've cross-checked the different copies and archives and it is the real data. To be on the safe side, I've also saved a <a href="https://github.com/nemozen/et-census/tree/master/data" target="_blank">copy of the data here</a>. Unfortunately the data is in PDF files! So I had to write a <a href=" https://github.com/nemozen/et-census/blob/master/census_pdf_parser.py">custom parser</a> (code at the link) to extract it into usable form.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Results: </b>Now we can look at ethnic diversity at each available administrative region level: country, province ("k'l'l") or district ("zone"). A diversity score of 0 means there's no diversity at all, everyone in the region is from one group. A diversity score of 1.0 means every person belongs to a different ethnic group. A score of 0.25 means there's a 25% chance that any two people chosen at random are from different ethnic groups. Here's what it looks like at the zone level. The darker regions are more diverse.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rw9Vmg15LOk/YYLSMN7CXlI/AAAAAAAB_XU/AlY0mXXD4PMINlyRoWwqleYFlw6UWMpagCLcBGAsYHQ/s1909/download.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1909" height="226" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rw9Vmg15LOk/YYLSMN7CXlI/AAAAAAAB_XU/AlY0mXXD4PMINlyRoWwqleYFlw6UWMpagCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/download.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>This gives us a sense of diversity spatially. But of course, this doesn't tell the whole story. Some tiny regions have huge populations and vice versa. So to get a better sense we can view diversity and population size together as follows:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PYMAYFBxNSc/YYLTxskiWdI/AAAAAAAB_Xc/OghesowyvSoHIzBvWPixfI04jbPXME-HQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1706/download%2B%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1322" data-original-width="1706" height="248" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PYMAYFBxNSc/YYLTxskiWdI/AAAAAAAB_Xc/OghesowyvSoHIzBvWPixfI04jbPXME-HQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/download%2B%25281%2529.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>Keep in mind the colors represent the degree of diversity, not the ethnic groups themselves, of which there are more than 80. So if the country could be neatly divided into ethnic regions, it would all be light yellow. If it was completely mixed everywhere, it would all be dark brown. For details, including the code to generate these results, see this <a href=" https://github.com/nemozen/et-census/blob/master/ethnogeography.ipynb">notebook on github</a>.</div><br /><div>Note we can assume this <b>data understates the degree of diversity</b>. One hint is the number of people classified as "Ethiopian National of different parents". For example, according to this data, there are only <a href="https://github.com/nemozen/et-census/blob/master/data/Addis_Ababa_Statistical-table_3.1.pdf">20,724</a> such people in Addis Abeba, less than 1% of the population, which is absurdly low. One explanation for this is that the census was done in 2007, when ethnicism was the governing philosophy, and the 2005-2007 period political repression and fear were at a peak. We can assume that most people who are mixed just chose one ethnicity, out of convenience or necessity. I had a couple of personal experiences during that regime which corroborate this -- one before this period and one after this period. Both times, I was asked for my ethnicity when interacting with the government (one instance was local, the other was federal). When I said I am a mix of three different ethnicities, both times the officials refused to accept the answer, and demanded that I choose one. In the end, both times I just told them to choose for me. To this day, I'm not sure what they filled in. Of course my anecdotes don't prove anything about the census data, but given the political environment of the last few decades, the real number of individuals with mixed parentage is most likely higher than the above shows.</div><div><div><br /></div></div><div><div>What we see in the above pictures is a very very diverse country. Not just in the superficial sense of having 80 different ethnic groups. But in our precise sense that they are geographically deeply intertwined. Some highlights: In Addis Abeba, if you pick two random people, there's a 71% chance that they are of different ethnic groups! In Dire Dawa it's 69%. But it's not just the major cities that have a deep ethnic mix. In Mezhenger, it's 81%; Metekel -- 76%. Looking more closely, the Awash river, the Rift Valley lakes, the Omo river, and the Nile valley are apparent in the pattern of colors, even though they are not drawn on the map. If you think about the history of civilization, it kind of makes sense. People need water, so rivers and lakes attract populations, and over hundreds of years, those areas will become more mixed, while desert and mountainous area populations remain relatively isolated. (I could be totally wrong about this explanation, happy to learn more!)</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Most importantly, it's clear that in most areas, separating ethnic groups geographically is practically impossible. Behind our technical metric is a grim truth, almost too horrific to contemplate. When we say the diversity score is 0.71, what we are saying is that if your region had to become ethnically homogeneous, there's a 71% chance that either you or your neighbour are not gonna make it. And homogeneity is the inexorable direction of ethnic political parties in ethnic regions. Now look at that map again, and think of the tens of millions of people in the brown parts. For many people, the dividing lines would not be just between neighbours, they would be inside the house, in the bedroom, inside my own body!</div><div><br /></div><div>It's like the story of Procrustes from Greek mythology. Procrustes owned a hotel, and he was very proud of a key feature -- he had designed the perfect bed. Then, guests of different height started showing up. Some too tall, some too short for his bed. But Procrustes was so convinced of the perfection of his bed that he decided the problem was the guests. So he insisted on making them fit by chopping or stretching their body to fit his design.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PdQq3RfGSZU/YYPlZ2bWBiI/AAAAAAAB_YE/Omk1ag6cuukLAyoBJb2LiywNat_3tLvNgCLcBGAsYHQ/s450/0_ya9pTu-Ef_euIUFh.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="450" height="111" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PdQq3RfGSZU/YYPlZ2bWBiI/AAAAAAAB_YE/Omk1ag6cuukLAyoBJb2LiywNat_3tLvNgCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h111/0_ya9pTu-Ef_euIUFh.png" width="200" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ethnic federalism is the Procrustean bed of Ethiopia. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And that's the bug. It's even right there in the Amharic name for the administrative regions: ክልል (k'l'l) . I had never really thought about until I heard it broken down by an erudite Ethiopian (not sure who it was, citation needed!) but the word is not neutral like province, state, etc. The verb መከለል is to put a barrier, a shield, a fence etc. It implies protection from the other, assumes hostility and need for separation, apart-ness. When combined with ethnicity, the closest analogue we can find in another language is ... apartheid. We must fix this bug. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The changes that started in 2018, including (re)formation of some political parties on a non-ethnic basis, the removal in some regions of ethnicity from IDs etc. Those were hopeful signs! But the bug is still there, and it has never been more threatening than today.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Oh what a rat race!</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Some a gorgon-a, some a hooligan-a, some a guinea-gog-a</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>In this here rat race</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>....</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Political violence fill your cities</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>When you think there's peace and safety,</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>A sudden destruction!</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Collective security for surety? Yeah</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>...</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Don't forget your history</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Know your destiny</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>In the abundance of water</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The fool is thirsty</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>...</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Oh it's a disgrace</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>to see the human race</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>in a rat race.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_KN7WJCH5A" target="_blank">Bob Marley</a></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-52223815225669186752021-11-03T23:00:00.014-04:002021-11-04T08:31:55.980-04:00How old is Ethiopia?<p>There are quite a few possible answers: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>At one extreme, you could argue Ethiopia is just 27 years old, since the current constitution of the federal republic was implemented in 1994. But that's obviously silly, no one argues for example that France is only 63 years old because the current system (their fifth republic) started in 1958.</li><li>Or you could say it's 28 years old since Eritrea separated in 1993. But no one argues the US is only 62 years old because the 50th state joined in 1959. </li><li>How about the claim, fashionable since the 1970s, that it's 150 years old. This dates it to the reign of Menelik II during which many of the neighbors became European colonies, thus setting roughly the current shape of the map. Or to Tewodros II (1855), the end of a few decades of "zemene mesafint" where the central government was weak, which many consider the start of the "modern" period. But just the fact that II in the names is already a hint that this doesn't make sense. The people who were there at the time saw themselves as continuing something, not inventing a new country. </li><li>A well established answer is that it started in 1270 AD, the end of the Zagwe period of Lalibela fame, and the start of the Solomonic dynasty's rule. From that point forward, there's a huge amount of written history, both internal and external.</li><li>Another answer is to the reign of Ezana, when the name first started being used <i>internally</i>, around 330 AD. </li><li>The word Ethiopia itself is of course older, and is believed to be of Greek origin. It can be found in Herodotus in the 5th century BC, and throughout antiquity. But this was an "<a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/exonym" target="_blank">exonym</a>", and some say it applies to the entire continent which they didn't even know the shape of. </li><li>Many Ethiopians say it's 3000 years, going back to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba#Ethiopian">Queen of Sheba</a> and Solomon, who lived around 900 BC. But, while this is the legendary foundation of Ethiopia, it's not exactly documented history. </li><li>And some say the first Ethiopian was Lucy who lived about 3 million years ago. But, while this archaeological find is monumental in the history of humanity, and a great source of pride for Ethiopians, it's a bit silly to call her Ethiopian, especially since she was just a random Australopithecus whose bones we happened to find. Politics is hard enough even for us Homo Sapiens, let's not drag the poor little "girl" into this. </li></ul>So what's the right answer? The best definition -- one that is consistent with how we say how old is China, or Iran, or the USA --- is not based on a specific shape on a map, nor a particular political system. What counts is the entity, it's existence as a distinct polity with that name and in that region. And that is well documented as being around 330 AD:<p></p><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OfPalWq2uAE/YYNEqmGl2tI/AAAAAAAB_Xw/vcJ2ldMm2Og169V73nVgJkv17ao1tNzJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s814/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2021-11-03%2B22-24-23.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="814" height="221" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OfPalWq2uAE/YYNEqmGl2tI/AAAAAAAB_Xw/vcJ2ldMm2Og169V73nVgJkv17ao1tNzJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2021-11-03%2B22-24-23.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ibjuTu4M7yo/YYNRjWZ0HbI/AAAAAAAB_X8/p-EAh3rg8PgEErq7ZXu_ZSGFSVfrqW5xgCLcBGAsYHQ/s760/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2021-11-03%2B23-20-07.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="202" data-original-width="760" height="85" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ibjuTu4M7yo/YYNRjWZ0HbI/AAAAAAAB_X8/p-EAh3rg8PgEErq7ZXu_ZSGFSVfrqW5xgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screenshot%2Bfrom%2B2021-11-03%2B23-20-07.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><div class="RQZ6xb" style="margin-top: 10px;"><i>(Source: <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Aksum_and_Nubia/Oy7N_d6HoYIC" target="_blank">Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa</a>.)</i></div><div class="RQZ6xb" style="margin-top: 10px;">So the most reasonable answer is: <b>Ethiopia is 1,700 years old</b>. </div><div><br /></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-83803232321359992212021-07-14T22:53:00.015-04:002021-07-16T13:03:24.791-04:00A brief experiment with Truth<div>In my previous <a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2021/06/pay-any-price-bear-any-burden.html">post</a>, I mentioned in passing that an article by Declan Walsh in the NY Times about the war in Tigray seemed to have reversed facts and created a false narrative about who was the aggressor. Well, this subplot took a dramatic turn today. Long story short, in addition to the blog post, I asked him publicly repeatedly, and today he publicly admitted it! It is an extraordinary admission but since the editors of the NY Times are apparently sweeping this reversal under the rug, I would like to relay the story more completely here.</div><div><br></div>On June 21, the NY Times published this article: "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/world/africa/Ethiopia-election-Abiy-Ahmed.html">From Nobel Hero to Driver of War, Ethiopia’s Leader Faces Voters -- Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed plunged Ethiopia into a war in the Tigray region that spawned atrocities and famine</a>". It's quite long and there's lots of "color", but it basically has two pieces of new information.<div><div><br></div><div>First about Feltman meeting Abiy in Addis Abeba in May. The meeting itself is not news, what's being reported is an anecdote about how the meeting went, showing Abiy trying to clumsily charm Feltnan and failing, with details like coffee spills, etc. to show the info comes from someone who was there. So basically this is relaying the story of the meeting from Feltman's perspective. Not really reporting but ok... </div><div><br></div><div>Second, it reports that Coons spoke to Abiy in "early November". What happened in that conversation is the real substance of the article. Here's what it said:</div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O5hbC5P7hMo/YO8iKZA1YSI/AAAAAAAB8fc/e5-Oe9XXfh4MEX-ek-34YPhsveubZoIygCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1626284584206852-0.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O5hbC5P7hMo/YO8iKZA1YSI/AAAAAAAB8fc/e5-Oe9XXfh4MEX-ek-34YPhsveubZoIygCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1626284584206852-0.png" width="400"></a></div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>"Washington" heard about the war <i>before</i> it started </li><li>Coons called Abiy and tried to talk him out of starting the war</li><li>Abiy wanted the war and predicted swift victory <i>before</i> it started</li><li>There is no mention in the article of the actual event that started the war, namely the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_November_Northern_Command_attacks">Nov 4 attack by TPLF on the national army</a>. </li></ul></div><div>The story a normal reader would get is basically that the Ethiopian government was the aggressor against TPLF. </div><div><br></div><div>But if you are not naive a few things jump out. </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First it is saying the call happened in early November before the start of the war, and before the US election, so it must have been Nov 1-3. At that time Coons was running for reelection. It is hard to believe that a US Senator is making phone calls to foreign leaders in the last 48 hours of his own election campaign. </li><li>Second, the reason Senator Coons has been involved lately is as a personal emissary of President Biden. They are both from Delaware, Coons took Biden's seat in the Senate when Biden became VP, and it is not unusual for a sitting president or a president-elect to have personal emissaries do some international diplomacy for them. What is unusual is for this to happen before he's elected. And it is even more surprising that candidate Biden would be focused on Ethiopia while he is in the final hours of his own very intense presidential campaign! </li><li>Third, consider how might have "word reached Washington" about a war that hasn't started. Who gets "word" about alleged secret military plans of a foreign country? Is the claim that Biden was getting secret foreign intelligence while he was still a candidate? The Trump adminstration and Biden transition were not even cooperating *after* the election, so if there really was a secret channel of intelligence to Biden this would be news!</li><li>Fourth a quick look at Senator Coons website shows that his calls are logged. For example <a href="https://www.coons.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-coons-speaks-with-ethiopian-prime-minister-amidst-escalating-conflict">the Nov 23 call is there</a> and is consistent with what was widely reported at the time. But there is no record of a call in early November. Strange exception.</li></ul></div><div>What makes more sense is that there was no pre-Nov 3 conversation. It was the Nov 23 conversation. By taking what Abiy said three weeks <i>after</i> the war was started by TPLF, and placing it <i>before</i> Nov 4, the article creates a false narrative about who the aggressor is. Literally reversing the truth!</div><div><br></div>This was part of a pattern in all the other articles by the same Declan Walsh. In a June 28 article he wrote ENDF "<a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1409639101985288193">invaded</a>" Tigray back in November, a strange statement considering ENDF was attacked on its own bases in Tigray. (I'm using links to tweets as neutral timestamps since publication dates on nytimes.com can change). In May he wrote that "<a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1393560585653129218">Abiy began a military operation on Nov. 4</a>" , as if he just happened for no apparent reason. In February article, he describes the beginning of the war by saying "Abiy launched a surprise offensive". A surprise! A few people have noted this <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1407041844765151233">amnesia</a>. By June, he had written <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1407041844765151233">over 6300 words in 4 articles on the war without once mentioning the Nov 4 attacks</a>. The phrase "Nobel prize" appears in every single article in sentences with a negative or ironic tone. Every Ethiopian government or army action is portrayed as if it was done personally by Abiy himself on a whim, a typical "third world dictator" trope. But the Nov 4 attack by TPLF was not mentioned, not once. Finally, after months, and thousands more words, perhaps as a result of the criticism, <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1411568359754190849 ">"Nov 4" appeared in the 20th paragraph</a> of an article on July 3. In the most recent article, perhaps he has retreated to using passive voice formulations like ""<a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1414299562202656771">war erupted in November</a>". All this to say this detail appeared on Jun 21 against a backdrop of consistent, shall we say, omission.</div><div><div><br></div><div>But this time it was more than just an omission and subjective tone, it was a blatant true or false question. So I asked him directly on Twitter
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Convo between Coons & Abiy was on Nov 23, NOT before Nov 3 as you claim: <a href="https://t.co/JHIzenPLGo">https://t.co/JHIzenPLGo</a> <br>Or was it a secret one? Changing timeline to reverse cause and effect? You did this in May 13 and Feb 27 articles. <a href="https://t.co/s8qHCR1KTq">https://t.co/s8qHCR1KTq</a> <a href="https://t.co/LxJa5KFDSR">pic.twitter.com/LxJa5KFDSR</a></p>— Nemo Semret (@nemozen) <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1407024847587250179?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
And <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1411569828863758336">again two weeks later.</a></div><div><a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1411569828863758336"><br></a> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>Finally today, (<a href="https://twitter.com/Noslata/status/1415203275058581504">thanks to @Noslata</a> and many others) Declan Walsh responded! He said the article was updated, and blamed the falsehood on Coons misremembering the dates.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">After publication Senator Coons said he misremembered the date and the story has been corrected and appended. <a href="https://t.co/nuHeSHaokS">https://t.co/nuHeSHaokS</a></p>— Declan Walsh (@declanwalsh) <a href="https://twitter.com/declanwalsh/status/1415237973331824640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</div><div>Here's what the updated article says as of now </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Fj-E8HmkDh4/YO87TSDQ7II/AAAAAAAB8fo/PyuuZALGUNEbhZYuBB2DcEQPmqaw6-WtwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1626291019703130-0.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Fj-E8HmkDh4/YO87TSDQ7II/AAAAAAAB8fo/PyuuZALGUNEbhZYuBB2DcEQPmqaw6-WtwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/1626291019703130-0.png" width="400">
</a>
</div><br></div><div>So basically the main point, the meat of the story, is now completely different. </div><div><br></div><div>Vindicated! </div><div><br></div><div>But I'm not celebrating. The whole thing is still a loss for Truth. Either the reporter was lying in the article and is also lying now on Twitter when he blames it on Coons; or he simply writes what a politician tells him without even the most rudimentary checking -- more secretary than reporter. One might wonder how a "bureau chief" of a major newspaper could be such a clumsy liar or so gullible. I guess we are lucky that we are dealing with the B team here. Check this out: "<a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/15078/the-new-york-times-shows-how-to-write-about-an-africa-job-advert/">The New York Times shows how not to write an Africa job advert</a>"<span><span style="color: #1d1c1c; font-family: ysobeldisplaypro;"><span style="background-color: white;"> a hilarious deconstruction of a job ad. That might even be the actual one that was filled by Declan Walsh! Reading it you can totally see how the position could go to second-rate hacks who are easily manipulated by their sources. This is not the first time either -- I've </span><a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2007/11/collected-rants-about-jeffrey-gettleman.html" style="background-color: white;">complained before</a><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #1d1c1c; font-family: ysobeldisplaypro;"><br></span></span></div><div>More depressing is that on the article itself, even now there is no indication that a correction was made! No editor's note, no diff. It just says updated as if it was a minor punctuation change. It's hard to overstate the impact of this.... One of the most influential newspapers published a completely false narrative about one of the biggest most tragic events, then after millions had read it, quietly reversed the facts. It's much worse than the old problem of print corrections not getting as much visibility as the original falsehood. In this case the damage is done and what little evidence there was is erased.... </div><div><br></div><div>Another disappointment is that <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/10/what-next-ethiopia-tigray-war"> this July 11 artcile in Al Jazeera</a> covers the same conversation with the same tone, and misses the opportunity to clearly put in the right context (i.e. after not before Nov 4). Before today's admission by Declan, I had asked the author privately if he had more info on this conversation but didn't hear back. </div><div><br></div><div>So what can we do? When this kind of stuff happened leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the NY Times played an infamous role. Here is <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/international/middleeast/20040526CRITIQUE.html">their own list of articles that contributed to deceit about the war</a>. Their ombudsman aka public editor, whose role was to hold the paper accountable on behalf of readers wrote a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the-public-editor-weapons-of-mass-destruction-or-mass-distraction.html">scathing rebuke of the Time's failures</a>. Sadly, this position was abolished in 2017 it seems. So I resorted to asking the question on Twitter. And that is the silver lining. <i>You</i> are now the public editors! And unraveling falsehoods can now happen in a few days instead of years. And of course, the evidence was never <i>really</i> erased merely swept under the rug. We can see on archive.org that the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210625012908/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/world/africa/Ethiopia-election-Abiy-Ahmed.html">change occured between June 25 and June 27</a>. Also I usually don't grab screenshots but for some reason something made me latch on to this on June 21. The summer solstice maybe? Anyway I hope this little experiment shows there's hope for truth. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QgNkQ8Jj0o">Strengthen your mind we are living in serious times</a></div><div><br></div><div>P.S. The title of this post is borrowed from the autobiography of M. K. Gandhi, <a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2012/02/five-books-non-fiction.html">one of my favorite books</a>. </div></div></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-61469066601660924962021-06-24T19:29:00.011-04:002021-07-02T15:25:24.375-04:00Pay any price, bear any burden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iGgPnFsZDe4/YNUCBl09efI/AAAAAAAB7sc/CLiqGhStPlULHDtqPeB4za2YWonLl1ClwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/20191231_092454.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="1920" height="112" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iGgPnFsZDe4/YNUCBl09efI/AAAAAAAB7sc/CLiqGhStPlULHDtqPeB4za2YWonLl1ClwCLcBGAsYHQ/w555-h112/20191231_092454.jpg" width="555" /></a></div><br /><div>There is so much to say about the tragedy currently unfolding in Tigray, so much propaganda, so many paranoid conspiracy theories on all sides in the conflict, and this being Africa, such low quality media coverage... If you don't know much about it, don't get <a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2009/08/gell-mann-amnesia.html">Gell-Man amnesia</a> and start with a random news article. Instead, the best place to start is probably the Wikipedia pages on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_War">war</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Tigray_War">timeline</a>, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_November_Northern_Command_attacks">start</a> (check the citations if anything seems biased!) But my assumption is that you have already done all of that. </div><div><br /></div><div>My focus here is just the US foreign policy aspect. What is going on in Washington, how do we explain US government actions vis-à-vis Ethiopia? Is it "responsibility to protect" or is it "neocolonialism"? Is it all part of a broader strategy related to China or is it related to Egypt? I have not seen anyone answer this adequately, so this is my humble attempt to make sense of it.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Throughout this post I try to remember three principles. Occam's razor: <span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">The simplest explanation is usually the best one. Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Third, every complex problem has a simple neat explanation which is wrong, so we won't oversimplify. </span></i></div><div><i><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></i></div><div>Let me explain where the question arises. First let's take a snapshot -- the very eventful week of May 23, 2021:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>May 23: the US State Dept imposed <a href="https://www.state.gov/united-states-actions-to-press-for-the-resolution-of-the-crisis-in-the-tigray-region-of-ethiopia/">imposed visa restrictions</a> on Ethiopian government officials, which <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/21/biden-visa-restrictions-ethiopia-tigray-conflict-eritrea-war-crimes-humanitarian-crisis/">had been rumoured a couple of days earlier</a>.</li><li>May 24 Blinken <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-call-with-uae-foreign-minister-sheikh-bin-zayed/">spoke</a> to the UAE foreign minister. The same day, the UAE <a href="https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/uae-pulls-out-of-mediation-on-sudan-ethiopia-border-dispute">pulled out </a>of Ethiopia-Sudan dispute mediation.</li><li>May 26 Blinken <a href=" https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-meeting-with-egyptian-president-al-sisi/">met </a>with Al-Sisi </li><li>May 26 USAID said in a <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/may-26-2021-death-usaid-partner-humanitarian-aid-worker-tigray">press release</a> and in a US Senate hearing on May 27, that a "USAID partner" had been killed by "Ethiopian and Eritrean" and that the killing was "<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", Helvetica, Arial, "Arial Unicode MS", "sans serif"; font-size: 14px;"> clearly intentional"</span>. A few things stood out: </li><ul><li>I've tried but can't find the name of the partner organization. It's not mentioned in the press release, or in the statements to congress the next day, or in any press interview. Why would it be secret? </li><li>In congress, USAID's Sarah Charles said it happened in April. But for some reason, USAID did not speak bout the murder for a month. Here's a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics/usaid-tigray-dart/index.html ">CNN story</a> where "a top USAID official working on the ground in Tigray" talks about the situation with partners on April 30, and does not mention the murder.</li><li>the press release says the killing was by Ethiopian <i>and</i> Eritrean troops. As described by Ms Charles, it was not in the heat of the battle. And she also says "and". It would be understandable if they said "or". The "and" means they know it's both. It seems strange that both armies would simultaneously shoot one unarmed person, especially given that most reports have them in different territories, and there was no battle going on. </li></ul><li>May 27 In <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/congressional-testimony/may-27-2021-statement-assistant-administrator-charles-humanitarian-situation-ethiopia">Senate testimony</a>, Sarah Charles said that it was critical the US be allowed to bring in "right kind of people" and "right kind of equipment" to Ethiopia, but that some people were denied visas. Which raises the question, why would the Ethiopian government deny some visas but not all? WFP, World Vision and CARE don't seem to have visa problems. The government says it not only grants access but also provides security to aid workers when they go in areas where fighting is still going on. And adds that it has intercepted weapons and ammunition in food aid trucks, so checking the trucks is necessary. The subtext here is obvious. It is not a secret that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/15/when-is-foreign-aid-meddling/secret-programs-hurt-foreign-aid-efforts">USAID sometimes has secret programs</a> and after all, as it's current head Samantha Powers said in her confirmation hearing, <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/congressional-testimony/may-26-2021-written-statement-usaid-administrator-samantha-power-senate-fy-2022">USAID is a national security agency</a>. So a bit of disagreement on the "right kind of people" should be expected and the USAID reaction seems a little disingenuous.</li></ul></div><div>Then there's the election. Despite all the flaws, the Ethiopian federal elections on June 21st are objectively an improvement over the previous ones. The flaws of course include the fact that two major parties OFC and OLF boycotted. And that the election has been delayed in some regions, including Tigray, which together represent almost 20% of the seats. On the positive side, the independence of the judiciary, independence of the election board, number of parties participating nationwide, number of voters are all better than ever (admittedly a very low bar). Yet over the last few weeks, the US statements started sounding very negative about it. It started with "<a href="https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ethiopia-again-delays-national-election-amid-16179451.php">deeply concerned</a>" on May 27, to being "<a href="https://www.state.gov/elections-in-ethiopia/">gravely concerned</a>" on June 11. They also keep talking about "post-election dialogue" before the election, which sounds a lot like encouraging people in advance to not respect the outcome. All we hear from the US state department is glass half-empty rhetoric, and almost constant predictions of violence. Wouldn't it be strange if, while doctors are working hard to deliver a baby, a "friend" just kept repeating over and over that they are deeply concerned about the complications, and that the family should be prepared for a funeral? </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Now zoom out and consider the think tanks and media figures that form the bench of the foreign policy establishment. We have ex-CIA people like <a href="https://twitter.com/_hudsonc">Cameron Hudson</a> at the Atlantic Council and <a href="https://twitter.com/JDevermont">Judd Devermont</a> at the Center for Strategic & International studies, consistently pushing the most pessimistic narratives about the election. We have <a href="https://twitter.com/mrubin1971">Michael Rubin</a> from the American Enterprise Institute, ex-Pentagon neocon who worked on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, writing extremely negative articles about Ethiopia <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ethiopias-hydro-hegemony-has-arrived-174863">predicting trouble with Kenya and Somalia</a>, and even <a href="https://www.aei.org/op-eds/abiy-ahmed-has-condemned-ethiopia-to-dissolution/">predicting</a> the break up of the country. If we look at the NY Times, the chief Africa guy Declan Walsh seems to be on a campaign to rewrite the history of how the war started: he wrote <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1407041844765151233">4 long articles</a> on it, without once mentioning the actual event that started the war, namely the Nov 4 attacks, and each time stating the opposite of what happened -- that the first attack was by the government rather than TPLF. (His most recent article seems to deliberately<a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1407024847587250179"> change the date</a> of a conversation between Abiy and Coons to support that reversal). This is really bizarre and reminds me of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the-public-editor-weapons-of-mass-destruction-or-mass-distraction.html">scandal of the WMD stories</a> leading up to the Iraq war. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>If you know anything about US-Ethiopia relations, regardless of your views, it should be obvious that something is going on. It almost feels like a new product launch. The Biden administration and the broader foreign policy establishment in the US seem to be executing a policy which views the current Ethiopian government as an adversary. Most importantly, there is a clear push for "intervention". What is the thinking behind it? Let's consider some hypotheses:</div><div><br /></div><div>1. <b>R2P</b>: Our null hypothesis is to take it at face value. The US actions simply reflect "the international community's responsibility to protect" and should be welcomed. No doubt that this motivation is true for many of the individuals involved, so I will give this some weight, but overall, the pattern of actions listed above refutes this as the only explanation. Why would they go to such lengths to not acknowledge the cause of the war for instance?</div><div><br /></div><div>2. <b>Scorpion: </b> the opposite hypothesis is that the US and Ethiopia are like the scorpion and the frog in the fable, that "they" just want to harm Ethiopia period, because it is in their nature as an evil empire. We can simply dismiss this hypothesis. And throw pure racism in this bucket too. Yes of course racism is a factor at various levels, especially the subtle racism of condescending "experts", but it is just silly to think that is the main force driving the policy.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. <b>Puppets:</b> This hypothesis is that the TPLF is successfully manipulating "the west" using money and propaganda. It's true that many journalists, crisis experts and activists on social media probably serve TPLF. Some may be paid agents, and some may be "useful idiots". But the idea that people at the highest levels of power in Washington are unwitting puppets of TPLF seems implausible. How about the idea that they are consciously doing it? Indeed much has been made of Susan Rice's history with TPLF, or Tedros Adhanom's connections etc. Relationships matter a great deal of course, like Chalabi for Iraq, but it seems like a stretch to say these personal relationships are the main reason for the overall policy.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>4. <b>China peril</b>: maybe it is just part of the geopolitical chess game with China. Ok that seems plausible on the surface, China has been very investing in Ethiopia, way more than the US. And containing a "surging China in Africa" definitely fits the bill as something big enough to drive policy in Washington. But on deeper analysis... It doesn't explain our situation. Over the last 3 years with the current government, the trend in Ethiopia is slightly leaning more towards the West than before, including famously in the telecom sector. So "growing fear of China" does not make sense as an explanation for US interventionism in Ethiopia <i>at this time</i>. Ditto for "fear of Russia". </div><div><br /></div><div>5. <b>Neocolonialist resource grab</b>: this hypothesis is that "The West" has a strategy to exploit resources in the region in the long run, which requires a pliant government, which it had until three years ago with TPLF, but the current government is not, so they want to destabilize and ultimately replace it. Given the last 150 years of African history, this definitely deserves consideration. But in this case that doesn't really make sense as a root cause. Ethiopia is not a very good place for pure extractive exploitation... Not much oil and gas etc. What there is is a lot of water, which is indeed very valuable. But even if you think of water converted to electricity, or water converted to food through irrigation, so what? It's not like the US or Europe need to take food or electricity from Ethiopia, so that doesn't explain it. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>6. <b>Oak</b>: But of course water <i>is</i> the key and it brings us to our final hypothesis, which is the Egyptian angle. It is no coincidence that all of this strange stuff is overlapping with GERD. Fundamentally, <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1320057404978057216">GERD itself is actually not harmful to Egypt</a>, and there is a reasonable way to share the Nile long term - the <a href="https://nilebasin.org/index.php/nbi/cooperative-framework-agreement">Cooperative Framework Agreement</a>. But politically, GERD is a threat to the Al Sisi regime right now. The military government in Egypt lives in constant fear of the Muslim brotherhood, fear of a new iteration of the Arab Spring of 2011, etc. The exaggerated almost <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8854453/Bulk-like-Egyptian-Topless-beefcake-police-cadets-pose-president-graduation.html">caricatural</a> "strongman" image Al Sisi cultivates is because he needs to project strength. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-usra-saCLD4/YNUUToLDp0I/AAAAAAAB7tA/CcFCBqWTuscOpt1KPCeTAlsWbW0LKaOCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s700/http___com.ft.imagepublish.prod.s3.amazonaws.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="700" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-usra-saCLD4/YNUUToLDp0I/AAAAAAAB7tA/CcFCBqWTuscOpt1KPCeTAlsWbW0LKaOCgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/http___com.ft.imagepublish.prod.s3.amazonaws.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>That's how <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/41af5f60-f435-11e2-a62e-00144feabdc0">he got there in 2013</a>, it is in the nature of his power. The moment he shows weakness, he's toast. Like the oak tree in the fable, if he bends he breaks. And nothing makes him look weaker than Ethiopia going ahead with GERD despite his intransigence. Egypt will be fine but the current Egyptian government is at risk, and the best way to minimize that risk is to destabilize Ethiopia enough that GERD is stopped or at least delayed until it can be done in a "pliant" way that makes Al Sisi look "strong" domestically in Egypt. </div><div><br /></div><div>But why does the US care about this oak tree regime more than peace in the horn of Africa? Well the oak is a necessary part of the regional axis with Saudi Arabia, and UAE. If Egypt is run by the Muslim brotherhood or a secular civilian government, or anything other than a military dictator, it may no longer be a reliable ally of Saudi Arabia and opponent of Iran. And this is definitely the type of thing that could cause neo-cons, and the liberal hawks and all the other interventionists to coalesce. So it seems plausible that there is a faction within the Biden administration and the broader "establishment" that believes in trying to weaken Ethiopia to help Al Sisi as part of the the overall strategy in the Middle East. It explains the "launch" events of the week of May 23, it fits <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-special-envoy-for-the-horn-of-africa-feltman-visits-qatar-saudi-arabia-uae-kenya/">Feltman going to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar to discuss GERD</a>. It fits with the US policy in Yemen. And it is similar to the convoluted logic on Syria that you see from all the "serious people". It is of course not wise to attach yourself to a doomed oak and it's not like they don't know it. Listen to <a href=" https://youtu.be/i1UsdMhL1Sk?t=294">this interview </a>with Ben Rhodes who was in the white house during the Egyptian coup of 2013. But a policy in an organization as complex as this is not like a logical thought in a single brain, it's the outcome of many competing interests. If enough factions want something, it can happen even if their reasons are contradictory. A great explanation of this is in an <a href="https://charlierose.com/videos/28177">interview of Al Gore</a> in 2006 which really struck me at the time. Skip ahead to 27:20 where he says "the decision to invade Iraq was the worst strategic mistake in American history" and goes on to very clearly explain the "perfect storm" of four policy forces that led to it. It is really one of the most remarkably clear segments I've ever heard on recent US foreign policy.</div><div><br /></div><div>And as in the case of Iraq in 2001-2003, here in 2021 with Ethiopia, it's not one thing, I would say US interventionism is driven by </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>60% stability of the Al-Sisi regime,</li><li>20% fear of China,</li><li>15% R2P</li><li>5% pro-TPLF feelings</li></ul></div><div>For now this seems like a powerful mix, and the interventionists have the upper hand in the Biden administration. They will "pay any price, bear any burden" to pursue these deeply flawed goals. As long as the price is paid and the burden is born by others of course. That's the big picture. Not very glorious. Just the same type of mess that in the past has led to the US supporting military coups overthrowing democracy when the "wrong" party wins elections like in Egypt, talking about humanitarianism while favoring war like in Yemen, "accidentally" <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html">arming Al Nusra Front </a>(aka Al.Qaeda) in Syria, lying about motives and bringing perpetual war like in Iraq etc. I'm sure Samantha Powers and Susan Rice try to rationalize that they are the good guys, the ends justify the means, mistakes are made etc. But they have been staring into the abyss for too long, the abyss stared back at them and sucked them in. </div><div><br /></div><div>The best hope is for the interventionists to be slowed by the weight of their past disasters and blocked by other factions in the US. American interventionism has been failing a lot for a long time. The Iraq invasion gave birth to Al Qaeda in Iraq, then ISIS. They made Iran, which they want above all to contain, stronger than ever in Iraq. Assad won in Syria. Even Libya, despite Egypt the supposed big force of the Arab world being right next door, is a dismal failure. In Yemen $100B and five years of bombing, the Houthis are still there. In Afghanistan, after 20 years and $2T US intervention, Al Qaeda moved and the Taliban won. More important than the failure to achieve US goals, the incalculable damage to the people in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen is impossible to ignore and the strategic blow-back keeps getting worse. So despite the strong interventionist cabal in the Biden administration, it's not clear they can beat the "isolationists", some evangelical Christians like <a href="https://www.inhofe.senate.gov/newsroom/videos/watch/inhofe-speaks-on-senate-floor-about-ethiopia">Inhofe</a> that are pro-Ethiopia, maybe even some "anti-imperialists" from the left, and other factions in the administration and congress.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jiLVLgLPaj0/YNUDfEZHqUI/AAAAAAAB7sw/Xjqy2RaYqZcH7pPfk7Lj98vKJWmcJSXTwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PowerHKP.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1143" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jiLVLgLPaj0/YNUDfEZHqUI/AAAAAAAB7sw/Xjqy2RaYqZcH7pPfk7Lj98vKJWmcJSXTwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/PowerHKP.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>An additional weakness of the interventionists, which may seem paradoxical, is that they don't pay the price of their mistakes personally. No matter how wrong their predictions and disastrous their policies, the same people keep shuffling in and out of think tanks and the Pentagon and the state department, progressing their careers, with no evolutionary pressure, no natural selection. So in effect, neo-cons and liberal hawks and Clintonites and Cheneyites in the foreign policy establishment have been in-breeding for so long their ideas are getting weaker, and their failures are getting more expensive. Samantha Powers and Susan Rice are like inbred descendants of Henry Kissinger. Michael Rubin is like Paul Wolfowitz's mini-me. So one possibility is that it all just fizzles out in incompetence and they end up doing nothing significant in Ethiopia.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are also forces outside the US at play. GERD is kind of a pan-African rallying point. Practically six Nile Basin countries are already aligned with Ethiopia on this issue. Another key variable appears to be the UAE. They are usually aligned with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. But, they have had a good relationship with Eritrea and Ethiopia, helped with the peace treaty between the two governments, offered to mediate with Sudan (until suddenly backing off mentioned above). Qatar is famously not aligned with Saudis so a possible balancing force. Turkey is a other big source of investment in Ethiopia and is <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/03/19/will-page-turn-on-turkish-egyptian-relations-pub-84124">a potential stabilizing force</a> and of course China is as usual against US interventionism. Finally, there's the fact that no matter how many times they pooh-pooh Abiy's Nobel peace prize, whatever his flaws, they can't make him look like a Saddam, Gaddafi or Assad because he isn't. And the election will make that even clearer.</div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com119tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-48239419923305820802021-05-20T10:46:00.007-04:002021-05-20T20:01:16.629-04:00Five books: Pandemic Pentateuch<p>During the last 12 months, I read quite a few books that I really liked. I doubt my overall reading volume increased during the pandemic (more time at home, but also less time in trains and planes), but for some reason, the past year yielded a memorable crop of books. Here are five of them: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49772727-apocalypse-never">Apocalypse Never</a>, an interesting and timely book, with solid coverage of the fundamentals of climate change. Besides being full of information, as I wrote in a previous blog post, it helps you think more clearly about <a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2020/08/what-is-good-for-environment.html">what is good for the environment</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53487333-apollo-s-arrow">Apollo's Arrow</a> a very good book about <i>the </i>topic of the year: Coronavirus. It covers all dimensions and is very educational on how to understand the pandemic in terms of medicine, epidemiology, sociology, evolutionary biology, public policy, history, etc. Lots of interesting details about how the pandemic unfolded in different places from Wuhan to New York City. It also helps to understand how things might evolve going forward. For example, are future mutations of SARS-CoV-2 likely to be more lethal or less lethal? I won't tell you the answer because you should really read this book!</li><li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43726511-the-shadow-king">The Shadow King</a>: "Fiction is a shadow of real life, great fiction is Truth! Furious, illuminating, warm, fantastic, can't say enough about this book. Highly recommended", I <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/1303088512225419264">tweeted</a>. The author is a childhood family friend, and I was really happy to see it short-listed for the Booker Prize. But I can honestly say that was not at all on my mind while engrossed in the story. </li><li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34320321-the-plot-to-kill-graziani-the-attempted-assassination-of-mussolini-s-vi">The Plot to Kill Graziani</a>. "Deeply researched, meticulously sourced, highly readable account", was my brief <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3619880134">review on goodreads</a>. This real life historical thriller would be fascinating to anyone interested in Ethiopia, Fascism, etc. As a personal bonus, I was able to use this book to fill in a few <a href="https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000159946758829">specific details</a> in my family tree. Interestingly I read both Shadow King and this book before the current war in Ethiopia started in Nov 2020. Having the 1930s fresh on our minds is helpful perspective on the current crisis. In the darkest hours, it helps to remember <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWKOPsPffqM">two thousand years of history, could not be wiped away so easily</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35215524-the-monk-of-mokha">The Monk of Mokha</a>, a real-life story of a guy who decides to make Yemeni coffee "great again" (my silly choice of phrase). Nice deep dives into the ancient history of coffee, the technicalities of high quality coffee in the modern world. A real tragic, dramatic and hilarious story, brilliantly told. If Shadow King shows how fiction can be very real, the Monk of Mokha is the converse, it shows how non-fiction can be as good as a novel. </li></ul><div>As usual with my "five books" -- not definitive. If I did it again, I'd likely come up with a different list. Some honorable mentions: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117833.The_Master_and_Margarita">The Master and Margarita</a>, an absolute classic; and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3764414246">Le naufrage des civilisations</a> a poignant personal view of history from one of my favorite authors, who has appeared a few times on this blog. </div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-53501463201505595912020-12-24T13:57:00.001-05:002020-12-24T13:57:56.913-05:00Five books: historical fiction<p>By historical fiction, here I don't just mean novels that are set in the past, but more specifically, accounts of actual events and people, but that are not strictly historical. While the main story is real, the author takes the liberty of imagining the details like thoughts, conversations, relationships, even some side characters. These details of course can't be known for sure but imagining them allows us to access a deeper truth. Here are some of my favorites in the genre:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Mémoires d'Hadrien</b> by Marguerite Yourcenar. A brilliant imagining of the inner thoughts of the great Roman emperor. I read it a pretty young age, having found it while browsing the bookshelf out of sheer boredom. At the time I didn't really read this kind of stuff but to my surprise I ended up completely engrossed. Much later in life, I came to appreciate stoic tradition, which makes me appreciate it even more in hindsight. <br /></li><li><b>Léon l'Africain</b><span class="by"> by Amin Maalouf. Imaginary "auto-biography" of Ibn Battuta aka Leo Africanus. A great explorer who traveled a huge part of the Africa, Europe, and Asia, and had many incredible adventures. Everyone learns about Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus etc. But this guy should really be covered more. <br /></span></li><li><span class="by"><b>Samarcande </b></span><span class="by"><span class="by">by Amin Maalouf. Another fantastic book by Maalouf, describes the life and times of Omar Khayyam, a great poet of the middle ages. The city of Samarkand still exists, in present day Uzbekistan. It's fascinating to think that this place, which we think of as so remote nowadays, was once a major world city, the equivalent of Paris or New York today. <br /></span></span></li><li><span class="by"><span class="by"><b>Burr</b> by Gore Vidal. The story of Aaron Burr, the second vice-president of the US, famous for having killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. I read this a long time ago, before the current Hamilton craze, and never formally studied American history in school, so knowing more about Burr than Hamilton gives me an unusual perspective. Very vivid description of life in the early 19th century New York. Every time I pass by Jumel Mansion, I remember this book.<br /></span></span></li><li><span class="by"><span class="by"><b>Siddartha</b> by Herman Hesse. Imagine real life in the times of Buddha, how people lived and what they thought. Very wise book, historical, spiritual, took me a while to appreciate this gem.</span> </span></li></ul><p><br /></p>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-82200593466120904622020-08-25T16:07:00.006-04:002020-12-29T14:12:31.002-05:00What is "good for the environment"?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d_j-cZhWI-w/X0VVjvmwapI/AAAAAAAB11w/X9PO7kMcxlURuVUUom0qAZyO2-AoUWJkwCPcBGAsYHg/s3888/IMG_2468.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2592" data-original-width="3888" height="267" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d_j-cZhWI-w/X0VVjvmwapI/AAAAAAAB11w/X9PO7kMcxlURuVUUom0qAZyO2-AoUWJkwCPcBGAsYHg/w400-h267/IMG_2468.JPG" width="400"></a></div><p>Consider two pretty obvious statements. First, living in dense cities is much more energy efficient than living in rural areas, especially in cold places where you need heating. Second if we had 1,000 cities the size of New York City, that would be all of humanity, and they would only occupy a small fraction of the earth's surface. A somewhat larger fraction would be used for producing food and extracting some resources but the vast majority of land on earth could be devoid of humans. Yet, for years, I've been surprised at how often people are surprised by these points. Somehow, people assume that cities are bad for nature and that living in a rustic rural cabin or hut, using wood fires for energy is more friendly toward nature. Obviously the flaw in such reasoning is that they are thinking not of humanity as it exists today or in the future, but subconsciously going back to a time when there were very few humans, and so it didn't matter if we were extremely wasteful of resources. Of course the reason there were few humans is that most of them died very quickly. It's a "<a href="http://nemozen.semret.org/2009/08/gell-mann-amnesia.html">wet streets cause rain</a>" type of reasoning that is surprisingly prevalent.</p><p>Another bit of inanity is that many people believe using bio-fuels is "good for the environment". Indeed the US government <i>mandates </i>blending corn ethanol in gasoline. This is good for corn farmers, and good for politicians who depend on them, and maybe even good if you think <i>foreign</i> oil is a problem. But in fact, when compared to just using gasoline without corn ethanol, it results in an increase in green house gas emissions, not a decrease. Yet the belief that it's good for the environment persists.<br></p><p>A new book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49772727-apocalypse-never" target="_blank">Apocalypse Never</a>, by Michael Shellenberger covers these as well as many other such points, in making a very good case that the current global alarmism around climate change is doing more harm than good. Normally, the title and the marketing of the book would have turned me off. The last thing I want is more political BS from climate change deniers. But this book is not that at all. The author not only agrees with the conventional view that the climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions, but he's actually one of the pioneers in the space. Second what actually made me notice the book in the first place was that people were trying to get it banned or de-platformed. Which naturally kind of proves the point that he's making. And it made me want to look into it. (So maybe giving it a provocative title is a good strategy after all!). Which I don't regret.</p><p>He also does a good job debunking the idea of "extinction of humanity". Of course we won't go extinct because of global warming. Isn't it enough to say it will cause a huge problem and enormous suffering? Similarly "saving the planet" is misguided hyperbole. The planet will still exist, even if it's boiling hot or completely frozen, and certainly more CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature changes of a few degrees are no big deal on a geological timescale. So this is just misguided and confused language that is counter-productive. It's like when people scream about "genocide" whenever there's some political violence or war that is ethnically motivated. Constantly calling everything a genocide is not helping the cause of peace. Similarly saying that smoking a joint is exactly the same as a heroin overdose is not helping kids avoid drugs. </p><p>If you care about solutions and the well-being of humanity, you should be more precise in your thinking. What we care about is how we live, and what we mean by "we" is critical. The book does a good job of explaining this and the underlying basic concepts, perhaps the most important of which is "energy transitions", and he generally summarizes the science and arguments pretty fairly <br></p><p>Still there are a few points where I disagree with it, three in particular.<br></p>First, in a section on the "<a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243">Tragedy of the commons</a>", a paper and concept with which <a href="http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~nemo/work.html">I'm intimately familiar</a>, he seems to imply that the "tragedy" in the paper is uncontrolled breeding of humans, which is inaccurate. But the "tragedy" is that when shared pasture land (aka commons) is not properly managed to align incentives, that leads to over-grazing and destruction of the shared resource. The real legacy of that classic paper is about mechanism design, pricing, property rights etc. But Schellenberger seems to reduce this classic insight to <i>just</i> the Malthusian aspect. This is a rather small technicality and doesn't change the main point he's making so I can give it a pass.<br><p>The second one is a much more serious problem. In discussing solar power he says "the achievable power density of a solar farm" is "up to" 50 watts/m2 (p. 188). But the solar constant is 1<a href="https://medium.com/@nemozen/looks-like-the-slope-is-about-10-percentage-points-per-decade-adacf7cc9a34" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="800" height="217" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*TpZTRK38NIuvLnARWvsaIA.jpeg" width="400"></a>.37kw/m2 and the maximum solar energy on the surface of the earth is about 1,000 watts/m2. So he's assuming solar conversion achieves 5% efficiency at best. But this is not true, as we can see from this chart, we're at about 20-30% now and gaining about ten percentage points per decade, as <a href="https://medium.com/@nemozen/looks-like-the-slope-is-about-10-percentage-points-per-decade-adacf7cc9a34">I've written about before</a>. So his take is really unduly pessimistic about the future of solar power.<br></p><p>Third, he makes a really good case for nuclear power for electricity generation. But he fails to address what to me is the strongest argument against it. Chernobyl and Fukushima are "supposed" to happen once every few hundreds of years. But if we do a Bayesian update on those priors, the probabilities are much worse than advertised. Or to put it more simply: How come no nuclear power plant can get private insurance? If the risks are as low and manageable as he and other advocates claim, then one should be able to get free market insurance for it. But that has never happened. I used to be pro-nuclear power, but I've become more skeptical over the years. And despite devoting a lot of the book to it, Schellenberger didn't quite convince me. <br></p><p>Overall, this is a good book, it helps the reader think of many of the questions in a more holistic way, and paints a coherent big picture of environmental humanism. Recommended reading. </p>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-12867937439145351602020-06-27T21:19:00.001-04:002022-07-31T11:38:13.837-04:00Proof of royal blood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>I have royal blood. I'm a direct descendant of one of the great kings in the history of the world. I am sure of it. Pretty cool eh? <div><br></div><div>Which one, you ask? Well, ahem, I just mean I'm mathematically almost sure I am a descendant of a great king. And so are you. <div><br></div><div>Here's the proof. First, like everyone, (except clones if there are any) I have 2 biological parents, 4 grandparents, ..., 2^n direct ancestors n generations back. This is not an estimate, it is a precise fact. Second, I am not a descendent of extra-terrestrials, so I must have human ancestors on earth who were around at all points in human history. Now let's take say n=30. That would be about 1000 years ago. That means I have 2^30 that is about 1 billion ancestors that existed then. Woah. But the world population was only a few hundred million. So how is that possible? How can you fill a billion positions on my family tree, which, remember *must* exist, when there are only a few hundred million humans in existence. Obviously it's because the same person must fill multiple slots. If there was 100M people let's say, then each one on average must appear 10 times. Of course, some get more than average and some get less. It's like a lottery. And the odds of each person on earth getting many slots in my tree are directly related to how many children, grandchildren etc they had. Obviously most kings have more descendants than the average person by far. Not only do they have more kids, their kids are more likely to survive and so on. Therefore in that lottery if the average human appears ten times then the average king who existed 1000 years ago must appear way more than 10 times. Therefore I have lots of kings at n=30. Now if we keep going, as n gets larger, each king gets exponentially growing number of lottery tickets to win places in the tree. If you add it all up, the probability that I have at least one <i>great</i> king approaches 100%. QED.</div><div><br></div><div>P.S. I first read a version of this argument in a magazine article years ago, I think it was Harper's or something, will try to find it and give credit.</div><div><div><br></div><div>P.P.S. The picture is of King David (I love how it looks like "Dawit" but I think it actually says "Davidus"), from the Nine Worthies in the Palazzo Trinci, Italy, circa 1410.</div></div></div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-42476897065433186662020-06-14T12:04:00.002-04:002020-08-03T16:57:27.862-04:00Pray for me: bossa nova Bob<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><div>Deep in the second hour of "The Bedroom Tapes", there is a song called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQP1FZB1S_Y">"Pray for me"</a>. Today for the first time I listened to a cleaned up version. Though the quality is still terrible, genius shines through. The Jazz guitar ending is ... So sweet and unexpected. I play it again, and realize it's all jazzy, bossa nova. Wow. World's colliding. After all. these. years. Yet another dimension of Bob ... A gem within a gem within a gem.</div>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-9364598233088021842020-06-14T11:25:00.003-04:002020-08-03T16:59:57.011-04:00JailbreakerA few years ago, I stumbled upon the amazing <a href=https://youtu.be/6Tn1zCpTnQs>"Bedroom Tapes"</a>. This morning I was thinking about police brutality, injustice and so on, as one is wont to do these days, and I remembered the song "Jailbreaker" from those tapes:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>The jury found me guilty</i></div><div><i>But I found them guilty too</i></div><div><i>I'm a Jailbreaker, hotstepper</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>As they take him to the gallows, an old priest says to him:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Son, I know you haven't done wrong,</i></div><div><i>What a pity the things of today,</i></div><div><i>good got to suffer for the bad</i></div><div><i>But the townspeople were singing: he's a Jailbreaker</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Powerful stuff. Jesus going to the cross. Where are these images coming from? I realize the images playing in my mind are from "The Master and Margarita".... I've been rereading it over the last few months.</div><div><br /></div><div>But then Bob goes on:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Old priest get out of the way</i></div><div><i>You don't know what I've had </i></div><div><i>Watch this, I'm</i><i> a Jailbreaker</i></div><div><i>You can call me a hotstepper</i></div><div><i>...</i></div><div><i>Babylon get nervous, </i></div><div><i>They know we've got to tear it apart</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><br /></div>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Tn1zCpTnQs" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-79183589558331511242019-11-17T12:12:00.000-05:002019-11-17T12:39:57.857-05:00Five books: recently read biographies<p dir="ltr">In the last year or so, I've stumbled into an unusual streak of 5 really good biographical books.</p>
<p dir="ltr">1<b>. Shoe Dog</b>, by Phil Knight. Standing in an airport bookstore with a few minutes to kill, I saw this book and picked it up. I remembered an article I read years ago in Wired about Nike's early days. For some reason I remember the phrase "halcyon days" being used. Such an interesting word. Halcyon. But I digress. Anyway I opened the book and read the first few sentences and it was surprisingly good. So I decided to buy it and was not disappointed. It's well written, and focuses on the interesting early years rather than then better known recent history. Does a great job of showing exactly how a tiny humble importer of Japanese sneakers born out of old school business hustle and a passion for running, grows into a manufacturing and branding icon.</p><p dir="ltr">2. <b>So much things to say</b>, by Roger Steffens. An "oral history" of Bob Marley. It's a collection of transcripts of people who were close to him talking about their memories of the singer. Bob means a lot to me, I grew up with his music, I know the lyrics to even the most obscure unreleased songs, his biography in great detail etc. Still this book was enlightening and very deeply touching. I happened to read it a unique time -- was it high tide or low tide? think of that song here -- in the late fall 2018 -- Bob was born in 1945, just like my mother. Possibly one of my favorite books of all time.</p><p dir="ltr">3. <b>Lenin</b>, by Victor Sebestyen. Really thorough book on the life of the revolutionary Soviet leader. In our new world order, many old isms and schisms are coming back. Nationalism, mercantlism, Marxism. People see them and argue about them. Leninism is different. It's meta. It's about the processes of ideology and power. And it is more relevant than ever. Osama bin Laden and Steve Bannon are Leninists. While this book is about none of that, simply reading the life and thought process of this man is worth it as, in a way, we still live in his world.</p><p dir="ltr">4. <b>The First Tycoon</b>, by TJ Stiles. A very solid biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, well researched. Great window into US history. Through this one person’s life you learn a lot about (among other topics): steamboats in the early 19th century; railroads in the mid centurye; east-westtravel, the panama canal; and filibusters! woah. US-Nicaragua relations: this was perhaps the most surprising part, it gives really really interesting context to the US-Nicaragua problems of the last 30 years or so; the evolution of the modern corporation; the early stages of the stock market. Great read. My only criticism is that the author is a little too sympathetic to the subject. I prefer when a biographer is a bit more neutral, still this book is really a fountain of information.</p><p dir="ltr">5. <b>Homage to Catalonia</b>, by George Orwell. Excellent in every way. One of the best writers in the english language: very precise, efficient, elegant, unpretentious style. Very interesting story, important history and super relevant to what’s happening int he world today. </p>
Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-47628303165446742062019-05-05T13:37:00.001-04:002019-05-07T17:00:58.447-04:0012 rules<p dir="ltr">Apparently everyone does this. So here are mine. Like my lists of books, if I did this ten times I would generate ten different lists.</p>
<p dir="ltr">1. Burgers: well done. E. Coli.</p>
<p dir="ltr">2. Don't buy the second item on the menu (see my previous post on this). Relatedly for wine: order domestic or same continent. Imports tend to be over-priced</p>
<p dir="ltr">3. Insurance: only buy insurance for losses you can't afford, or if you have asymmetric information</p>
<p dir="ltr">4. Debit cards: don't use them. Cash or credit are strictly better options.</p>
<p dir="ltr">5. Shoes: one area where it is usually worthwhile to pay the premium. Prioritize quality (comfort, weight, stitching) over quantity.</p>
<p dir="ltr">6. Investments: only make investments without deadlines,   timing is often where hidden uncertainty is greatest, so make sure time contingencies are on your side.</p>
<p dir="ltr">7. Identity: keep your identity small. (h/t Paul Graham)</p>
<p dir="ltr">8. Food:  the food chain is acyclic. don't eat animals that can eat you</p>
<p dir="ltr">9. Butter is always better than margarine. Never use artificial sweeteners.</p>
<p dir="ltr">10. Premature optimization is the root of (almost) all evil in software engineering (h/t Donald Knuth)</p>
<p dir="ltr">11. Never rewrite from scratch (h/t Jamie Zawinski)</p>
<p dir="ltr">12. My phone does not notify me. I notify it.</p>
Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-75013403755380760242018-09-01T13:10:00.003-04:002023-04-02T09:59:04.792-04:00Desire and scapegoating<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A couple of years ago, I <a href="https://twitter.com/nemozen/status/726497662174941184" target="_blank">stumbled upon the thoughts of René Girard</a>. It's a pretty rare occasion when something makes you really think about the most basic things in a new way. That tweet led me to reading a bit more about it (thanks Dan!).</div><div dir="ltr">
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People are driven by memetic desire. Beyond our objective needs, what drive us most is wanting what others want. To put it in game theory terms, my utility function is a function of the utility function of others. This most obviously explains things like fashion for example. But also, more deeply, the notion of status in society.<br />
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I want something because others want it. This is a self-reinforcing mechanism, and the object of desire can become scarce, so it creates occasional instability, frenzies of desire, and ultimately violence. This is a fundamental process in all human societies.<br />
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The way societies deal with it is through scapegoating. As the frustrated desires get stronger and stronger and become unsustainable, societies create scapegoats: some individual or group which is blamed for the inability of the many to satisfy the memetic desire. The frustration of desire reaches a paroxysm of violence on the scapegoat. Scapegoating works as an auto-immune mechanism: by channeling the violence onto the scapegoat, and even institutionalizing it, society avoids self destruction. And societies that don't scapegoat fall apart into chaotic violence. Thus scapegoating is an evolutionary adaptation to memetic desire. <br />
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This sheds some light on the institutionalization of violence throughout history, whether it is Mayan human sacrifice or the politics of immigration.</div>
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Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-13867016502706709192017-07-15T21:12:00.001-04:002017-07-15T21:12:26.903-04:00Zelalem<p dir="ltr">Et ça, c'est le prince,<br>
qui, sur le chemin de grâce<br>
fait une pause pour réfléchir<br>
au bord d'une mer de miel.<br>
C'est là, le salut.</p>
Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-29364567126415764362017-05-08T10:58:00.001-04:002017-05-08T10:58:39.358-04:00The message is the medium<p dir="ltr">I've started posting stuff over on <a href="http://medium.com/@nemozen">medium.com/@</a><a href="http://medium.com/@nemozen">nemozen</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">After many years on Blogger, I finally got tired of trying  to write a posts on the Blogger app and failing, I gave up.  Medium, both the app and the website, seem to be really author-friendly.<br><br></p>
Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26686539.post-87792480790091626382016-07-19T01:24:00.000-04:002016-07-20T01:05:05.423-04:00Inequality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Let us assume, for now, that wealth inequality is by itself undesirable. OK therefore if Bill Gates moves to Ethiopia tomorrow, it would be a bad thing. The Gini coefficient would shoot through the roof! Wait no.... Where is the actual harm? To make it clearer assume all his investments and charity are unchanged globally, he just wants to live there. Does his presence make people worse off? No probably not, on the contrary. Certainly all the people who would sell him goods and services are happy. And who knows what else. Yet clearly inequality has increased. So what is the real problem?<br />
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This the point where your typical lefty friend is stumped. And then your righty friend jumps in and says: aha, yes this shows that most importantly we want total wealth to increase. A rising tide lifts all boats etc. And then your lefty friend says: well if it wasn't for evil capitalists then the Ethiopians wouldn't be poor in the first place! To which, righty says: No, not evil, wealth creator! And lefty: No, what about the monopoly abuse... And so on. Until they both sink in intellectual quicksand. When they finally stop, instead of answering the real question we started with, lefty goes back to his original assumption that inequality is the root of all problems and right goes on thinking all rich people deserve it.<br />
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Here's a simple test to make this more productive. Always ask first: When you are talking about inequality are you really talking about injustice? Almost every case where someone speaks of a concrete example of inequality, when you peal through layers, they really mean material injustice. They are against the *way* wealth is obtained. Whether it is Wall Street or kleptocrats in poor countries, the real root of the accusations is theft, abuse of power, denial of opportunity, corruption, and especially regulatory capture. And those are usually clearer issues with clearer solutions.<br />
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Of course clearer doesn't mean easier. Justice is hard by itself. But if you seek real understanding, in each instance, first look at injustice. When you have fully considered that, often you will find the issue is fundamentally injustice. The rest, as they say in research, is implementation details.<br />
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Now in the rare cases where there really is no injustice, there is something to say about inequality. When you rigourously examine what people can actually defend, it is not the overall inequality. Say one independent worker is at the 40th percentile because they want time for their hobbies; and another person works twice as much and ends up at the 80th percentile. Few people would argue that the second person should subsidize the first. When you get down to it, morally the case is: help those at the bottom. Yet, when politicians talk about inequality (in the US especially), it's always about the middle. Middle class this, middle class that. How come?<br />
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Because the real issues they are talking about are actually issues of injustice. And if you are part of the machinery of said injustices, then the best way to avoid dealing with questions of injustice is to roll them into with the incoherent debate about "inequality". That will make sure everyone is so confused they will think you are the good guy. That is also partly why both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements became what they are. They both started out as rebellions against bail-outs. Now they are mainly fighting against each other while being directed by their former targets. Political jujitsu.<br />
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So if you, dear reader, are a kleptocrat, congrats! It's working. If you are not, then please don't get confused. Focus on injustice.<br />
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P.S. The jujitsu works because of fundamental human traits: desire and scapegoating. I recently came across the thoughts Rene Girard. That deserves its own post.</div>
Nemo Semrethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17214997121658069676noreply@blogger.com2