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Thirst For Coltan Fueling African Conflict
MetaPhyzx writes "According to an article put forth by the Toward Freedom website, the metallic ore known as columbite-tantalite or coltan for short is fueling conflict in central Africa. The relevance to us who read news for geeks: Coltan is in quite a few consumer electronics; the article references the Sony Playstation series." As reader fahrvergnugen points out in the comments below, there's reason to more than doubt the currency of the claims in the above-linked article, as outlined in a post at Joystiq.
honestly, anything and EVERYTHING starts a war in Africa. This is really nothing new.
The problem with African tribes is they have too much freedom. They have the freedom to violate the rights of others without any consequence. This lack of law creates a rule by force in which the incentives favor violent force over non-violent competition. This means any new resource found will lead to bloodshed as the means of competing for them instead of market competition. I don't see that as being ethnocentric, since the entirety of history until constitutional monarchy was implemented is filled with the same pattern.
I got assaulted with negative mods when I said the Burma junta was going to seize the aid as being ethnocentric and making over generalizations, a week latter they did. I was no more wrong about that than this because it is human nature to follow self interest, and the incentives as they exist in Africa now make the competition by force and the war of "all against all" it brings the most rational.
The problem with Human nature is that it is very rational, even in irrational situations. Africans may know that if they support co-operation today they might eat better tomorrow but they also Know that if they don't kill the other town they will not live to see tomorrow and will eat better today. The option of furthering the system of violence in this case is the more rational. this is played out in movies, no one is going to be the first to drop the gun when they know the other will shoot them if they do.
Africa has a great many regular Africans who WOULD be happy to get by not much above subsistence, if they COULD do it in relative freedom, but they opt instead to do it through organized violence.
I guess you could call it ethnocentric to assume rule of law is superior to anarchy and force, but then I would say you're disparaging my ethnocentric culture and are engaging in an anti-ethnocentricly biased ethnocentric view point against me, which makes you no better than a hypocrite.