I'm writing because one of the Stories visible on Greta's Instagram account via Picuki is about the war in Sudan. I will decide later who I am writing to.
As far as I can tell, from the Wikipedia articles "2019 Sudanese coup d'état", "Khartoum massacre", "Next Sudanese general election", and "2021 Sudanese coup d'état", people are fighting because they want power and cannot agree who should have power.
This might sound like it's the reason for a lot of fighting, but notably, this explanation does not touch on any specific issues that people disagree on, other than "who should be in power".
Poll: A conflict in which 1000 people die is more similar to which of the following?
An Internet argument between two people who hurl insults at each other
A war where 2 million civilians and 500k soldiers die
12 Mar 2026
Poll: Why is there fighting between Russia and Ukraine?
- Because the Russian government is bad
- Another reason
(Attempted escape of president of Sudan with $7m in cash-filled suitcases)
Poll: If your current wealth and yearly income tripled, do you think you would act in a more moral way or less moral way?
(disagreements about power that led to Khartoum massacre)
Poll: What is the greatest amount of governmental corruption that you think would be still be better than an ongoing war? 1% to 100%
Poll: Teleportation booths are invented that can be used only by people, not cargo, to instantly teleport to any other booth at no cost (but immigration laws are still enforced). Any factory can employ anyone, if laws allow it. Would this reduce or increase global unemployment?
The last poll is about how you would fix the situation in Sudan. I don't know why the economy got worse, prompting the 2019 revolution. FRED has Gross Domestic Product Per Capita for Sudan, but this uses the exchange rate. So a lot of the drop around 2018 is from the currency exchange rate dropping from 0.15 to 0.02. World Bank has PPP GDP per capita, and it's only a small drop before 2019, when the revolution happened.
Wikipedia for Sudanese pound mentions oil.
Since the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Sudan has suffered from a scarcity of foreign exchange for the loss of three-quarters of its oil resources and 80% of foreign exchange resources.
2011 South Sudanese independence referendum:
Minister of Petroleum Mr. Deng said he fears that an immediate budget cut for the north would ignite a war. "In order to avoid conflict, we could look to a phase-out arrangement whereby you provide the north some [oil] until they get an alternative". The pipeline to export southern oil currently cuts through the north, and the south has not begun construction on a pipeline that would avoid that route.
It does have an official exchange rate. So people were upset when foreign imports became more expensive, after the change in official exchange rate.
I don't know how much of the government budget came from oil, and not checking. The second FRED data series that has recent (post-2010) data was Youth Unemployment Rate for the Sudan. Low unemployment seems like it should be good? And maybe it was, until the fighting started?
Transport costs are a barrier to trade. It's supposedly cheap to transport things by sea, seen in things like what percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of food is from sea transport, vs 'last mile' of people driving to the store. (Of course if I ever go to the store, I walk, which is less efficient and slower than a bike.) A search for "what percentage of transportation costs to reach the midwest in the us from china are sea transport?" did not give an AI answer, but it did give a somewhat relevant chart, Logistics Costs, United States, 1980-2024. Shows that the US had $730 billion in inventory carrying costs, $1670 billion in transportation costs, and $180 billion in administrative costs.
If everyone in the US was poor, the administrative costs would be lower, but the cost of fuel would be the same. The vehicles might be cheaper, but maybe not much cheaper. Repairs could be cheaper, but a new vehicle would cost the same no matter which country buys it. This is $4800 in transportation costs for each person in the US; Sudan's per-capita GDP was $1k in in 2024.
So if people in Sudan could teleport to factories in China that are close to the ocean, their potential to be employed if everyone in the world worked less would be higher than in the current world. (The potential for them to be employed might decrease if everyone else in the world could also teleport to those factories, though.)
Ok kind of funny that I didn't know about Stories until a day or two ago, and a search result for "instagram stories" says that "Stories is one of the most used parts of Instagram". Now I know.
No comments:
Post a Comment