The idea of using drones to drop something helpful...
What would the world look like now if for the past 15 years drones had been dropping computers, medicine, water purifiers, seeds, etc.? How many millions of parachute-fitted, protective boxes worth of these things could we have dropped for the same amount spent on war?
The cost of drones, including associated equipment and personnel, will be much higher than just paying locals to move goods in the normal ways (truck, boat, donkey, wheelbarrow, etc.) Less risk that you will squash houses and children or litter the landscape with containers. Even so, international operations are expensive. You'll probably have to grease some palms. Then there's the fact that this kind of major cash influx attracts attention from men who are very shrewd and skilled at diverting cash flows. Watch as your dollars line pockets and pay for things you never imagined.
The computers that aren't simply sold for profit will become e-waste with nowhere to plug them in, no local use for them, nobody to maintain them. Your water purifiers will break down, requiring expensive parts to fix, and they may not have been useful to begin with. Your seeds will typically fail to grow, and do nothing about all the other barriers to farming. Medicines without medical care are typically not very useful either. The kind of stuff that is usually dumped like this is cheap trash that the donors would never use, and the locals know it. They could infer it, from the way it is being dumped like worthless trash, and they undervalue it accordingly. When you dump shipping containers full of (say) cheap shoes and t-shirts, you put all the local cobblers and tailors out of business.
When all of this fails or is even seen to do harm, despite costing astronomical sums of money, that will do severe long-term damage to the cause of foreign aid.
> Less risk that you will squash houses and children or litter the landscape with containers.
Sadly, some drops of food aid used similar colours as cluster munitions. About 10% of cluster bomblets don't explode. This has, obviously, caused some death and maiming.
> A key United Nations clearance expert has expressed concern about the similarity of the coloring of the yellow BLU-97/B cluster bomblets and the small yellow food aid parcels being airdropped in Afghanistan, noting that people are being encouraged to pick up the food parcels, but that picking up a bomblet would be lethal. He said, "Our experience in Kosovo showed us that children and youths were highly susceptible to the submunitions…. It is highly likely that many in Afghanistan will not know the difference between aerially delivered food aid and aerially delivered munitions." BBC Worldwide Monitoring reported that U.S. Psychological Operations units broadcast a radio message warning Afghan civilians of the similar yellow color of the cluster bomblets and the food packages, noting that cluster bombs will not be dropped in areas where food is air-dropped but stating, "[W]e do not wish to see an innocent civilian mistake the bombs for food bags and take it away believing that it might contain food."
I do realize that drones are not the optimum delivery method for something like this. A big C-130 would probably be better for most all cases.
You already argued why handing out big sums of cash is a bad idea. As you said, shrewd people will be quick to take it. Foreign aid is already little more than a bribe, usually entirely siphoned off by the country's elite. Centralizing the goods in a warehouse or truck makes them easier for a bad actor to steal as well. And as you said, you'd have to grease some palms to get anything happening at all.
As for the rest of what you said, I don't agree at all. A water purifier (or perhaps I should have said a water filter) can be the size of a straw, with no electrical component or moving pieces, and will last for decades[1]. The medical care to accompany the medicines will come with education, and foreign doctors will no longer fear their hospital being blown to pieces. Your cobbler example makes no sense -- as far as I know Afghanistan does not have a thriving computer manufacturing economy. Obviously seeds will be chosen appropriately for the climate of the region they are delivered to.
So, I didn't necessarily mean my initial comment literally. The core of the idea is that direct aid is a much better solution than bombs and military occupation.
I imagine the refugee crisis wouldn't exist. People with computers rarely go outside.. (but seriously they would be able to work remotely much like the Indian tech sector)
If we provided these areas with internet access too via satellite or balloon, you would likely have a whole legion of educated young people fixing problems from within their own society, rather than an outside force mostly wreaking havoc despite its intentions. I don't know if the average American would scoff at the idea, but I am dead sure that it would turn out better for everyone than the path we took.
Drop some generators then too! I live in Cambodia, and spend a lot of time out in the provinces where everyone meets up daily to charge their phones and other electronic devices around the single generator in a village.
And need I mention that massive bombing campaigns don't exactly facilitate having a reliable power grid.
Everything I'm saying would cost peanuts compared to what the US spends on weapons and war.
I think you're responding to a comment that advocates US foreign policy... I haven't ever made one.
I'm just saying that Facebook and Google can't throw some balloons and gliders in the sky supplying Internet access and call it a day. There are many more barriers to increasing the penetration of technology in the third world.
I also have a hard time believing that the former Cambodian regime would have allowed generators and other supplies from the US to be used by the populace.
> I live in Cambodia, and spend a lot of time out in the provinces where everyone meets up daily to charge their phones and other electronic devices around the single generator in a village.
I would love to read a blog post about this. Do people charge, who maintains the generator, is there any solar, what else do people need, what else do people want?
Respect to the endangered american polecats, there are a few good ways to save it and a lot of bad ways to try it. Astrid Vargas and other scientists from the Wyoming university strike the right chord when start breeding it in captivity. Fortunately "the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion was not so developped then. Between 1987 and 1994, the wild population increased from 0 to a few hundreds and then 6000 ferrets. Since 1994, this woman moved to Doñana and tried to save the iberian linx breeding it for first time. Something that proved to be much more difficult. Both species could be extinct now without people like her (and much other).
This said, the access to the article seems restricted and the title didn't help too much to understand the idea. Trying to just "feed" the polecats with pellets looked like a really dumb idea to me, before to read that the real goal is to vaccine them (and to prairie dogs also) against sylvatic plague transmited by fleas. This is a totally different question. Similar things were done before to eliminate rats on NZ islands... Could work. Yersinia pestis was a formidable killer of humans also (is the creature that caused the black death in Europe), so would be a great success for all people living in the area.
..."the lets burn all zoos with pitchforks and torches" current fashion...
Ignore the fringes. We need more and bigger zoos, reserves, protected habitat. Any one who disagrees is a fruitcake.
I'm as left wing as they come and volunteered for a decade for a conservation group (trying to save wetlands, habitat for birds and fish). I'm a paying member of my local zoo. They have extensive conservation and preservation efforts. They earn my money.
Much as I dislike zoos (enclosures are too small for most critters), we need them to serve as gene-reservoirs (arks) and breeding mills.
On mobile I immediately get a 'please enter your email address to continue reading' banner. It also seems to be clever enough to realise that 'annoying@washingtonpost.com' is not a valid email to enter. In addition it didn't accept made-up (random string)@gmail.com or even made-up (list of English words)@gmail.com.
It seems like a lot of effort was put into this little tool.
At a guess, cropdusters are not designed to dispense something as thick and colloidal as peanut butter, and they're designed to maximize coverage. Presumably these animals do better with "pellets" of peanut butter, rather than a fine mist of peanut butter slurry applied evenly over the landscape.
Cropdusters, I believe, used to be able to broadcast either seed or other matter[1], if outfitted properly. So, I think it's possible, they'd just need the right attachment for the belly of the Ag Cat, Snow AT or similar.
On the other hand a drone might be cheaper to rent a operate than a personned aircraft.
Cheaper? Not sure. I recall a thread here once about using drones for agriculture where someone pointed out that they can rent out an aerial op over their fields (not sure whether it was spraying crops or just photographing the field with IR cameras and stuff) for less than it would cost to get a single drone in the discussed project, that would likely require lots of those drones to make sense. Agricultural plane rental in the US seems to be cheap, like taking a cab every now and then is much cheaper than buying a scooter for every member of your family.
Good point about the safety. That said, a nice Ag Cat or Snow AT can carry a hefty load of those pellets in the hopper and spread it with venturi or even a centrifugal broadcaster. Probably a ton or two or more?
According to the article: "Matchett says airplanes aren’t quite right for the ferret mission, because the delivery must be precise, and therefore low-flying."
mmmh... This is an interesting problem that merits to think about it. How to grant that most donated money ends really helping the country instead making rich the local organized delinquents, spoon-feeding the war and supporting the local corrupt nets. We need to attract more creative people as possible to think about how to improve this.
I'll propose something. Why if we would use the donated money to condone the same amount of external debt in origin? or maybe to lobby with the goal of stopping unreasonable external debt forever?.
Advantages: More simple, no blackmail when crossing customs, no generous international help for lords of war of dictatorships, not money leaked in the travel, more money available to help with the same amount of cash, because you don't need to burn part of your resources to move a team of people to a small country in the middle of nowhere and protect them of being kidnapped or falling ill. No more buying goods in America and spend your money moving it to Tailand when you could buy the same products in Myanmar, less troubles when converting between a lot of currencies...
I'll propose something. Why if we would use the donated money to condone the same amount of external debt in origin? or maybe to lobby with the goal of stopping unreasonable external debt forever?.
What do you mean? Do you want to use peanut butter to save endangered Oklahomans, or persecute Kansans with an aerial food assault? Or do you want to increase the ferret population of Nebraska? Do you want to trick Michiganders into consuming vaccines?
I always forget how this sophism is called: "Does not make sense to do x, because y is much worse.", when in reality you can do both. Can someone please help me out?
What would the world look like now if for the past 15 years drones had been dropping computers, medicine, water purifiers, seeds, etc.? How many millions of parachute-fitted, protective boxes worth of these things could we have dropped for the same amount spent on war?