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Comment by ratww | Hacker News Reader

As someone born in Brazil, I'm tired of this condescending bullshit.

There are several economically viable solutions, but Brazilian government should be interested in pursuing them, rather than only pursuing things that only benefits the current friends of the government (such as deforestation).

US/EU/etc forcing Brazil to get its shit together would be BETTER for the population. We don't need the deforestation to progress. Quite the opposite.

If Brazil were to wage a war on another country, would it be fine just because Europe/US also did it in the past?

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This is also "sins of the father" style reasoning. The fact that other people did a thing in the past doesn't mean I agree or support it. I have ancestors who fought with the confederacy; does this mean I shouldn't be opposed to human trafficking in 2022? I think that would be an unreasonable jump to make.

Exactly.

This is a very weak argument for something that is so damaging as letting the forest be destroyed for what is virtually zero economical gain to the population.

> There are several economically viable solutions...

Such as? The sheer scale of what Brazil feeds to the rest of the world would hardly accommodate for "several economically viable solutions".

2020 paper about the issue: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2003270117

You can't simply tell a third-world country to halt a major part of their economy.

I answered somewhere else.

Brazil being a major exporter of only primary sector goods isn't doing the population of the country any favours.

> If people from other countries really want Brazilian economy to get off the ground, they should want Brazil to export processed and manufactured goods, or other sectors.

> Treating Brazil like a big farm is doing neither Brazil nor the environment any favours.

> The "We should't criticise Brazil" is not only hypocritical, it's also counter-intuitive.

It's not about halting a major part of its economy. It's about not fucking up the rest of the economy only to accommodate a sector that isn't doing that much good for the greater part of the population.

China/EU/US actually love the cheap meat. The "let's not criticise" is as self-serving as it gets.

Yes, we can and do every time we tell country that its drug production is bad for the rest of the world.

There is no moral reason not to intercede here, if suitable compensation and incentives are provided.

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