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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

> rare earths

This is a common myth that just won't go away.

From 2019:

"A new report by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) shows that rare earth minerals are not widely used in solar energy and battery storage technologies."[0]

> like copper and rare earths, are quite dirty to produce, and often done in the global south

I'm from Australia. You say "Global South" like it's some kind of substitute for "poor countries".

I have very mixed feelings about mining, but it's pretty hard to argue against the idea that mining these exact minerals has made Australia one of the richest counties in the world, and the people working in those mines as some of the best paid "unskilled" labor on Earth[1][2].

[0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/28/are-rare-earths-used-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

[2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

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> I'm from Australia. You say "Global South" like it's some kind of substitute for "poor countries".

“Global South” is the currently used term for what was previously called “Developing Countries” and “Third World Countries” before that.

The global south is not equal to the geographical south, otherwise they could’ve just said the southern hemisphere.

According to Wikipedia[1], Australia is considered part of the “Global North”. It’s an economic label more than a geographic one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South

> what was previously called “Developing Countries” and “Third World Countries” before that.

I actually think referring the development-challenged countries as “Less Developed Countries” and/or “Developing Countries” started when “Third World” still had its geopolitical alignment meaning (i.e., when “First World” and “Second World” were meaningful, and both also included countries that were behind the curve in economic development but aligned with the respective central power of the respective blocs), rather than the order you suggest.

Yes it's true that "Third World" originally was a political term that meant non-aligned.

However it was non-aligned nations that started using the term themselves in conjunction with poverty to highlight the issues they were facing. Although slightly different, Mao's "Three Worlds Theory" included China in the "Third World" as an "exploited nation" (whereas under purely political terms it was a "Second World" nation because of its communist government)

After the Sino-Soviet split, China would have been considered third world, like communist Albania was canonically considered. Any country not in the USA or USSRs orbit was technically third world even if communist.

I don't think it was as cut and dried as that.

To quote Wikipedia: By the end of the 1960s, the idea of the Third World came to represent countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that were considered underdeveloped by the West based on a variety of characteristics (low economic development, low life expectancy, high rates of poverty and disease, etc.).

For example, I agree China was usually considered Third World but so was Cuba (despite being Soviet aligned).

And as far as I know Yugoslavia was never considered Third World despite it not being Soviet or US aligned.

I guess my argument is that whilst Third World initially was a political label is turned into an economic one so quickly that the political aspects were mostly ignored. Instead terms like "non-aligned block" were mostly used in the political sphere to designate what "Third World" originally meant.

Another Australian here. Hint: nl understands that the so-called "Global South" does not include Australia.

It's not that we don't understand how the term is used. It's that we find the term very distasteful.

Yes.

It's non-descriptive (since it really is supposed to be referring to less-economically developed countries) and entirely inaccurate in every way.

China, India, Mexico and all of Africa are considered "Global South" despite being north of the equator.

The only things they are south of are the US and Europe, which really says what this name is about. I think it really shows the US/Euro-centric thought process that came up with this name.

Isn’t every country basically south of Europe except maybe northern Canada? It’s weird that they are so warm. And Harbin is south of Seattle, yet is much much colder in the winter.

It should also be noted that rare earths for magnets may be going away too! Tesla is saying they'll be moving to RE-free iron nitride magnets (from Niron, I think). If they can, so can wind turbines that use PMs.

Iron nitride, of course, uses elements available in essentially unlimited amounts.

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