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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

There are a few things that would make Brazil a lot more stable economically (and even socially and politically) if we achieved self-sufficiency:

Fossil fuels: Currently, Brazil is self-sufficient in oil, but we export petrol to buy back refined fuels (gasoline and diesel). If we were self-sufficient in fossil fuels we would be much more immune to inflation every time OPEC decides to reduce oil output.

Wheat: We are the top of the world exporting foods. We produce 6x our current need. Nevertheless, we still need imported wheat. Ukraine war and dollar variations literary affect our bread.

Fertilizers: The largest world food producer needs imported fertilizers. The irony: our main supplier is Russia. This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.

Achieving self-sufficiency in these three areas would be like a second independence for us (first was when we got free from Portugal).

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> Nevertheless, we still need imported wheat. Ukraine war and dollar variations literary affect our bread.

This would happen imports or not. So long as wheat exports are allowed, the local price will settle on the world price as the product is able to flow to the highest bidder. An event like the Ukraine war will impact someone and that will drive the world price up.

Only under a perfectly free market system. A great many countries have export controls in place specifically for wheat and other vital commodities. States can also set price ceilings and floors. The US, for instance, passed the temporary Wheat Price Guarantee Act during WWI.

Also, even a perfectly free market has shipping costs.

Brazil government runs a company called Conab that acts as a "buffer stock" for grains. It buys, stores and sells grains in large quantities in a continuos fashion, so the government can soften market fluctuations for those commodities over time.

That's fascinating. I've wondered for a while whether governments did that. Seems like a common sense precaution for preserving your country's food security.

In the latest 5-6 years the stock was basically zero-d. And the previous government even wanted to close CONAB. Now I believe they will return to stock commodity and stuff again, but there's a lot of pressure from agrobusiness to not stock again.

One of reason why food inflation in Brazil rise in the latest years is exactly because of CONAB stopped stocking it.

Even milk and peanut they stocked before.

That's interesting. It reads as a central bank of grains.

> Fertilizers: The largest world food producer needs imported fertilizers. The irony: our main supplier is Russia. This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.

No, it means you can’t take a position without paying a cost. A lot of countries used to depend on Russia for various things, and they have paid a price to change this.

If Brazil exports less food it isn't Brazil alone that would pay the price

> If Brazil exports less food it isn't Brazil alone that would pay the price

Ukraine is/was the world's bread basket. Supporting Russia jeopardizes the world's access to food. Brazil's actions don't exist in a vacuum.

Brazil is not Europe. It’s not going to be some minor inconvenience like having people to take cold showers and virtual signal on the internet. There will be famine and the poorest people will die.

Indeed, Sri Lanka's latest crisis is a heavy example of fertilizer disruption without long term planning.

Europe got lucky with the cold, but for (many) other aspects has been very effective at diversifying very quickly away from Russian supply.

Sure, even the poorest countries in the EU are significantly richer than Brazil, but it's not like we didn't get significant food price inflation either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Lucky? More like expected. The ten hottest years ever recorded all occurred in the last ten years. I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict next winter will also be unseasonably mild in Europe… and everywhere else.

It was still warmer than expected. Look at how prices shot up in advance, before declining when it became clear quite how slowly the stockpiled resources would be consumed.

It's not about not buying stuff at all. Just buy it from different sources. Morocco for example.

Interesting, I've never heard the impact to Europe reduced to cold showers and "virtual signal on internet"

> Brazil is not Europe. It’s not going to be some minor inconvenience like having people to take cold showers and virtual signal on the internet. There will be famine and the poorest people will die.

I don't get your point. Where do you see this fundamental difference between Brazil and Europe? Europe was highly dependant on Russia for it's energy supply, to the point that Putin was hoping to leverage that to conduct his genocide of Ukraine unopposed, and Europe successfully shed that dependence on a dime.

In your opinion, what stops Brazil from finding alternatives to Russia imports?

Brazilian is an extremely unequal country. The poorest population is very sensitive to foods' prices fluctuation. Rejecting Russian fertilizers could mean famine (and not only for Brazil).

There are some recent photos that show the result of accumulated inflation and unemployment during the pandemic:

People scavenging bones to eat: https://f.i.uol.com.br/fotografia/2021/09/29/16329448496154c...

People scavenging garbage to eat: https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-b...

This was possible because alternative fuel sources were available. US fuel exports to Europe reached record levels, and political will was a large part of that.

Alternative fertilizer suppliers might not be available.

How many people are currently starving to death in Europe right now because they cut ties with Russia? If Brazil were to suddenly cut all Russia imports, there would be places in Brazil with actual famines.

> A lot of countries used to depend on Russia for various things, and they have paid a price to change this.

And now they depend on US for the same things paying a much bigger price.

Some countries never learn.

> And now they depend on US for the same things paying a much bigger price.

What? Germany is now reporting record drops in it's energy prices.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/energy-costs-german-hou...

"However, energy prices remain well above pre-crisis levels, he added."

> Wheat: We are the top of the world exporting foods. We produce 6x our current need.

What? Source? Just some rough Google search results seem to consistently show China as #1 in production and the US being #1 in exports (and in the top 3 for production.) The first result I found showed Brazil as #4.

Maybe you're ultimately correct, but you should show a source when making those claims (I'm not trying to make a claim.)

It could just mean they're one of the top of the world. Probably just a slip up. I wouldn't read into it too much. lol

No, they confirm that interpretation in the next paragraph: "The largest world food producer".

The trouble is, when you're making claims which are obviously wrong, then it throws the entire argument into question. If you're getting easy things wrong, then I'm not going to bother with the rest. It's like spelling and grammar issues on your cover letter. You might be a great hire, but come on, at least deal with the easy stuff.

It's perfectly possible to evaluate the other claims in the comment independently from this one. The behavior you're advocating (refusing to consider the rest of the comment because of one error) not only makes you look like a dick, it also makes you worse informed. Bad take dude

Maybe you're giving it a pass because it's a quick to read comment. If this is an essay or a book, I'm absolutely going to consider skipping it at the first major error. This is especially the case if the book is heavy on building a case which would need to be backed by facts (sources.) If the author isn't willing to include sources to back up claims which are passed as fact, then I'm not going to do the work myself. It's difficult enough to open the time to read the thing in the first place. And I would be doing myself a disfavor by believing any of it.

If you think all or even most comments on Internet forums have the same kind of due dilligence behind them as books and essays, you're in for a treat!

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/september/brazil-s...

> Brazil is

> the largest country in terms of arable land

> a top-5 producer of 34 agricultural commodities

> the largest agricultural net exporter

"Brazil produces food for 1.6 Billion" [1] Our population is 250 million; that's probably where the 6x comes from. I don't have a source saying 6x but the "Brazil produces food for 1.6 Billion" is easy to find from many reliable sources; just a google search away.

With regards to "largest food exporter", I stand corrected. The correct is "the largest net exporter in the world" [2] of "of agricultural commodities and related food products".

[1] - "Brasil produziu comida para 1,6 bilhão" - https://brazillab.org.br/noticias/brasil-produziu-comida-par...

[2] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/september/brazil-s...

Hum... Nope, Brazil is not really self-sufficient in oil. It was for a while, but the production did not keep up with the domestic consumption. Anyway, Brazil exports its oil and imports some slightly more expensive one because the existing refineries weren't built to process the relatively recently discovered kind of it that consists on most of the production. And there is little sense in upgrading them.

About wheat, yeah, nobody ever place any priority on being self-sustaining. That's because it's not really important. Brazil has a couple of neighbors that produce enough wheat for supplying it, and need quite a bunch of stuff Brazil produces. The only reason anybody is going for self-sustainance now is because it's profitable, and things will change once it's not.

On fertilizers, well, Brazil can not produce enough of the material for the fertilizers it imports.

The commenter is not claiming Brazil is already self-sufficient in those three things.

"Currently, Brazil is self-sufficient in oil"

What you said is pretty much in agreement with what he said.

> This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.

Not at all. President Lula sided with China and Russia already. Dude loves communists. He even had Venezuelan dictator Maduro over for lunch.

Ah so Russia is a communist country?

It was once. Lula literally wants to turn South America into a southern Soviet Union. Not even kidding.

That's bullshit, sorry.

Sigh. Is it news to you that this guy's a socialist? He literally called himself "a refined socialist" last year before the elections. Why do I have to keep reminding people of this fact? He literally founded a forum for south american communists to gather and discuss how to install this cancer everywhere. There's fucking decades old videos of him talking about installing socialism in Brazil.

It's seriously tiresome having to say this stuff over and over every single time.

I'm from Spain. Lula it's closer to our current social-democratic goverment than communism. It just happens that you are so right-leaned that you don't even realize what are you looking at.

I know exactly what I'm looking at: a communist. The brazilian government as a whole might not actually amount to a communist state but it's certainly not for a lack of trying on his part.

Please explain why. Otherwise its just the internet dude saying.

We can go through the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

"Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarcho-communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those."

So I'm confident the South America Communism/Socialism is as Communism as your Life-style left, where you support 300 genders and drug abuse. They are all communism, which as wikipedia describes: "Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement"

First, Lula is adept of the so-called "class conciliation", therefore he is not a communist by any means. Second, Lula is against the idea of a revolution, with makes him a social democrat on the left spectrum, at most. Third, you can't just use US left as a model for the rest of the world. US left (mainly the democrats) is a pale left when placed alongside the Brazillian left, for example.

> Lula is adept of the so-called "class conciliation", therefore he is not a communist by any means.

That he even mentions this marxist class bullshit is bad enough.

> Lula is against the idea of a revolution, with makes him a social democrat on the left spectrum, at most.

If you actually watch the decades old videos where he explains why he's against it, you'd realize it's because he thinks they don't work as a communist regime installation strategy.

His plan is to do it small bits at a time so that nobody notices. Boil the frog slowly so it doesn't jump, as they say. Since he's a cancerous old guy, he's been accelerating his schedule as of late so it's become a lot more obvious.

This is lazy, learn what communism is; it's not hard.

it is so hard because it either doesn't work at all or people trying to implement it didn't get it right.. :)

Wouldn't disagree that it doesn't work

Sigh. Socialism is not a synonym for communism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

Whatever. I'm not wasting a single brain cell trying to figure out the academic difference between them. They're history.

that will be like the case with Russia and China: The leftist are going to start to call it right. Now Russia and China are Right, not Left anymore. Cuba and Venezuela too. North Korea? radical right! Left for them, today, are just Germany and Norway.

Russia. Left. With Putin. And Aleksander Dugin.

Please, don't use drugs.

> Russia. Left. With Putin. And Aleksander Dugin.

Why do you think he is right? Raised and Educated in the Soviet Union, he tries to revive the soviet union, a socialist/communist dream.

> Aleksander Dugin

The guy that created the National Bolshevik Party, which historically defended Stalinism?

> Please, don't use drugs.

I don't do it, that's for communists ;)

>He tries... He tries to revive the damn Tsarist Russia, totally opposite to the Communist values. It's closer to your conservative values.

>That's for... Yeah, as cocaine for CEO's in the 70's, very commie like.

Cocaine was everywhere in the 70s, but mostly the Californian CEOs in the 70s were commies.. so thats kind of inline with what I said.

You can't be a Commie and a CEO.

These were Capitalists. A progressive capitalist, yes, but Right leaned economically. There's nothing Leftie on being a poshy Californian with the pockets full of bucks even if you don't give a shit on any religion or Conservativism.

The same way you can't call yourself a vegetarian when you eat a weekly BBQ in a Texan rancho.

That's where you are totally wrong. Mostly people that are communists, don't live under communist regimes. Never went to a communist country. They are mostly rich kids, that "read" Marx and thought they "got it". Funny part is that Marx himself was the same kind of person. Rich kid, never worked and thought that he understood the world enough to try to fix it..

In America, maybe. In Europe, the social-democracy it's a big spectrum.

There's the liberal left, the tankie left, the conservative left (which in the end it's 99% close to the Italian/Spanish Fascism), and the libertarian communism, also known as Anarchist comunes, but you need highly educated people there. No, not rich, just truly educated. In scientific and technological fields.

On Russia, today they're closer to fascism than to Socialism. No one it's Communist in the Putin/Dugin circle. No one. Just thugs, corporate mafias and a right wing nationalism with an homophobe discurse against the West, influenced by the Russian Orthodox church.

Not so different to the Evangelican Neocon from the USA. Switch the American flags on a Neocon for the Russian one, change a little bit its Christian branch and you'll get the Russian Ivan full of hate against Western progress since the 1789's revolution and Human Rights. It probably listens to the Orthodox Pope and he listens to the Russian equivalent of Fox News. Oh, they have their version of Alex Jones, too. With the same conspiranoic crap.

it is actually not different than Soviet Union under Staling. So wasn't Staling a Socialist?

Check this out: " LGBT themes and issues faced increasing official government censorship and a uniformly harsher policy across the entire Soviet Union. Homosexuality was officially labelled a disease and a mental disorder in the late 1920s (specifically over a period from 1927 to 1930)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Russia. People keep trying to avoid call Left by their name. You cannot simply start to call everything bad Right and the Heaven Left. Its absurd.

You have conservative left and socially liberal right.

During the 20th century, real-world communism (as opposed to the academic theory) always leaned on ye olde Russian imperialism, which, reincarnated under a new red flag, lent it the necessary muscle. Of course it was awkward to admit that the Communist bloc is actually an extension of the Russo-Soviet empire, so a lot of ink was spilt to recast the Russians/Soviets as liberators, bringers of peace and progress.

As of today, Russia is no longer even superficially left-wing in its state ideology, but the old personal and political ties to the far left in the rest of the world are still there. That is one of the reasons why "tankies" support the invasion of Ukraine and even cloak their support in the same "peace movement" jargon recycled straight from the Cold War era. That is also why countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are sympathetic to the Russian imperial project.

Another reason is shared anti-Americanism, of course. The US has a much worse record track in Latin America than in Europe, no wonder that systemic competitors try to exploit it.

And? Castro had a friendship on a former right wing minister from Franco's dictatorship in Spain, as they shared some of culture traits and heritage from an Atlantic region in Spain, Galicia. Binding left and right populisms together wont make Russia left-leaned. Neither with do that with China.

so in your opinion its Left until it gets dirty, then its Right, and Left is something like Heaven, that people will never reach, but we should still try it over and over again? grow up.

> The US has a much worse record track in Latin America than in Europe, no wonder that systemic competitors try to exploit it.

I liked your explanation, but this part - I agree with you, thats the sentiment there - BUT it just doesnt make sense at all. Europe exploited much more the Latin America, than US did. US was actually one of the first countries that fought this exploitation.

> Ah so Russia is a communist country?

Russia still represents itself as the successor of the Soviet Union, and hardline communist parties still hold onto the (whitewashed) history of the Soviet Union to validate their existence. Russia's armed forces in Ukraine still fly the Soviet union flag, and Putin's propaganda still holds onto Soviet leaders like Lenin to push their propaganda.

To the eyes of hardline communist parties throughout the world, Russia represents the heir of the Soviet Union thus communism, and that's by Putin's design.

It's not like Brazil want to take sides either, so this might be a excuse, not a reason. And there is the BRICS, so taking side is not a good idea. BTW, unlike Europe, there is no consensus here that the side to be taken is with Ukraine.

I gope you guys are not going to copy USA & Europe in term of bread consumption, it's not worth! eat more vegetable, like peas, even quinoa, fruit, they're adapted to your climate and much more nutritive and healthy

Bread is and has always been a staple in Brazil. Quinoa is a fairly recent development over there, and is quite expensive. Definitely not adapted to Brazilian climates although it can be made to work. Wheat OTOH is very adapted and cheap.

Does Brazil send crude oil to opec for refining?

I’d thought refineries would be hungry for oil when opec decreases production and therefore be a net benefit for oil producers outside opec.

It might be a net benefit, but distributing that wealth from oil producers to oil users within Brazil isn't easy. And when oil users see the price of their oil going up, that's what triggers inflation.

But would that change if it was refined within the borders?

Only if you also closed the borders, so that the internal and external prices were insulated from eachother.

> Achieving self-sufficiency in these three areas would be like a second independence for us (first was when we got free from Portugal).

Every country in the world is dependent on trade, which is saves a lot of money over self-sufficiency. North Korea is the only country that tries self-sufficiency.

If it costs you $100/bushel to produce wheat and you can buy it for $60/bushel (I'm fabricating numbers), why produce it?

It is nice to be self-sufficient on survival staples like grains if that is an option. If your competitors are driving a hard bargain and the downside is that you don’t get video game consoles, it isn’t the end of the world, you can call their bluff. If the downside is starvation, it is a bit tougher.

When has that happened - that a country experienced starvation because grain was withheld? Especially a country the size of Brazil?

Ask the Soviets.

Though they were able to find alternative foreign sources to make up the difference and redevelop domestic production.

East Germany after WW2

Because 'Geopolitical Risk' is a thing.

Its nice when you can buy $60/bushel wheat. Its not so nice when your dealer cuts you off.

The extra $40/bushel you pay to produce in-house, thats your insurance policy against having your supplies cut off. In a world where geopolitical lines are shifting, it's a matter of national security and optionality to have your own food production capacity. Risk management.

That's not risk management, that's a panicked reaction. Risk management accepts risk, takes into account likelihood and cost, and finds the most economical outcome.

Nationalism makes you poor.

Taking into account the most economical outcome in the short/medium term also can make your country or community poor in the long term. If you care about the future of where you live, its important to cultivate and support local industry, even when its more expensive.

> Taking into account the most economical outcome in the short/medium term also can make your country or community poor in the long term. If you care about the future of where you live, its important to cultivate and support local industry, even when its more expensive.

Your solution is the short-term one, maybe not even that. In the long run, your community is much better off producing what it does best and trading with others for what they produce best, rather than everyone trying to do everything at some mediocre level.

Your solution is like Microsoft building its own furniture and cars and flying its own planes, rather than making software and buying the furniture, cars, and air travel from those who are expert in it.

Countries subsidise food production for reasons of national security. This is not a new or controversial idea.

Your reply comes right out of ECON 101, and is broadly speaking correct. Still, you've missed the point.

Let's use your example, Microsoft. Companies have different incentives than communities or countries, but I think we can make this work.

For many years, Microsoft only sold software, and let others who were experts in hardware make the hardware and install microsoft on it. Later, they realised that it was strategically important to manufacture their own consumer hardware, and now you have the Surface lineup. Maybe in the near future, they will decide they need to start manufacturing their own chips. If they do that, it's not going to be cheap, especially in the short term. In fact, Microsoft might never be able to produce chips more cheaply than Intel. But they still could choose to do it in-house (or just buy Intel) if the alternative is to lose their dominant position in the market.

> Your reply comes right out of ECON 101

What a bizarre things to say. First of all, are you an economist who can comment on other people's sophistication? Second, who cares? The merits are what matters, and you agree it's "broady speaking, correct".

And risk management in this sphere consists of subsidizing local producers.

The world is three meals away from anarchy, being dependent on the caprice of global markets for food is a great recipe for getting regime-changed by starving people.

> The world is three meals away from anarchy, being dependent on the caprice of global markets for food is a great recipe for getting regime-changed by starving people.

The evidence shows that vastly overstates the risks: It hasn't happened or even come close to happening yet. In fact, name any place that has turned anarachic due to food shortages.

The modern global markets are not capricious, but the most efficient, effective distributors of resources in the history of the world.

> If it costs you $100/bushel to produce wheat and you can buy it for $60/bushel (I'm fabricating numbers), why produce it?

“Certain countries” are well known for subsidizing domestic grain production and dumping it on overseas markets which ends up hurting the local farmers as they can’t compete on prices. Given enough time these countries become totally dependent on the imported grains and their entire farming industry goes away.

You make the choice on if you’re comfortable depending entirely on foreign production of foodstuffs.

—edit—

Actually, you don’t get to make the choice…

I found this compelling but I'm still seeing how objective it is as we carry out this timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI

Well, Brazil needs to stop producing oil within at most a generation. Or pay for it.

Why would we do that?

Because the american liberal that knows what's best for everyone told you that, what was not clear?

The user isn't even American. Nor is it clear that they are "liberal"

Climate change maybe?

We're not yet rich enough to be able to afford such virtue. Give us some time.

Are renewables economically viable? I don't expect any nation that isn't "rich enough" to go green, but the trends of it becoming cheaper means it will become the cheapest means.

Are we there yet? My assumption was the political climate of Brazil was primarily pushing oil dependence

Current political climate seems to favor making gasoline cheaper for the poorest brazilian consumers at pretty much any cost. I've read that they want to uncouple local fuel prices from world wide market prices. They really want to wash off the bitter taste left by the utterly insane prices during the pandemic.

Thus their move will likely be to somehow dictate prices to Petrobras, profitability be damned. Petrobras stock has already taken several nosedives since this guy took office.

That makes sense. People in the UK want their energy prices to fall, at pretty much any cost at the moment

And frustratingly they could, if the current system of renewable wholesale prices being pinned to the most expensive, fossil fuel, prices were removed. There’s some complexity there because building of renewable generation is incentivised via being able to charge more for it, and therefore break even on the investment earlier, but it certainly seems like that would have been a better move than the government just outright subsidising massive price increases, thus transferring money directly from taxpayers who are feeling the pain of inflation to some of the richest companies in the world.

according to al gore - who became a multi millionnaire if not billionaire thanks to his fake prediction - we are already dead so we might be living in a simulation.

Which prediction?

We promise to do this when at leat half of the world has stopped.

Fertilizer - Production : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Production

>Fertilizers

Watch this space.. Green Ammonia is going to be a big new development for Brazil soon... or at least there are a couple of green hydrogen companies that trying very hard to get that up and running in Brazil right now.

That's interesting but the real bottleneck is Phosphate. You can't manufacture that...

None of this independence is deserved if brazil continues raping the Amazon.

I also find the take on decoupling from russia weak and cowardly.

"would make Brazil a lot more stable economically (and even socially and politically) "

It's the other way around.

Brazil and Argentina especially should be rich, what's lacking is coherent social organization from top to bottom. Obviously it matters more at the top, but it has to be borne by regular people as well.

Same could be said of other Central/South American nations, but geographic factors and natural resources do give a material advantage that can be leveraged into a lot.

Consider that Canada, unlike most other so called 'advanced nations' - does not actually have lot of advanced industry. Research, yes, but 'applied' - no. And yet, because it has a 'free export card' with natural resources, it can import the equipment and materials necessary to support the rest of the regular domestic economy, which benefits from ultra boring politics, 'functional' bureaucracy, low levels of corruption.

Innovations can only be leveraged by organizations that have the coherent ability to make use if them.

The 'low hanging fruit' in Brazil is governance, though I hope this Wheat helps.

Why don't the states there organize into a southern United States? It feels silly to talk about self-sufficiency and all when the analog at country level is the USA states. Nobody would expect e.g. Rhode Island to feed itself, but thankfully there is the Midwest. Maybe Bolivar's dream could come true one day.

The United States grew (colonized, captured, appropriated - feel free to chose the verb that most agrees with your view - it doesn't matter too much) into relatively uninhabited land from a starting point with a relatively uniform culture and ideals. As areas got to a large enough population that they could become a state, they were added to the union.

South American is already mature. The countries there have different political situations and relationships. Trying to bring them into one federal republic is a non-starter -- it ain't gonna happen.

A better model would be the EU where you have mature countries removing trade barriers between them, allowing free immigration, and a single currency. This was anchored by a few large countries that had relatively low corruption, peaceful relations and strong economies.

South America... doesn't quite have a strong set of low corruption and strong economies. There are regular coups and a number of ongoing civil wars that would make trying even for a loose coalition of countries in South America difficult.

Well, Bolivar tried but, luckilly, failed. Good for us he was no big military genius, and a coward in battle. We don't need a Napoleon wannabe in South America, thank you very much.

Would you mind expanding a bit on the whole “no big military genius” and “coward in battle” or share some links on it? I’ve heard and read many critics of Bolivar but never any of the sort you mention (not trying to call you out or anything, just genuinely curious about it)

I've read it a couple years ago and it made a big impression on me, had to track it down now.

I misremembered it as San Martin's opinion while old and dying in France, but it appears to be the description given by Karl Marx to Engels (apparently on a letter sent on 1858-02-14, though I can't find that letter right now). This article [0] on the Metapedia explains a bit of the history on why Marz was talking about Bolivar, but also says that modern marxists don't share this view.

[0] https://es.metapedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx_contra_Sim%C3%B3n_Bo...

The Latin American countries are probably too different to unify. Some are led by right-wing populists (El Salvador) and some by left-wing ones (Colombia, Brazil). Some are rich (Uruguay) and some are very poor (Nicaragua, Venezuela). Some are huge and powerful (Brazil and Mexico) and would be able to completely dominate the rest. Some are liberal democracies and some are one-party states.

On the cultural level, they have some similarity but not to the extent that they view each other as part of the same “nation” or “people”. One shouldn’t exaggerate the effect of speaking the same language: consider the fact that the US, Singapore, and Zimbabwe are all English-speaking officially (or de facto officially in the case of the US). Also Brazil does not even speak the same language as the rest.

Some differences do of course exist between the various US states but to a much, much lesser extent.

I think your first paragraph describes the EU/EEA too, or at least it did when Poland et al joined in 2004.

Germany and France (and the UK at the time) dominate. Poor nations like Poland and Greece with rich ones like Norway. Conservative countries like Hungary alongside progressive social democracies like France and Sweden.

People have got to stop calling Poland a poor country. It’s on track to overtake the UK in terms of quality of life in the middle of the decade.

Read the comment again please. I am talking about 2004, you are talking about 2025.

my bad

Well, the EU is not one country and probably never will be. One of the most important countries has already left, euroskepticism is a major political force in many of the remaining ones, the idea of “ever closer union” seems to be dead, some natural future members (Turkey, Serbia) are indefinitely stalled, and even mildly authoritarian members like Hungary and Poland (which, btw, are infinitely more liberal and democratic than Cuba or Venezuela) are constantly in conflict with the central institutions.

I doubt there will ever be even an EU-like structure encompassing Latin America, but even if there is, that would be a far cry from becoming a united sovereign state.

Well, on Spanish speaking countries, Fraga (Spanish Tourism Minister at Franco's dictatorship, right wing) and Fidel Castro were friends.

" Nobody would expect e.g. Rhode Island to feed itself, b"

Again - internal self sufficiency is not the basis of development.

S. America has relatively free trade for things they need, and there are no hugely relevant issues there.

The wheat innovation is going to be nice for Brazil, but more as a function of expansion of industry, not really on the basis of 'self sufficiency'.

Brazil's path to wealth lies through the reform of civic and social institutions, not through some kind of magic grain.

The same could be said of most places.

The geography really makes it hard to create a cohesive whole. The rainforest is almost impossible to traverse by road. It doesn’t help that the two largest countries, Brazil and Argentina, speak different languages.

It’s hard to bring people together when they speak different languages and have to take a plane or cross difficult terrain to meet each other.

From a Portuguese speaker learning Spanish it's a breeze.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

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