Egyptian govt. wiped out pigs, cities now overwhelmed with trash | Hacker News Reader

Egyptian govt. wiped out pigs, cities now overwhelmed with trash

nytimes.com

46 pointsrandomwalker45 comments

Speaking broadly, there are two systems for receiving services in Egypt: The government system and the do-it-yourself system. Instead of following the channels of bureaucracy, most people rely on an informal system of personal contacts and bribes to get a building permit, pass an inspection, get a driver’s license — or make a living.

While I realize the thought might not be popular in the corridors of power in Egypt or, for that matter, the NYT newsroom, a refinement on the "informal system of personal contacts and bribes" is a "market". Try them sometime -- they work fabulously!

Signed,

World That Does Not Wade Through Trash On Commute To Work

It doesn't always work. The city of Napoli in Italy also has its own system of "informal system of personal contacts and bribes" to get things done: yes, the Mafia controls garbage collection there, and for some time it looked like this:

http://images.google.com.au/images?q=Napoli+garbage

Market needs accountability and transparency. Bring the transactions to the surface and let the offers compete.

> let the offers compete

http://images.google.com/images?q=Athens+garbage+strike

Yes, and when you have a market-based system for violating laws, that's called "corruption."

When the government obstructs the market in egregious ways, it is called corruption. When the people circumvent it, it is called the black market and it is often the most important market when the government is corrupt or incompetent.

It's a bit naive to suggest that corruption is only ever caused by governments, and that black markets don't ever involve corruption.

The claim isn't that corruption is caused by govts, it's that govts make corruption inevitable.

Corruption requires a govt from which to extract special privs via illicit means. (Unless, of course, you're referring to moral corruption.)

It isn't corruption to dump sewage into the drinking water supply if there's no govt restriction on said dumping that you evade through "connections". (Yes, it's wrong to do so even if there's no rule against it, but corruption is the evasion, not the act itself.)

Of course, black markets often involve corruption because "black market" is, by definition, illegal, which requires a govt.

There is a form of corruption involving companies (such as bribing someone to get hired) but they don't affect other people.

>The claim isn't that corruption is caused by govts, it's that govts make corruption inevitable.

They also enforce laws preventing it.

>There is a form of corruption involving companies (such as bribing someone to get hired) but they don't affect other people.

Of course they affect other people, what do you mean? There are all kinds of harmful corrupt practices not involving governments.

> They also enforce laws preventing it.

All govts selectively enforce laws. The "bad" cases get called corruption.

> Of course they affect other people, what do you mean?

Exactly what I wrote. If I don't do biz with a company, whether or not it follows its rules doesn't matter to me at all. In fact, I can even avoid a company that obeys all of its rules.

One can almost always avoid a company. It's very hard to avoid a govt.

> There are all kinds of harmful corrupt practices not involving governments.

How about three examples?

>All govts selectively enforce laws. The "bad" cases get called corruption.

Agreed, but I don't see what this has to do with our discussion. Selective enforcement of laws by a government is certainly one form of corruption, but I see no reason to define the word "corruption" so that nothing else counts. If you prefer, we can talk about "schmorruption", and reserve the term "corruption" for cases involving governments, if the definition of this particular word is so important to you.

>. If I don't do biz with a company, whether or not it follows its rules doesn't matter to me at all

That's just false. Ever heard the word "externality"? If a company has corrupt hiring practices, for example, that's going to adversely affect the people who would have been employed by that company if it had a fair hiring process. And in any case, it's not always so easy for consumers to avoid doing business with a company (try avoiding business with your local electric company).

>How about three examples?

Nepotism, price fixing and protection rackets.

>>All govts selectively enforce laws. The "bad" cases get called corruption.

>Agreed, but I don't see what this has to do with our discussion.

The relevance is that you charged in arguing that govts weren't all that relevant to corruption, your best argument being that they "enforce laws". I merely pointed out that how they enforce laws is where most corruption occurs.

> That's just false. Ever heard the word "externality"?

Yes, I have, and it has nothing to do with biz-only corruption.

>>How about three examples? [of biz-only corruption that affect other people unwillingly]

> Nepotism, price fixing and protection rackets.

You seem to think that every bad thing that a company can do is corruption. It isn't.

You're not owed a job at a given company, so nepotism isn't interfering with something that you're entitled to.

Price fixing and protection rackets aren't even (necessarily) violations of a company's rules (which is a necessary condition for corruption).

>The relevance is that you charged in arguing that govts weren't all that relevant to corruption

No, I didn't say that.

> I merely pointed out that how they enforce laws is where most corruption occurs.

I don't really understand what this sentence means, or what you mean by "selective" when you say that corruption results solely from selective enforcement of the law by governments. Your original statement was this:

>Corruption requires a govt from which to extract special privs via illicit means.

This is clearly false. It requires only some or other party from which to extract special priveledges by illicit means. There is no requirement that the party in question be a government.

>Yes, I have [head the term "externality"], and it has nothing to do with biz-only corruption.

Are you claiming that the corrupt actions of a business have no externalities? I don't understand how you can possibly think that is true.

>You seem to think that every bad thing that a company can do is corruption. It isn't.

Nepotism, price fixing and protection rackets are examples of what is ordinarily called "corrpution." You are free to define the word so that it only applies in cases where a government is responsible, but then your claim that all corruption is preconditioned on government is just a tautology. I've already said that I'm happy for you to use the word "corrpution" however you please -- we can choose to use some other word if it makes you happy.

>You're not owed a job at a given company, so nepotism isn't interfering with something that you're entitled to.

This depends on what you think you're entitled to. I personally think that I'm entitled to a fair assessment of my job application. And in an earlier post, you admitted that bribing someone to get hired was a "form of corruption." In any case, the entitlement issue has nothing much to do with the question of whether or not it is corruption. Same goes for your other examples.

> price fixing and protection rackets are examples of what is ordinarily called "corrpution."

No, they're not. Corruption requires that an organization violate its own rules. Price fixing, while illegal/bad, is an example of an organization doing something that it wants to do. The same is true of a protection racket - it's the purpose of the organization.

You seem to think that every instance of bad activity is corruption. It isn't.

Let's go back to your definition "It requires only some or other party from which to extract special priveledges by illicit means."

According to that definition, all theft is corruption. As is all extortion. As is anything that results in some gain to the "bad actor".

That's absurd. Corruption implies a loss of integrity. Protection rackets and other thieves haven't "lost integrity" - they're criminal enterprises and their acts are completely consistent with that.

>No, they're not.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8271547.stm

> Corruption requires that an organization violate its own rules.

Does it? Where did you get that requirement from?

>According to that definition

You're misinterpreting the scope of "only", as should be obvious from the context. I was not proposing a necessary and sufficient requirement for something being corruption, I was just saying that the party from whom privileges are extracted doesn't have to be a government.

>You seem to think that every instance of bad activity is corruption

No, I do not.

It seem to me like you are trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Trash collection, at least in major cities in the US, is done either by some branch of civic government (for example New York's Department of Sanitation), or by a private contractor, usually on a long term contract (Greenwaste Recovery in San Jose).

It's pretty far removed from what could be considered a free market. Yet it's not expensive (at least compared to things like phone service, water, or cable), its employees tend to be reasonably fairly compensated, and as you mentioned, it works. ...even if that reality might not be popular in libertarian circles.

If anything trash collection in Cairo sounds more like something approaching a free market than what large cities do in the states.

I visited Cairo ~10 years ago. It was so polluted that your nasal mucus (can I say 'booger' at my age?) would be black by midday. The entire area around the Pyramids of Giza smelled like camel shit, to a nauseating degree. The museums and cops were in a race to see which could be defiled faster for a quick buck.

The only redeeming quality of the entire city is Khan el-Khalili (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_el-Khalili), which is one of the coolest places I've ever been.

I too visited about 10 years ago. I found the trash, poverty, chaos, and general attitudes on the street to be fairly repulsive. I referred to it as the armpit of the universe. I don't recall heavy air pollution though.

Giza was definitely overcommercialized to a nauseating degree, but I don't recall such a stench.

I felt that, as a westerner, I was walking around with a blinking dollar sign over my head.

We got out of Cairo as soon as we could, taking a 12 hour bus ride to Dahab. This place was a little paradise on the Sinai Peninsula, and the hospitable attitude by the locals was quite refreshing. We stayed a week and only returned to Cairo to fly back to Greece.

Yeah, it really saddens me. As an Egyptian, I grew up watching old Egyptian movies my parents always had running on the tv, and still do. I would see the Nile in all it's glory, flanked on both edges by beautiful rows of palm trees, etc. I guess that's how it really was back then, according to the parents. But it's not like that anymore. I've gone back to the motherland about 3 times in the last decade and have always been thoroughly disappointed. It's dirty, underdeveloped, etc. You drive down one block and see rundown apartment buildings, and out of nowhere you see a marble crafted government building that has not one blemish or crack. However, being a Copt, I do find the monasteries to be one of the few preserved gems of Egypt, where you can see artwork from hundreds and hundreds of years ago still in its original form painted on huge rock walls. Other than that, and the handful of tourist spots (museums, libraries and whatever is left of the ancient ruins), I really can't suggest anywhere to visit in Egypt that'll give you that Indiana Jones, culturally rich 3rd world country feel to it. Even places like Alexandria, which are considered to be on the cleaner part of the spectrum, don't do much for me. There are places like Sharm El-Sheikh that are great, but consider them like the Cancun of the middle east - nothing really culturally original.

Overall, I don't enjoy visiting that country, but that's dependent on the specific places I choose to visit. For a place that was once a leader in philosophy and sciences, the inventor of papyrus, the builder of the pyramids, to have devolved into what it is today is really sad.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba.

Um, when pigs eat organic waste, don't they usually produce other "organic waste"? Where did all of that go before?

Think of the pigs as lettuce->manure converters.

manure meaning fertilizer so you can make more lettuce, YUM!

Also, they were lettuce -> pork converters :)

There hasn't been pork eaten anywhere in Egypt for the last 1500 years or so. And before then, at least for the last 5000 years, it was unpopular among a sizable chunk of the working classes, slaves, refugees and migrants from the North East.

Live and learn, PebblesRox, live and learn.

The Coptic Christian community in Egypt-- which numbers in the millions and predates the arrival of Islam-- raises pigs and eats pork.

read what I wrote again: "for the last 1500 years". Also, the entire pig population in Egypt was 300k[1], how many people did that actually feed in a population of 25 Million[2]?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/middleeast/25oink.ht...?

[2] Coptic percentage of the entire Egyptian population. 15% - 30%, depending on who you ask, of 81 Million.

None of the pork was exported (or could have been exported)?

These are pigs that feed on garbage, who is going to slaughter them for export and what health regulations can they pass? They were mostly pets, and sometimes food for the poor. The Egyptian government is putting on this charade just to annoy the Christian community and appease the Muslim extremists for a bit.

The government plays the two religious groups against each other and has a habit of leaning against one to get favors from the extremists of the other. Recently, they prosecuted a Christian woman who converted to Islam and they handed her back to the church, who in turn revoked her conversion and punished her. Previously, they released a Muslim man who stabbed a Christian man, etc. etc.

As you, Gobbles, know (I know you just signed up, but why the trollish handle?) fascism works best when the public is kept in fear, hateful of each other, and divided.

Gobbles =/= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels

Anyways, it's nice to get a different perspective. Don't worry about the downvoters.

Thanks for the correction!

Since you're actually interested in fruitful discussion, let me leave you with this tidbit. Since the recent religious tension, the government tried to out-radicalize the Islamists, and their minion-clerics issued a fatwa by proxy calling for the boycott of all Christian businesses. The Muslim Brotherhood, the main Islamist opposition party in Egypt capitalized on this and issued a competing fatwa urging Muslims not to harm their fellow countrymen and to keep patronizing Christian businesses!

It completely exploded in the face of the government, they lost farther public support, and now the Islamists and the Christian community (i.e. the working classes) are chummy again. So now the government is leaning heavily on both groups; the Mubarak regime is going as far as talking up an imaginary Shi'ite invasion of Egypt and it's pickings diplomatic fights with Iran, even though the two have no border and the Egyptian Shi'ites are not even the same kind of Shi'ites as the Iranians (they're Ismaelis, adherents of a once ruling sect that once built the city of Cairo and the Azhar Mosque; the Fatimid dynasty.)

http://www.touregypt.net/food.htm ...Pork is considered unclean by Muslims, but is readily available, as is beef...

This was, of course, before the recent cull...

> Also, the entire pig population in Egypt was 300k[1], how many people did that actually feed in a population of 25 Million[2]?

Why are you assuming they only eat pork?

300k for 25M sounds too little, almost like having a muffin for a wedding cake.

But your question is very valid. Also valid are mine:

1) How many of those pigs are of edible age/weight? vs how many are still little piglets.

2) How many of those Egyptians are of chewing age (i.e. how many are not toddlers or toothless senior citizens unable to chew bacon.)

See, anybody can practice sophistry with little effort. We can debate this forever, but let's do each other a favor, shall we? Here is a quest:

Find ONE Egyptian coptic recipe with pork. Just one dish. Google for the rest of your life, call the Egyptian embassy in your country and summon the expat Coptic community. Why stop at copts? Go for all Arab Christian groups. Fact: pork is something the urban poor just resorted to recently, never part of their heritage or long-term diet.

mahmud: There hasn't been pork eaten anywhere in Egypt for the last 1500 years or so. mahmud: Fact: pork is something the urban poor just resorted to recently, never part of their heritage or long-term diet.

So which is the fact? That pork hasn't been eaten in Egypt for 1500 years or that it has only been eaten their recently.

You know what water hasn't been drunk in Egypt since the time of the pharoahs - go on prove me wrong find a Egyptician recipe for water ...

The recipe for pork is this. Take pig, cook over heat, eat. Also people who survive on garbage don't use recipe books.

Here you go - http://bit.ly/porkpork - Islam Online's (very clearly biased) article reporting a priest to have advised Egyptian Christians to stop eating pork. It's from 2007. It doesn't strictly say that people do, but does say they shouldn't - it could have been an entirely unnecessary edict but for any sane person it's sufficient to show pork was being eaten in large enough quantities for prelates to comment on and for Islamic news groups to report.

Doesn't the article you link to tell you that it's eaten by foreigners? i.e. tourists and expats?

Nope, "Egypt's Christians are divided over a piece of advice given by Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, who urged followers not to eat pork over health reasons."

All the quotes are from Egyptians including several church leaders in Egypt.

I love the "Scientists say" editorialising in it too ... hilarious.

I found an Egyptian pork recipe http://bit.ly/porkrecipe

also an account of a group called the Boheyreh who eat pork and dog http://bit.ly/2uYIY .

http://www.touregypt.net/food.htm from 1996 says pork is widely available.

But I'm sure it's all just a conspiracy of lies ;0)>

Excellent finding there with the second link. But please note that the Maghrebees are dogs as well, an exception in all mediteranean, semitic, ancient-egyptian and abrahimi traditions: these clearly are not representative of the larger community of the inhabitants of this region; they were either pushed by extreme hunger, or it's a culture brought in from other parts of the region (excepting consumption of these meets for medicinal or ritual purposes.)

But I'm sure it's all just a conspiracy of lies ;0)>

I never alluded to conspiracy, don't put words in my mouth.

Regards.

Next thing you will be telling us that no Egyptians drink alcohol either...

From the article.

For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs — which they then slaughtered and ate.

Another example of the kind of thinking that has made the third world great.

Another example of what happens when supposedly rational monkeys prove to be completely irrational and base their actions on unsubstantiated emotions.

This doesn't just happen in the third world.

As opposed to the irrational monkeys that dump their trash in the ocean? Or shoot satellites powered by plutonium into fast-decaying orbits? Or use ASATs to destroy satellites, then cry out for ways to get all that trash out of orbit? Or make TV sets full of heavy metals, then provide no way to dispose of them safely?

From my POV, there's plenty of irrational to go around. Finger-pointing is an exercise fraught with peril.

Why? Does one wrong make another one go away?

If it's screwed up, say so. Sure everybody is screwed up, but only by talking about it are we able to improve.

Please don't call people monkeys; it's somewhat rude.

Why?, unless you don't think the writer is a person, too.

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