The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics strikes again.

"when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster."

https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

I think I am missing the relevance here, or not getting your point, could you clarify please? Possible I'm missing the obvious reference.

As a side note, I find that articles arguments troubling for several reasons that appear to be glossed over, but in interest of not derailing onto a different comment, I'll wait for what aspect you are specifically referring to in this case.

I think he meant that when Japan gave that loan, they took a significant risk (loan could very well default) in order to help fight polio. Other countries did nothing. Yet now Japan looks like the bad guy.

Japan did something to stop polio when no one else would. And now because a billionaire did more as charity Japan looks like a monster for doing what no one else would at the time.

Would it have been better if Japan had done nothing and Bill gates committed the charity now? No, people would have died. So unless you are japanese my question to you would be what has your government done for polio irradication in Nigeria? Because I bet it's less than the Japanese government.

From that perspective, I can see what he meant. Fair enough.

The ethics of profiting off the act might need to be truncated off it though, that is a genuine moral discussion that has so many shades of grey I feel.

> How could they reasonably expect Nigeria to pay them back $76M?

Well three weeks ago Nigeria agreed to buy a dozen Super Tucano aircraft through a US FMS arrangement for $593 million.[0]

So why would Japan expect that they couldn't pay $76 million? The Nigerian Presidents's Boeing 737 is worth nearly that much, plus his pair each of Gulfsreams and Falcons...

[0] whereas the USAF paid about $30 million per airframe including similar spares and support services, and bare flyaway cost from the manufacturer is about $12 million each.

Eh. What about the 200+ other countries who didn't give Nigeria a loan (or gift) towards the goal of eliminating polio? I don't think lending money to a willing debtor is a bad look.

I don’t think making a loan and expecting repayment under its negotiated terms is that bad a look.

Making the Japanese and Nigerian elite look bad, could be a large part of the intent here. That $76M might mainly be a political comment.

In perspective, oil and gas companies spend more than double that lobbying the US government every year and in Mayfair in London, a house went on sale last year for $120M.

> How could they reasonably expect Nigeria to pay them back $76M

Oil revenue?

If they make so much cash with oil, then why does Japan and Bill Gates have to spend billions to help them fight polio?

In 2013, the official in charge of the central bank claimed that $20 billion had disappeared from the state oil company. He provided over 300 pages of evidence to parliament to substantiate this claim, and yet he was blamed for the loss and fired.

Nigeria is a country with a long and persistent history of corruption. It pays its legislators the highest salaries in the world, yet over 60% of Nigerians live in poverty. About 9 months ago, anti-corruption investigators found $43 million in cash in an apartment, which is a drop in the many-hundreds-of-billions that have been lost to corruption in the course of Nigerian history.

The amount of money isn’t really the issue, it’s the infrastructure for getting this revenue back towards public funds. That is to say corruption and a lack of internal organizations probably prevent a good portion of revenue from coming back to the people... And/or that they’ve already obligated themselves to other humanitarian efforts. Oh yeah and don’t forget existing debt obligations which are likely to be many factors larger...

Also, more importantly, you should probably google before shit posting as they roughly make ~$48bn of their GDP from oil.

You should ask this question to the Nigerian Govt.

Everyone has debt, it's a tool, not a sign of poverty/inability to repay.

Or, this encourages japan more.

It's possible that Japan are providing other aid[1] (which they don't seek repayment for), but this was under different terms.

[1] I'm trying to find their foreign aid info, but not having much luck on finding figures...

It makes Nigeria look bad. Why lend money to a country that's just going to wait around for some megabillionaire from another country to make a goodwill effort to take care of its problems?