I'm not sure I understand your comment, this article is specifically about KoBold, a startup which has just received venture funding (semi-recently) from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. It isn't implying that they owned the mine or were able to build their businesses from the gains from the mining. I assume both of them funded the company because sourcing minerals necessary to transition to renewables is a priority, whether for personal or business reasons.
They own equity in a company that owns part of the mine, they don't own it outright.
On your second point, I thought the whole complaint from people about Elon was that he wasn't actually "self-made" because he benefitted from the gains of the mine and had a privileged upbringing. If you just think owning mines in general is unethical, I'm really not sure what to say.
> They own equity in a company that owns part of the mine, they don't own it outright.
Of course, but it's a distinction without a difference.
>the whole complaint from people about Elon was that he wasn't actually "self-made" because he benefitted from the gains of the mine and had a privileged upbringing.
Yep. Not only is this claim factually false, but (as you point out) it doesn't make any sense because there isn't any inherent ethical problem with mining.
Another way to look at it. Hopefully the find brings the price of copper down so it is less attractive to thieves who steal it and interrupt infrastructure projects.
The double-edged sword is, this also makes it famously dirty. This is structural, not incidental. An iron deposit is only viable at 20% iron (4 tons of slag for every ton of product), but copper is viable at 1% (99 tons of slag for every ton of product).
Apparently it as high as 150t of ore per 1t of copper, and yeah it's an environmental disaster. [1] I can't help but feel this discoveries are such a mixed blessing for developing countries, when even Western countries do such a bad job of controlling for bad environmental outcomes. [2]
As with rare earths, it feels like a good way to get clean outcomes at home and export and concentrate the environmental implications abroad. [3]
Thanks. I probably understated my case, but I try to err on that side.
So the question becomes, how do we fix the environmental optimization algorithm? Then it hits me: "It's the price signals, stupid." It's only economical to dig 150 tonnes instead of 5 because copper is 30x as expensive. So if your environmental optimization goal is simply set to "reduce cost," then these factors cancel out, and you 'auto-magically' optimize for minimum environmental impact. :D
Obviously I'm simplifying here and there are cost differences in processing copper vs iron too, but those differences should also "flow through" and get weighted appropriately.
The problems start when externalities (pollution shirking) and middle-men (rent seeking) enter the room. Both of these distort the price signals, which should (but rarely do!) convey the true underlying environmental cost.
> The problems begin when externalities (pollution) and rent seeking (middle-men) enter the room. Both of these distort the price signals, which should (but rarely do!) convey the true environmental cost.
> The problems start when externalities (pollution shirking) and middle-men (rent seeking) enter the room. Both of these distort the price signals, which should (but rarely do!) convey the true underlying environmental cost.
This makes it sound like externalities are the distortion rather than the primary driver of the environmental cost. This is not my area, but my understanding is that b/c environmental systems almost never have an "owner" who is a party to transactions/development, the environmental costs are almost entirely externalities. What are the important underlying environmental costs which _aren't_ externalities?
Externalities are both "a [pricing] distortion" and also "the primary driver of the environmental cost." The former is what allows the latter problem to persist, despite the efficient market hypothesis.
>get clean outcomes at home and export and concentrate the environmental implications abroad
Yes this is a huge problem. If your inputs tell the market that certain humans or certain biomes are economically less valuable than others (eg through statistical life valuations, or environmental regulation arbitrage), then the market genie will say "you asked for it you got it!" and 'efficiently' re-allocate pollution to those poor countries. :-\
Markets are fundamentally a tool for distributed computation, and "garbage in, garbage out" still applies.
Given that the U.S. hasn't invaded DRC where the majority of the world's cobalt is mined and whose mines are mostly controlled by the PRC, an invasion of Zambia seems highly unlikely.
I know this will probably sound extremely arrogant but... at least we actually do try to bring democracy when we invade other countries, unlike, say, Russia + Ukraine or China + Hong Kong/Taiwan.
IMO, Afghanistan had a pretty great gift handed to them by the USA, but they didn't value it at all and threw it all away for a crappy theocracy as soon as we pulled out. Stark contrast to South Korea.
To be clear, I now think it's a terrible idea to force democracy on a country that doesn't want it, but hindsight is 20/20.
More like ignorant. The US spent decades supporting whichever side would work with us, including overthrowing democratically elected rulers that wouldn't. Maybe we've learned, or maybe in another 30+ years we'll hear about all the shit we're pulling now.
Seems pretty disingenuous to include this, no? No invasion ever occured, compared to the million or so deaths in Afghanistan and god knows how many by the time the Ukraine conflict is over.
I'm curious about the environmental impacts of this deposit vs the copper sulfite mine we've been debating in Minnesota near Lake Superior / Boundary Waters.
Volts Podcast had an interview with the CEO of KoBold. It was definitely interesting and a needed improvement in finding resources considering the stakes. Hoping this isn't a Jevons Paradox and we don't ruin equally valuable ecosystems in our path. This is a real ethical concern given that the amount of resource extraction has grown so much year over year.
We had unprecedented social upheaval last year in Panama to free ourselves from a big Canadian copper mine and to push for nature and forests as our primary source of wealth. Zambia has of course not benefited from mining[0] (surely with the exception of big politicians), serving as just another third world source of raw materials with the usual consequences for the locals and the environment.
About time more people in the global South reject this arragement.
Sounds like kobolds were in Dwarf Fortress. The WoW writers lifted from every fantasy/mythology ever, so I'm not sure if wow kobolds are a nod to DF or just a fantasy folklore reference. Probably the former.
Kobolds are from D&D. Both Dwarf Fortress and World of Warcraft got them from there. D&D got them from Tolkien, like most of the fantasy races, but I think the small lizard people concept is from D&D.
I like KoBold a lot, but this is a wild take on what has happened so far - a traditional mining exploration technique found this deposit, KoBold then brought into this as a typical cashed up midtier/large miner would and haven't released a resource and reserve calculation at all.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 79.0 ms ] threadhttps://news.crunchbase.com/ai-robotics/cleantech-kobold-bil...
That's what "venture funding" is, by definition.
>It isn't implying that they owned the mine or were able to build their businesses from the gains from the mining
It isn't clear why this distinction should matter, ethically speaking.
On your second point, I thought the whole complaint from people about Elon was that he wasn't actually "self-made" because he benefitted from the gains of the mine and had a privileged upbringing. If you just think owning mines in general is unethical, I'm really not sure what to say.
Of course, but it's a distinction without a difference.
>the whole complaint from people about Elon was that he wasn't actually "self-made" because he benefitted from the gains of the mine and had a privileged upbringing.
Yep. Not only is this claim factually false, but (as you point out) it doesn't make any sense because there isn't any inherent ethical problem with mining.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-27/la-me-co...
Thieves are less sensitive to the prices somebody else is paying.
The double-edged sword is, this also makes it famously dirty. This is structural, not incidental. An iron deposit is only viable at 20% iron (4 tons of slag for every ton of product), but copper is viable at 1% (99 tons of slag for every ton of product).
As with rare earths, it feels like a good way to get clean outcomes at home and export and concentrate the environmental implications abroad. [3]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579155/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/09/copper-minin...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
So the question becomes, how do we fix the environmental optimization algorithm? Then it hits me: "It's the price signals, stupid." It's only economical to dig 150 tonnes instead of 5 because copper is 30x as expensive. So if your environmental optimization goal is simply set to "reduce cost," then these factors cancel out, and you 'auto-magically' optimize for minimum environmental impact. :D
Obviously I'm simplifying here and there are cost differences in processing copper vs iron too, but those differences should also "flow through" and get weighted appropriately.
The problems start when externalities (pollution shirking) and middle-men (rent seeking) enter the room. Both of these distort the price signals, which should (but rarely do!) convey the true underlying environmental cost.
This is my opinion as well.
This makes it sound like externalities are the distortion rather than the primary driver of the environmental cost. This is not my area, but my understanding is that b/c environmental systems almost never have an "owner" who is a party to transactions/development, the environmental costs are almost entirely externalities. What are the important underlying environmental costs which _aren't_ externalities?
Externalities are both "a [pricing] distortion" and also "the primary driver of the environmental cost." The former is what allows the latter problem to persist, despite the efficient market hypothesis.
Yes this is a huge problem. If your inputs tell the market that certain humans or certain biomes are economically less valuable than others (eg through statistical life valuations, or environmental regulation arbitrage), then the market genie will say "you asked for it you got it!" and 'efficiently' re-allocate pollution to those poor countries. :-\
Markets are fundamentally a tool for distributed computation, and "garbage in, garbage out" still applies.
IMO, Afghanistan had a pretty great gift handed to them by the USA, but they didn't value it at all and threw it all away for a crappy theocracy as soon as we pulled out. Stark contrast to South Korea.
To be clear, I now think it's a terrible idea to force democracy on a country that doesn't want it, but hindsight is 20/20.
Seems pretty disingenuous to include this, no? No invasion ever occured, compared to the million or so deaths in Afghanistan and god knows how many by the time the Ukraine conflict is over.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/getting-better-at-mining-the-mineral... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/31/raw-mate...
About time more people in the global South reject this arragement.
[0] https://dailynationzambia.com/2023/04/mingomba-mine-a-wester...
Because kobolds are the little mining tunnel rats in World of Warcraft. Surely this company wasn't named after a warcraft species.
If I remember my folklore correctly some variants of them are associated with resource deposits. Maybe that's the connection?