The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Read a great article awhile back on HN that talked about the impulse to fix other people’s problems far away from your own.[3] Seems that SV and Stanford could do a lot more to fix the issues closer at hand in the Bay Area (homelessness, unaffordable living, rising inequality) and the US in general before solving all the worlds problems. Lead by example sort of stuff. Instead my main takeaway from the article is get rich in the startup lottery then proselytize your grand vision and plans from your bubble of prosperity. Sell the dream but don’t look in the mirror.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Life_in_the_Emerald_C...
Speaking as someone who currently struggles financially, one of those three things is not like the other....
Homelessness and unaffordable living are things that could potentially threaten me personally. Rising (income) inequality does not. There are bonuses and fat paychecks being received all the time by upper management in a casino nearby where I live. Those well-off managers are not the sort of things that are worth losing sleep over.
Plenty of people I talk to agree that having the US or Germany or someone just run the government completely would be a huge step up. Honestly I can't find any realistic objection. Just hopeful stuff about educating them, making it better, etc. Approaches that have been tried a long time and simply aren't working. Apart from pride (which doesn't cure infections, get kids in schools, or feed people), there really isn't a reason for those people to object.
The problems of colonialism tended to be human rights, eh? Are we really concerned that Belgium would start cutting hands off in the 21st century? (It's also sort of funny. China's getting big in Africa. No way they're going to treat people there very well. Can't imagine a 21st century British empire in Africa ending up worse than Chinese business domination.)
Syria is an ongoing case where there remain options. I think our tactful new foreign secretary may have the right idea that we should hold our noses and work with "the linchpin of a vast post-Soviet gangster kleptocracy" who looks "a bit like Dobby the House Elf" and the "manipulative tyrant Assad". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/1...
Pretty sure he'll back off from that after getting briefed [possibly by Israel if internally won't be enough]. I'd assume the same for Trump if he wins.
Operation Orchard [0] is a good example that Assad's nastiness wasn't just an internal issue that could be ignored. Unless of course he somehow promises to behave this time.
Everyone realizes the "rebels" could turn out to be even nastier guys so no Western power has a clear interest in letting any of the 3 parties win.
As such a ground invasion makes little sense if you have to cede power eventually - there's no guarantee some "good guys" will magically emerge, they won't.
That's were establishing an international colony comes in. Or as some suggest just an international safe zone on some portion of Syrian territory.
The proposed neocolonial plan far less problematic. You are not imposing a rule from the outside, which would naturally cause resentment. You get the country to agree to a voluntarily giving away a chunk of the country with preferably few people.
Then people will have to CHOSE to live and work there by moving there. Nobody there will live under European/American/Japanese or whatever rule without having chosen to do so by moving. We know people are capable of accepting foreign rule if it is voluntarily. People do it all the time when they move to Europe or the US.
It seems to me as a much more attractive option to have people being able to move within their own country to get freedom and prosperity rather than having to move all the way to Europe and America and having to deal with completely different languages and customs.
It's not much of an aspiration, but it is, strictly speaking, an improvement. It's also not a hypothetical: supply-side economic demonstrably works, to some extent. It just doesn't work very well, and we should be able to do better.
Personally, I think it's the difference in mentality between lottery winners and builders of successful products (who often work within difficult constraints and have to become very good at problem solving to succeed). There's a reason why lottery winners do not typically compound their success.
Things are more complicated in real world, because even if massive wealth is created (say, a boom of a certain industry), it doesn't necessarily go where it's supposed to.
Here [1] there is a real-world example of how, in a country with a strong mining industry, the "colonialists" get all the money, and the "colony" gets the crumbs (of course, that doesn't imply that this is always the case).
[1] Published long ago on HN: https://psmag.com/why-is-zambia-so-poor-f44dfeedd5ed
But in anycase what puzzles me, is why would first world countries allow this? If Sealand and such other projects failed because they lacked soverignity, why would a corporate city in Honduras be any different?
If someone would write an article that long without offtopic infos that would be cool.
most of this text is just fluff to stretch out the whole thing without adding anything...
Welcome to the St. Louis Free Economic Zone.
My politics are weird though. I would combine it with a basic income and single payer health care. I think the best current system we could create would be a strong but non invasive social safety net combined with total at will employment and business deregulation.
Still could be helpful, and I think we do see it often in some form or another, but is also subject to regulatory arbitrage: two cities pitted against each other to provide the best situation for companies, or Walmart flexing their power to get more favorable deals.
If such cities suck worse than the alternatives, no one will move to them.
The real worry I think many have is that charter cities will be successful and will demonstrate (by being successful without it) that a lot of existing socially favored regulation is harmful.
I.e. exiting Honduras is easier if a charter city is right next door.
The problem with you libertarians is that everything you say works with spherical objects in a frictionless vacuum, so to speak. But the real world isn't such a place. Outside your idealistic worldview everything collapses.
Similarly, because Hondurans are irrational, should they also be forbidden from entering Mexico and the US? Similarly, Brexit is good because Europeans and Brits might irrationally make the wrong choice on where to live?
Pointing out that people are irrational is not a magic argument against all policies that sound "too libertarian" to you. You still need to actually make an argument (presumably using irrationality as an underlying premise), which you haven't.
In reality, neither utopia is particularly achievable in the world as it currently is, but that doesn't mean that incremental steps in one direction or the other can't improve the situation.
Just as most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. My point is that you don't need to believe in the utopia (in either direction) to believe that a smaller move would be positive.
> what the article suggests is about as far from an incremental step and one can possibly get...
In terms of total impact, drastically changing the rules in a region where no one currently lives could certainly be a smaller step than slightly changing the rules for millions of people, which is what most political arguments are about.
Remind me again how big the death-toll from government wars is?
Or perhaps simply how badly it is failing at taking care of the sick, the poor, and the needy in almost every single 1st world country?
You are right, outside of our idealistic view of the world, everything does collapse. I am watching it collapse right now, on the state's watch.
>"It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty"
Luckily, those people have noble individuals such as yourself to tell them what to do, and fix their problems for them. Because you deem them unfit to do so for themselves.
That's quite a bold claim to make. I'm afraid I can't quite see what you mean by that. What I can see is that the countries with the most regulation and state "babysitting", as you like to call it, are the ones best placed in any poverty, development, health or well-being index. I really don't see what you can possibly mean by "badly failing at taking care of the sick, the poor, and the needy in almost every single 1st world country".
Either way, yes you are most likely statistically right. Spending on healthcare, poverty, and disabled individuals probably directly correlates with their well-being. You were presenting a case against a hypothetical ideal, and claiming it would not be able to fix social problems in a non-idealized setting. The counter-claim to that is that those very same things are not resolved in a society almost-exclusively run by state-governments, either. Whether 1st world or otherwise.
I eagerly await your "no true Scotsman" response.
"The problem with [obviously unworkable governing system] is of course that it's never been given a proper chance!"
Incidentally charter city like policies have been tried. Hong Kong. Singapore. Gurgaon. But I guess all the successes should be ignored because Honduras cancelled their project.
Getting the government out of the way can also help in countries that have ingrained cultures of low-level corruption. One of the things that drove my dad to leave Bangladesh and move to the other side of the world was having to pay a bribe to a functionary for the phone company to hook up a new phone line in our house.
Of course. But it's almost certainly the end result.
As for making it economically worthwhile for the "overseer" nation and particularly individuals, perhaps that could be solved by sharing in the high economic growth rates that successful charter cities would achieve. If you get that right there would definitely be takers give the current low growth rates in most industrialized nations.
(Paul Romer is one of my favorite economists of all time so maybe I'm biased.)
Against the odds, Honduras was actually willing to give the "charter city" model a go, but the project turned into a disaster before it even got started. Mostly because Paul Romer is an egotistical, antisocial control freak and nobody could work with him.
There's a lesson here for silicon valley types: Being a genius with a great idea doesn't count for anything if you can't work with other humans to bring your idea into reality.
It does not really sound as if this project would have worked under any circumstances due to the political issues.
It does beg the question, however, exactly what political problems stopped the Honduras project from going forward. The Podcast cited above focused on the personalities and personal resentments but there was clearly more going on behind the scenes. Romer himself was very circumspect about what actually happened.
For example in the Atlantic article Romer suggests driving things through non-US countries. This might not be pure coincidence.
It's so frustrating watching people ignoring history and then passionately agreeing with like minded people into tunnel vision solutions.
Charter cities are only possible because they concentrate capital, trade and workforce from mother country. It can not be done globally, entire China can not turn into Hong Kong
Life is not a zero-sum game. Rich places get rich not by stealing the cream, but rather by being less evil and stupid as other places.
Of course it's called "off-shoring" not "Maoism", but the effects on US industry have been very similar.
And is it working fine? Socially China has huge problems. I suggest you look beyond the GDP figure to assess whether a country is doing fine or not.
For example Guangzhou old http://www.angellam.com/ghostwife/ and recent http://skyrisecities.com/news/2016/01/viewfinder-guangzhou-s...
So they couldn't concentrate the Chinese workforce, whereas there is nothing to prevent that concentration just on the other side of the border.
The reason Hong Kong worked well wasn't merely the system of rules, it was also the presence and backing of the British military. In the charter city setup, the risk of changing regimes in the host country, and the bad press if the governing country were to intervene, is just too great.
Medieval cities had walls which were generally enough to keep the feudal overlords out. They were individually quite weak militarily. In Italy at least they succumbed quickly to foreign powers like France after 1494. It's probably bigger outside powers you want to worry about.
The Syrian refugee crisis got me thinking. Why on earth should so many people travel so far to get to European style rule and safety. If that is what they want, why could we not provided it where they already are?
The current system of dealing with refugees doesn't scale. There ought to be a way where you can allow in a lot of poor people without bringing severe economic strains on a rich country.
The problem when Syrians come to a rich country in Europe is that so many of their valuable skills can not be utilized even marginally, much due to different traditions, language requirements, procedures etc. However if there was a European enclave in Syria which they could move to, that could function using Syrian language and customs combined with European rule at the top.
Obviously Syrians would not naturally want to be ruled by Europeans but that is what they volunteer to when they move to Europe. A European enclave in Syria would be the same. You don't have to move there, but if you do, you have to accept European rule. The benefit is that, while not democracy it means freedom and rule of law.
Hong Kong was never a democracy but people there had freedom. Freedom and democracy is frequently mixed up, but they are not the same. By Freedom I mean that there is a free press, independent courts which apply the same law to all people, not just for the benefit of the rich and cronies of the rulers.
This neocolonialist idea would likely not sit well with lots of the same people who have issues with capitalism and historical colonialism. The specter of European colonialism would be hard to escape.
Then there is power and influence. These new cities would who up the host country and would be the envy of the non neocolonial zones. And further has to potential of subverting local culture for a western, Chinese or Japanese one, in a more immediate manner.
So, I feel there are too many cultural factors we would find hard to ignore, even if in practice, the result would be a net positive for the local population. In other words, politics would get in the way of practicality.
Imagine, Baja becoming a US state, in a few decades, it could be like New Mexico, not the richest state but a lot better than it is now. Now imagine how locals would take to the idea (even if individually they might like to immigrate into the US). And then how the Mexican government would take to the idea -a non starter.
Baja is already well to do.
Try that with Chihuahua and maybe I can agree with these proposals.
The things that make cities open and successful are fairly clear to those who study these things, it's not a secret or a mystery. The things that have prevented potential host countries from adopting those practices successfully on their own (political instability, corruption, whatever) will also prevent them from being a good place for anybody to set up a charter city there.
We shouldn't assume that everyone has to be like us to be happy. We shouldn't try to "civilize the barbarians" - to use a colonial phrase. Let them live as they live and let them develop themselves at their own pace.
Over the next decade, Africa's population is poised to explode. The great wilderness of Africa will all but disappear, and Africa might become just another blob of concrete, mining, and agribusiness. Desirable? Good for the human species? I think not.
You cannot "fix" another group of people in another country. They have to fix themselves and go through the necessary procedures to stabilize, weed out problems and corruption, and change their culture, people, social mindset, and traditions. All the stable rich countries of today were once violence, corrupt, and environmentally dirty during their earlier years, suggesting a sort of "puberty period" that all nations go through.
One group cannot build a country, achievements, stability for another group. If they try it is almost always only a temporary success, followed by complete failure as soon as the original "building" group pulls out. Google "the white foreigner effect" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268115... the most horrifying side effect is that natives purposely handicap themselves to signal need to an outside charity. This leads to dependency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083
In the short term good is done and hearts are warmed but in the long term a nation doesn't develop an immunity to its problems. A charter city would be no different. People would become dependent on the charity, funds, resources, and achievement coming out of the foreign created character city. What incentive do they have to create their own city? If they tried how could they compete with the foreign city?
2nd Problem: The solution and problem in the article is based on an emotional desire to uplift another group of people. Don't you think they want to lift themselves up? Do you believe they want you to lift them up?
What the article suggests, which is basically "nation creation communism" will actually do more damage to a country than good. Because now the native original people of a country cannot compete with the success, wealth, and power of the "colonizers" who are trying to uplift them out of poverty. This is the same series of ideas that sound good and make you feel good but actually cause damage. Countries grow and mature and stabilize on their own at their own natural rate. Trying to artificially "fix" each country ahead of its time, I believe, is immoral. That's like giving your kid steroids because you want them to hurry up and grow faster.
The problem with the present arrangement is that western powers are not in charge, they merely give the money. This is causing the dependency you speak of. They are trying to solve the development problem merely with money. That fails for exactly the reasons you quote.
A charter city doesn't need to offer money. The idea of a charter city isn't about pouring money into a foreign country it is about offering western quality rule and regulations. Hong Kong was not an expense for Britain. It was an income. Hong Kong did not prosper because Britain poured money into it but because Britain ran it.
That is a big difference. People would not depend on charity, funds or resources from the charter city because it would not provide any of that. It would only provide the rule of law and uncorrupt government without red tape. That means people can go to the charter city to start a business without being tied down. You know in your average developing country setting up just a simple bakery legally requires over a hundred days of full time work dealing with bureaucracy. That is no joke, you can read Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto about the subject.