The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The problem is partly the lack of space in which to experiment. On the internet, you can simply create a new site--draft your own rules, draw up whatever security measures you like to enforce them--and ask the world to come if they find that appealing. You don't need anyone else's territory, you can just make something new and experimental. People naturally vote with their feet, and the result is pretty good.
In the real world, that's much harder to do. You cannot simply draft a constitution, enlist a private army and police force, break ground, and invite the world. The ground is already claimed. Nobody likes private armies.
That's too bad. As the article notes, reform and revolution are a lot harder than simply building something new. If nations could simply experiment the way web sites do, if people could easily vote with their feet, we might have gotten government better figured out by now.
Of course, it might be a pipe dream, but it's the only concrete effort that I am seeing around here.
It is a dream that will happen. And, yes, there will be pipes, but not sure what kind of concrete will be used :-)
Hell, why limit ourselves to the surface of the sea? The materials nanotech promises to deliver will make it possible to live far above or below sea level with equal ease. Sky-steading, anyone?
We must take care not to lose this quality. The minute we do, we become as vulnerable as the plants and animals we raise, most of which would quickly fail in the wild.
Is that a pun on seasteading.org's plans to use ferroconcrete?
people are concerned with there being too many people. but it is cities, where there are the most people per square inch, that are often the most creative.
Very small countries, like Singapore and Switzerland are often the most competitive. And countries with few natural resources, like Japan, can dominate.
I think what all this shows is that the greatest natural resources are people. This resource needs to be free to function at its peak.
And the freer the country, the easier it is to absorb and utilize this resource. Which is why we should really have no problem saying "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". They are nothing to be afraid of.
But wouldn't it be cool if there were some broader international treaty among nations? Say, a group that agreed to totally free immigration and trade?
Sorry, that experiment is going to drown in beaurocracy.
But I guess its all foreign armies and navies that people don't like, not just private ones.
Maybe the answer is to offer a massive cash incentive and hold a competition between poor countries as to who will receive this opportunity first. Countries compete to get the Olympics and that often leaves them with significant debt.
I think there may be potential in the Sahara and in deserts in the Middle East. They would be like Las Vegas cropping up in the desert, but based on solar thermal power. Oil companies already get fiefdoms in the desert from desert nations. This would be just one step further.
But the people who are ruling the poor nations have a vested interest in the status quo, which is why the region is poor, and those organizations that pour "aid" resources in without changing the cause of the poverty also have a vested interest in not solving the problems.
Unless this changes, theorizing about changes is fruitless. Until Paul Romer or someone else has the wherewithal to MAKE changes, it's all air.
Likewise, wealthy nations also have vested interests in certain poor nations staying that way, since that arrangement yields very cheap labor, coltan, electronics recycling, diamonds, etc. Globalization has seen to it that poverty often doesn't exist in a vacuum any more.
Indeed, since the article already drops the term 'neo-colonial,' I don't see how the economic approach described should be considered anything but that. At least, it's a bit disingenuous to label this approach 'revolutionary.'
No, they don't. Heard of China? Growth in China? That shit makes capitalists giddy. And when the guys at Goldman Sachs are happy, your political elite smiles too. Would they like 800 million africans to become another china? Yes, they would. Industrialization of a nation does not make it's raw materials more expensive. Africa's cheap labour is of little use to the west (or china) (extraction of raw materials is not labour intensive, africas commercial agriculture is underdeveloped). Growth in africa would not hurt the evil imperialists.
Considering the catastrophe* de-colonization in africa has been the smugness of those who dismiss all ideas carrying the faintest whiff of colonialism is nauseating.
*Africa is the only continent on earth were falling levels of gdp per capita has been the norm in several countries. THis picture becomes bleaker if you consider the fact that the increase in gdp per capita is from resource extraction that brings little benefits to the people. De-colonization was a disaster on the scale of maos great leap forward.
There are clearly contrasting points of view about the benefits colonization of Africa. Those POVs which I've found insightful, as opposed to dogmatic or culturally biased, point out the assumption that modernization should be desirable to lesser developed nations is only an assumption, and not always one shared mutually.
cf. http://www.africaeconomicanalysis.org/articles/gen/neocoloni...
http://monthlyreview.org/100201hart-landsberg.php
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2005/mhlpb300705.html
I agree that China "makes capitalists giddy", even though it developed with intense government planning. The Communist Party controls the unions, which the Washington Post said that Wal-Mart loves, in contrast to its hatred of more democratic US unions. (I'm sure that more corporations than just Wal-Mart are so giddy.) Workers capture very little of the GDP, compared to China's wealthy elite, and have lost much of their social support. And GDP is itself an ideological measure for many reasons; for example, it doesn't track systematic costs (so people getting cancer from pollution raises GDP).
You can look at Cambodia and Vietnam prior to the Vietnam war, and you can analyze the history of Central America to discover why all these places are basically third world still when they have had thriving economies at one time or another. The problem was they weren't thriving on the ideals of Capitalism, rather some of them adopted a socialist workers structure.
The issue is the structure of success and how it feeds into the powerful states and their corporations and not success itself. Success that is not wrapped by Capitalist values is very dangerous to the US, EU.
The reason everyone turned on Hugo Chavez after being a man named in Time's influential people list is that his socialist policies (especially the distribution of oil wealth away from large corporations) started being successful and other Southern American states were taking notice (combined with trade deals with China). Of course, since then he has been shown to be misguided in a number of things so I fear even mentioning him.
Technology will always provide cheaper manufacturing processes, and alternatives to raw material needs. But it doesn't provide for additional people demanding finished goods.
Not everywhere, and not in a perfectly unified way, which is why Romer got genuine interest in Madagascar and apparently has a couple of other possibilities on line. It only takes one place to get started.
Note that the article closes by talking about how Romer's bigger problem is finding rich countries willing to be sponsors of the charter cities. If what Romer wants is a new Hong Kong or Singapore, this does seem like a problem, at least if he's looking for sponsors among Western democracies.
I think it would be hilarious--and not entirely implausible--if nominally communist China ended up sponsoring Romer's first free-market-enterprise-zone charter city.
> Unless this changes, theorizing about changes is fruitless. Until Paul Romer or someone else has the wherewithal to MAKE changes, it's all air.
Persuasion, argument, and communicating a vision are ways to make changes, and they sometimes work.
India and Brazil are also good candidates. They could try out such an experiment in their own borders.
My intuition is that it might be more politically possible for (say) India and Brazil to outmaneuver interest groups if they work outside the native country, even if they have otherwise reasonable locations inside their borders.
I've been thinking along these lines when a college friend of mine warned that the NYC legal system didn't necessarily respect habeas corpus
[1] This was partially subject to HN discussion a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1409194
Lübeck was subsidized by the tax money from King Henry's other lands. How else do you support a private mint and an army to protect merchants from pirates and bandits? Is it any wonder why the merchants moved there when they were essentially being offered free money?
Now fast forward to Africa today. The warlords are happy receiving millions in aid and not creating a powerful merchant class that could usurp their position.
Lubeck was subsidized by Henry, Dubai was subsidized by foreign oil investors. If we want to help African countries, we shouldn't be sending aid in the form of food but in the form of business.
Find an area where a suitable trade port could be established and where rail can easily be constructed to neighboring regions, add money, free-trade and liberal immigration laws and you'll have a major change in very little time.
So the reason Albania has no regular electric power, but children have iPhones it's because it hasn't rules. Come on, it's not it has not rules, it's just that the current administration wants more money.
[Edit2: Part of the problem is that in a way we are a charter country.]
We actually have rules, the financial capability, IP laws that conform to WIPO, enforcing agencies, and all you need to "kick ass". Our problem is that by kicking ass as a country (richer overall population), the administration in power cannot make the same money they make today, at least not that easy (I mean very very easy, like we already know what cut they'll require for the next financial aid).
Edit: "Starting in 2001, he began to channel his energy into a start-up software company that he named Aplia."
Looks like the power of monetization has striked again.
The middle class is being sexually out performed by the poor and the rich.
What was his software business?
Edit: oh, I see this is discussed in TFA. It was Aplia.