“to the Africans’ warlords, who steal the money and use it to stay in power”
Note the reference to Jeffrey Sachs in my comment. If you haven’t read The End of Poverty, he demolishes the “It’s all warlords stealing the money” argument pretty darned thoroughly.
I was thinking of my prime giving years as late middle age, two or three decades down the line, and I was hoping less that you would have an endowment than that, you know, you would control the world and dazzle the few remaining people who hadn’t advanced to a Stross-ian Economy 2.0 by transforming small asteroids into giant gold nuggets. But I guess an endowment would be nice too.
Haven’t read The End of Poverty, but I’m willing to accept that it’s other forms of economic displacement, not just the warlords stealing. However, it really doesn’t look like ending African poverty is remotely as simple as giving them a bunch of money. You’d think it would be. I wish it were. But it doesn’t appear to be.
It’s not particularly surprising that ending poverty isn’t that simple. Most developed economies were brought to their current stage through hundreds of years of innovation, investment, protectionism, and use of inexpensive raw materials and labor from the global South (among other things), and the ones that industrialized more quickly (like Singapore) often had unique geographical or political characteristics that aided this. The development of a stable, diverse economy (and correspondingly high standards of living for a population) depends on far more things than a simple infusion of capital.
For that matter, poor African states are usually poor for very different reasons. Congo’s poor despite its great natural resource wealth because the Belgians systematically sabotaged its ability to rule itself before independence even arrived, in the early ’60s, and then it got stuck with corrupt dictators who robbed it blind for four decades. Rwanda’s poor because the genocide destroyed everything it had built, and even the stable, non-corrupt government that’s in power today can’t overcome such odds in a generation (and has virtually no natural resources to help it along). Botswana’s actually not that poor, because it has a competent government that’s used its diamond wealth well. Rather like different aid organizations are differently competent, different African governments are better- and worse-positioned to benefit from A) aid or B) participation in the global economy in general.
There are other comments like this one that are from the same time period and were not retracted when the account was deleted. My guess is the user went through and retracted all of their comments before deleting their account.
Can’t say I recommend it. I picked it up about a year back. I made it about a third of the way through, and he was still discussing 1st year microeconomics and political theory. I really meant to finish it, and I might at some point, but there is a lot of unnecessary filler. The book’s written to be popular and easily accessible.
You, sir, have better things to do with your time.
“to the Africans’ warlords, who steal the money and use it to stay in power”
Note the reference to Jeffrey Sachs in my comment. If you haven’t read The End of Poverty, he demolishes the “It’s all warlords stealing the money” argument pretty darned thoroughly.
I was thinking of my prime giving years as late middle age, two or three decades down the line, and I was hoping less that you would have an endowment than that, you know, you would control the world and dazzle the few remaining people who hadn’t advanced to a Stross-ian Economy 2.0 by transforming small asteroids into giant gold nuggets. But I guess an endowment would be nice too.
Haven’t read The End of Poverty, but I’m willing to accept that it’s other forms of economic displacement, not just the warlords stealing. However, it really doesn’t look like ending African poverty is remotely as simple as giving them a bunch of money. You’d think it would be. I wish it were. But it doesn’t appear to be.
It’s not particularly surprising that ending poverty isn’t that simple. Most developed economies were brought to their current stage through hundreds of years of innovation, investment, protectionism, and use of inexpensive raw materials and labor from the global South (among other things), and the ones that industrialized more quickly (like Singapore) often had unique geographical or political characteristics that aided this. The development of a stable, diverse economy (and correspondingly high standards of living for a population) depends on far more things than a simple infusion of capital.
For that matter, poor African states are usually poor for very different reasons. Congo’s poor despite its great natural resource wealth because the Belgians systematically sabotaged its ability to rule itself before independence even arrived, in the early ’60s, and then it got stuck with corrupt dictators who robbed it blind for four decades. Rwanda’s poor because the genocide destroyed everything it had built, and even the stable, non-corrupt government that’s in power today can’t overcome such odds in a generation (and has virtually no natural resources to help it along). Botswana’s actually not that poor, because it has a competent government that’s used its diamond wealth well. Rather like different aid organizations are differently competent, different African governments are better- and worse-positioned to benefit from A) aid or B) participation in the global economy in general.
I don’t usually expect comments that have plus five votes and no negative reception to be retracted! Interesting.
Even weirder: It’s from 2009 (before the retraction feature was added).
Edit: Maybe the strikethrough is just because the account was deleted.
Aha. Good theory.
There are other comments like this one that are from the same time period and were not retracted when the account was deleted. My guess is the user went through and retracted all of their comments before deleting their account.
Re [i]The End of Poverty[/i]:
Can’t say I recommend it. I picked it up about a year back. I made it about a third of the way through, and he was still discussing 1st year microeconomics and political theory. I really meant to finish it, and I might at some point, but there is a lot of unnecessary filler. The book’s written to be popular and easily accessible.
You, sir, have better things to do with your time.
Edit: I fail at the magic of javascripting...