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Why Poor Countries Are Poor

reason.com

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Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#71

Post by Tichy »

Arun2009 wrote: post #70
Tichy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am responsible for it, and if I choose not to do anything about it, then it's my deliberate choice." What could you do about it? Granted, you could somehow dedicate your life to trying to end it. But even then, you'd need a starting point. Suppose you are extremely poor, how to you start? If you have to spend 20 hours/day to find food, you don't have time to practice becoming a good speaker to rouse the masses. I…

> If you chose to work against poverty in India, what would you do? :-) See, my version of your question is: What would Gandhi (or Nehru, Bose, Azad, Bhagat, Savarkar, et. al.) do? I don't have an answer to that right now , I am afraid.

I am not fully convinced that everybody could be a Gandhi. Wasn't he from a wealthy family and got sent to England to study?

Probably everybody could do fasting (although even that might require a certain amount of dediction). But to come of with the psychological strength and dedication would be another matter.

Maybe for everybody there is a path of possible actions that would lead him to become like Ghandhi. But that is what I was saying: it certainly isn't obvious what actions that would be. Therefore I think a certain amount of luck is involved.

If you don't have an answer to my question, then why do you disagree with me? How is the poverty in India your fault? I suppose you could at least decide to study and try to find an answer, but there is no guarantee that you would find one.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#74

Post by rbanffy »

richcollins wrote: post #41
bad_user wrote: post #39

This article is (almost) accurate. I live in Romania ... and of course, we are doing a lot better than Cameroon, the country got accepted in EU, and the average salary is something like $25-$30 / day (and people with college degrees do better than that). But the corruption has reached unimaginable levels ... and it's not just the government, it's everyone. For example, we have a public health system, and while I paid…

For example, we have a public health system, and while I paid something like $15000 last year in taxes (a big amount for us), my wife got pregnant, she's having problems ... and we've had to bribe a doctor to even speak to us, not to mention they demand big bribes for doing a clean caesarean section, and my wife needs it. The poor souls that don't have money for bribes simply get fucked. How is that not the governmen…

Not all problems can be solved by competition. This specific one could be best solved by a strong medical association, backed by strong laws, enforcing ethical behavior.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#75

Post by rbanffy »

JeffL wrote: post #58
fbailey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe one of you could show at least one example of a "competent" nation conquering disfunctional ones before building your complete world view on it.

Roman Empire? Pretty much all empires through history? Of course "competent" can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

It's not always fun to have a competent foreign power administrating your country...

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#76

Post by ytinas »

nostrademons wrote: post #43
DenisM wrote: post #29

In older times a dysfunctional country would be quickly conquered and fixed by the nearest competent neighbor. I don't even know what a solution could look like today?

That still holds. The problem is that it's been taken to its logical conclusion: all dysfunctional countries have been conquered by their competent neighbors, which means that there are large landmasses that contain exclusively competent nations (North America, Europe, Australia/Oceania, and soon Asia) and large landmasses that contain exclusively dysfunctional ones (Africa, Arabia, and South America). There are natu…

What does your (and the GP's) definition of "competent" mean, "imperialistic"? Were the native Americans less competent because they weren't always trying to expand and conquer? Looking at today's rat race, I don't think it's conclusive that we did a better job than they would have. Sure, it seems likely that we ended up with better medicine than they would have had by now, but the rest of it?

"I should probably mention that much of the reasoning behind the Bush invasion of Iraq was along these lines."

This statement seems extraordinarily naive to me. What is it based on?

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#77

Post by andrewcooke »

cousin_it wrote: post #67
fbailey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't stand that argument. It ignores history and millions that died under colonial rule, or episodes like in China when the economy was ruined because the western powers wanted to pay for goods with drugs. Or india where british rule deindustrialized india and forced it to buy salt from a monopoly. Or southeast asia where rich kingdoms where plundered and basically forced to become agrarian exporters. It also igno…

Most African countries actually were better off under colonialism.

try reading achebe - one of his books (it's in the african trilogy collection) describes quite well, if i remember correctly, how the colonial system created this problem in the first place.

or just read this article again and consider how close it is to living under foreign rule - colonialism replaced whatever working, local solutions existed with a system that meant that the logical thing to do was screw over others. colonialism and dictators are very similar.

you can argue that things only collapsed terribly when the colonists left, but that ignores the fact that it would have been so much better if they had never been there...

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#78

Post by ugh »

tulsidas wrote: post #73

Another reason is that rich countries usually benefit from poor countries staying poor, so the try to keep them that way

What's the mechanism there? How do they benefit? Exploitation is rather impossible these days, rich countries cannot anymore just waltz into any country they want and dictate the terms. If they are doing business with some poor country that usually leads to progress, not exploitation. It might very well be that rich countries want to use poor countries for cheap labor and - by keeping them poor - preserve that source of cheap labor. But it might also very well be that those two wishes are one too many. Maybe you can have only one at a time.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#79

Post by JulianMorrison »

tulsidas wrote: post #73

Another reason is that rich countries usually benefit from poor countries staying poor, so the try to keep them that way

That's obvious nonsense. Look what Japan, China and India have done for the world. First cheap fast-growing investments producing low cost goods (aka sweatshops), then a rich economy that can do its own investing. Even countries that get a smaller slice of the pie now still have cause to be glad that the whole pie is larger.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#80

Post by weavejester »

tulsidas wrote: post #73

Another reason is that rich countries usually benefit from poor countries staying poor, so the try to keep them that way

How so? I'm not convinced the leaders of rich countries think much beyond their next re-election, and whilst there may be some benefit to having cheap labour, you need a reasonable infrastructure in place to take advantage of that. You can't run a factory if you don't have a reliable power supply, for example.
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