Why Poor Countries Are Poor • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#81

Post by w00pla » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:19 PM UTC

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…

Romania is actually one of the fastest growing countries in Europe and is upper middle income.

In my country (South Africa), 2/3rds of the population voted for a president who is known to be corrupt. He is on the verge of giving his friend (who organized him a bribe) a presidential pardon.

What is shocking for me is not that the president is corrupt - but that he has the support of 66% of the population. The majority of the population approves of his corruption. Is there anything redeemable in a country if the majority thinks corruption is okay?

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#82

Post by thaumaturgy » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:25 PM UTC

ytinas wrote: post #76

nostrademons wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ment…

Which native Americans? The Yaqui? Or the Iroquois, pre-league or post-league? Or the Chiricahua Apaches? Or the Pequot?

Each of those had their own unique culture, their own identity, their own language, their own technology. Some were cruel to their captives and in times of war; others were not. Some wanted to expand their territory and conquer lands and other tribes, while others had found territory to settle in and had no desire to expand, while still others were purely nomadic.

If you have any love at all for history, stop referring to all those pre-colonial nations under a single name and title. Doing so is a vestigial prejudice in our culture, and worst of all, it's completely destroying any chance we have of learning what they were actually like.

As to relative "competence" -- well, we've begun exploring space. So, I guess it all depends on what you consider to be important.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#83

Post by LucaDuval » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:33 PM UTC

fbailey wrote: post #47

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…

Yes, sorry but as another EU citizen, I have to say I'm not sure we should have accepted Romania into the EU before this problem is fixed. Do you think it's helping against corruption or is any incentive now gone? Do you think it's getting better with rising income? (this was not meant against romanians it's just that EU institutions are pretty far away from EU projects and are usually terrible at detecting corruptio…

Sorry, but as another EU citizen, I have to say that applying your criteria lot of countries (beginning with mine - Italy) should not have been accepted either. I'm afraid that EU simply can't be that much selective without losing any change of counting for something on the world scene.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#84

Post by thaumaturgy » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:38 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #61

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.

The first that comes to mind is the Ottoman empire. World power in the 1600-1700s, but it failed to develop the institutions mentioned in this article and fell to Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Britain over the latter half of the 1800s. Lithuania. Largest country in Europe in the 14th century. Lost large sections of its territory to Sweden and Russia in the late 1600s and 1700s. All of the Native American nations that w…

Agree with you on all but the last example; I think the Mongol Empire was one of the marvels of human history, in terms of sheer size and coordination. It succeeded in uniting friendly tribes and warring tribes alike by allowing them to retain their cultural traditions and self-administrate, so long as it didn't violate Mongol law.

Unfortunately, the government that developed was mostly a dictatorship, and as usual it was relatively short-lived once some key family members died off and left an opportunity for others to squabble.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#85

Post by gvb » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:38 PM UTC

asmosoinio wrote: post #42

sprachspiel wrote: post #40

What does "eight times poorer" mean?

I guess it means that average income (or whatever they are measuring) of X = 1/8 x Y. But is it a valid way to say this in English? In Finnish they use this sometimes in the newspapers and so, and I am thinking I need to get over it. But I still hate it. It's kinda like "X is 8 times less expensive than Y", which I assume means X = 1/8 x X, but to me would make more sense as X = Y - 8Y = -7Y...

"Eight times poorer" is improper English and makes no sense, but is a very common usage. Most of the time multipliers are written when they should have used reciprocals. My only explanation is that it is more dramatic to say "eight" and "poor" in the sentence than "1/8" (hey, that looks like math, math is hard) and "rich" (they are emphasizing the poorness of the poor, not the richness of the rich).

Proper English, as I understand it, would be to say "they were 1/8 as rich" or "they have only 12% as much wealth", but that is much less dramatic.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#86

Post by sethg » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:49 PM UTC

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?

The British got out of the imperialism business soon after they introduced universal sufferage; the average blokes would rather see their tax money spent on things like jobs for themselves than on maintaining supply lines to India.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#87

Post by radu_floricica » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:50 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #57

radu_floricica wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a mixed (and reasonably good) system. You can go to any private clinic you want. It will be expensive, but a much more pleasant experience. Or you can stay with the public system, but in this case you will definitely encounter bribes. The cause is pretty simple: the salaries in public health are way lower then they should be. Most pacients understand that and view the bribes as a normal form of compensation.…

> the salaries in public health are way lower then they should be I understand that, but the way I view it ... it's not my fault they got into this. And while it's mostly a functional system (AFAIK, the US health system is horrible), it kind of bothers me that I pay lots of taxes without getting a return. > AFAIK, a good birth in a private hospital is around $1500, so he probably should have gone this way from the be…

Yes, this is a problem. The best doctors tend to be in the public system... or maybe they're the most networked? There should be plenty of good doctors working from their own offices, but they're probably a lot harder to find / evaluate.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#88

Post by daniel-cussen » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:53 PM UTC

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…

They also forgot the conquering usually also involved intentional, thorough genocide (as opposed to picking people off piecemeal, as they are now) and/or enslavement of the conquered people.

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#89

Post by GFischer » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:54 PM UTC

techiferous wrote: post #8

This is a chapter in The Undercover Economist , a book that I just finished reading last week: http://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Exposing-Poor-Dec... It's a great introductory economics book for the layman.

I was going to point out the same. The author, Tim Harford, has a blog in the Financial Times:

http://blogs.ft.com/undercover/

I still believe Freakonomics to be a better read :) but the Undercover Economist book was pretty good too (I read it because I was looking for similar style books)

Re: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

#90

Post by radu_floricica » Wed, Jan 20, 2010, 1:57 PM UTC

w00pla wrote: post #81

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…

Romania is actually one of the fastest growing countries in Europe and is upper middle income. In my country (South Africa), 2/3rds of the population voted for a president who is known to be corrupt . He is on the verge of giving his friend (who organized him a bribe) a presidential pardon. What is shocking for me is not that the president is corrupt - but that he has the support of 66% of the population. The majorit…

In our case all candidates are reasonably corrupt. Most current politicians started their careers in the chaos following the '89 revolution, when a lot of the public wealth was sold for ridiculous prices. The current president is pretty well known for involvment in selling the state commerce fleet. What we do know for sure is that he's a pretty good manager, and the other guy is a lot more corrupt. So we voted for him, twice.

The biggest problem I think is a bit different. I'm very very scared by the politicization of public institutions. Top management is always chosen based on party, and automatically so is middle management. This breeds a brand of bureaucracy interesting more in politics than in getting things done, and the more it lasts the lower the mindset seeps.