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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#91

Post by jernfrost »

poof131 wrote: post #45

Seems like we’ve entered some sort of post-modern neocolonialism. How do we “fix” the broken countries of the world. The neocons under Bush tried to remake the middle east by invading Iraq.[1] Debated with someone here who felt we just needed more time in Afghanistan so a generation could understand good governance.[2] In this article, the thrust seems to be benevolent foreign powers and businesses will lead the way…

What Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan was radically different and obviously idiotic. They took over two countries by force and then imposed democracy on countries with no democratic traditions.

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.

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#92

Post by jernfrost »

douche wrote: post #4

Assuming this ever worked, and produced good results, what happens when ten or fifteen years later, the corrupt local dictator takes over, all of the administrators flee before the mobs take their lives or nationalize all of their property, and all of the expertise and institutions that kept things going evaporate. Because we have a lot of examples of that happening.

The losses from that would probably still be a lot lower than the development aid wasted today. Anyway the locals might actually want to defend their city as they might recent their countries corrupt dictator more than a benevolent foreign power.

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#93

Post by [deleted] »

jernfrost wrote: post #91
poof131 wrote: post #45

Seems like we’ve entered some sort of post-modern neocolonialism. How do we “fix” the broken countries of the world. The neocons under Bush tried to remake the middle east by invading Iraq.[1] Debated with someone here who felt we just needed more time in Afghanistan so a generation could understand good governance.[2] In this article, the thrust seems to be benevolent foreign powers and businesses will lead the way…

What Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan was radically different and obviously idiotic. They took over two countries by force and then imposed democracy on countries with no democratic traditions. 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 pr…

[deleted]

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#94

Post by hodgesrm »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #41
hodgesrm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is character assassination. I've met Paul Romer and have followed his work for decades. People ignore his ideas at their peril. You can't blame him for not being an outstanding administrator at the same time. It does not really sound as if this project would have worked under any circumstances due to the political issues.

It's basically a political project, so political issues seem like a fundamental problem, rather than some external factor to blame.

That's a fair criticism of Romer's idea and one that deserves careful scrutiny.

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.

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#95

Post by jernfrost »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #64

1st Problem of this article: How do WE "over here" fix THEM "over there". 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 th…

Your arguments are against the current development model not against charter cities.

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.

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#96

Post by zo1 »

andrepd wrote: post #47
yummyfajitas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think will go wrong? Please be concrete. 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.

That thinking works in a perfect world with perfect information, 100% rational agents, and frictionless movement. It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty, culture and a myriad of other practical considerations from food to roads to family preventing them from take the 100% rational actions that you expect them to take. The problem with you libertarians is that everyt…

"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."

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.

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#97

Post by auganov »

tim333 wrote: post #81
auganov wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm expecting a resurgence in colonialist-like approaches. Especially in the context of the Middle East. It's exactly failures like Afghanistan and Iraq that make some consider solutions involving total governance for much more than just a few years. A case can be made for the US having been morally obliged to basically colonize Iraq (and Afghanistan tho I'm less familiar with that one).

I chatted to some educated Afghanis and they thought the period of greatest peace and prosperity in their life times was the Russian occupation which the US went to some effort to end. I sometimes wonder if western policies to bring democracy to Islamic areas by bombing them really do much good. We could perhaps just bribe the dictators to up their human rights a bit. Syria is an ongoing case where there remain optio…

Yea the big problem with "opening up" the colonization game is you'll have people fighting over who's the colonizer (tho it's still sort of happening anyways). No doubt Russia might have been decent for them.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orchard

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#98

Post by andrepd »

zo1 wrote: post #96
andrepd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thinking works in a perfect world with perfect information, 100% rational agents, and frictionless movement. It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty, culture and a myriad of other practical considerations from food to roads to family preventing them from take the 100% rational actions that you expect them to take. The problem with you libertarians is that everyt…

" 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. " 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 c…

>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?

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".

Re: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty (2010)

#99

Post by andrepd »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #67
andrepd wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thinking works in a perfect world with perfect information, 100% rational agents, and frictionless movement. It doesn't work for impoverished, illiterate, uneducated people with the weight of poverty, culture and a myriad of other practical considerations from food to roads to family preventing them from take the 100% rational actions that you expect them to take. The problem with you libertarians is that everyt…

Ok. How does it fail in reality? Please be specific.

Precisely because of what I said: people aren't 100% rational beings with full information. People, especially in third world, war-torn, poverty-ravaged countries don't have the power to make the "best decision" in to a libertarian free-market approach as you suggest. Some things aren't solved by capitalistic competition.
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