For once I agree with you. This is the only scenario that actually works. It’s a combination of enormous carrots and sticks. Shock-and-awe sort of thing. Singapore was the archetypal example.
It’s basically a case of giving people no option except to stop being poor.
However, as you noted, the amount of upfront investment required is enormous, and a lot of that investment has to go into maintaining an efficient and fair police force and judiciary (Singapore put that consideration right at the top of the list - unsurprisingly, given LKY’s personality and background). Otherwise, everything that can be stolen gets stolen.
What doesn’t work is trying to do it piecemeal, especially if you’re doing it against the wishes of the community (which is nearly always).
I would suggest that replacing the villagers with rich people - at least some fraction of them - is a critical part of what makes the whole community rich. As well as providing the know-how that makes the community economically viable, their rich-people memes infect others the same way poor-people memes do.
Picture the scene in the Apollo 13 Mission Control backrooms:
Kranz: ok, those boys upstairs are ed if we don’t sort something out. Failure is not an option.
Engineers: Well, what we really should have done, see, before we started this programme, is develop some sort of faster-than-light drive so that we could have plucked them out of there. But we didn’t. So there’s not really much we can do. I guess we should set up a working party to produce a feasibility study, and by 2060 we should be ready with the necessary technology.
Solar power is one of the simplest technologies ever, at least for the user. You can just plug stuff together and it’ll work. You can put a large-ish system together with a shovel, some buckets, a screwdriver and a drill, which is definitely not true of any other sort of power station.
Maybe it won’t work optimally, but it’ll work well enough, and it’ll pay for itself long before the panels and batteries fail (the electronics are easy and cheap to replace).
When your options are “inefficient” or “nothing at all”, I know which one I’d choose.
The example I was thinking of there is in “Mainlandia”, so definitely not that kind of police + judiciary (but still better than what you would expect in most 3rd world countries).
As for “rich people memes”, visitors from the great beyond tend to think they make things worse, not better.
I’ve read surveys about people living near valleys that would be flooded after dams were built. Those affected would be given compensation to move and free electricity, which would greatly improve their standard of living. It was nearly universal that they welcomed the offer and were happy to change their way of life. The only people unhappy were those living just outside the flood plain. They were upset they couldn’t get the same deal. I don’t buy the argument that most people don’t want to live in western standards. Those that do are the anomaly.
yeah, them too. As you said, it requires only a fairly minimal standard of law and order.
The problem with this kind of imposed development model is that, by definition, it conforms exactly and entirely to what the planners had in mind. In the case of China, what they had in mind was 'merica. And they got what they wished for, with all its attendant problems, that they now have to try to fix. They also have the fallout from failing to establish rule of law in a fair and consistent manner, and failing to promote better norms of behaviour.
If you want to see what happens when you get rid of all the rich people, check out Cambodia. I don’t buy the view that rich people are all grasping bastards who are a waste of oxygen - that line of thought leads logically to genocide. All my close friends here in Elbonia are “rich” - that is, they are decent, upright human beings who believe that if you work hard for a living and follow the Golden Rule, you’ll be materially rewarded (they are often disappointed with the result of following the Golden Rule, but their finances are usually a net positive despite relentless theft). This view of life is uncommon among the poor, and the results are entirely predictable.
As I’ve suggested before, “rich” is a state of mind, not a quantity of money. If you think and act poor, you’ll be poor, and vice versa. But I guess there’s no point rehashing that conversation.
Well yeah. A lot of people like free money, and governments often don’t mind giving away free money that isn’t theirs.
My great-uncle’s farm in S.E. England was flooded in this way. He wasn’t happy about the project and grumbled. His farmhouse burned down under mysterious circumstances, and even more mysteriously the insurance didn’t pay up. Make of that what you will.
In some cases I agree that one viable way to kickstart development would be to simply buy out those people who are holding it back. Where possible, though, developers should allow for local participation. Poor communities are not homogeneous: there are often people there who can’t attain escape velocity, but have good heads on their shoulders and would make competent project managers. They should be encouraged to remain and participate.
Of course they want to live in Western standards. They just don’t want to do the things that are necessary to get there, like not stealing everything that’s not nailed down, conforming to some minimal standards of social responsibility, not pissing away their money and their lives with alcohol, and getting a job. NGOs tend to promote the idea that if you give away enough free stuff, development will magically happen, despite all evidence to the contrary.
That’s how it should be done, after a few years the chicken is not going to lay eggs and becomes a cost, unless you eat it, but buy a new chicken a few months before that to produce new eggs.
Like $99 soccer balls that store kinetic energy to run an LED light for a few hours. Probably their yearly income and a few dollars of oil would supply a lamp just as well. Meanwhile they stop funding hydroelectric and fossil fuel projects that would definitely work for the pipe dream of solar and wind. One dam in Africa could power at least half the continent. F### the NGO and the World Bank.
Africa has a lot of dams (and several that failed because nobody thought about how to get the power from the dams to the people who want to use it, or how to safeguard the cables from theft). But yeah, some of the projects that those NGOs come up with just make me facepalm. Remember the laptops-for-every-African project? It’s clear they’re in the business to perpetuate their own jobs and publish navel-gazing papers about inclusiveness, not to make a practical, positive difference.
The elite in Africa make the elite in the US look like saints for sure. Corruption is a major issue. They have rangers killing poachers. They could have rangers killing cable thieves too. They need to clear less vulnerable habitats for factories, farming and cities.
TBH what Africa needs most is not electrical power, but fair laws, an incorruptible judiciary and police force, and some serious international pressure to get their f’ing act together and start acting like responsible adults instead of whining about oppression. They need 30-40% of the population jailed or under police observation. When ordinary people know that their property is protected and that the taxman isn’t an unrepentant thief, they tend to invest in their own prosperity. Very little assistance is required. Turkey’s progress under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is instructive.
There is infinite coruption around the globe in not only sending our trash there to be forgotten, but given grants, tax breaks charitable congratulations etc for sending it. recycling a lot of things like laptops is expeanive here cause they are so toxic. But if you open a temple, send over containers of toxic shit to africa you get paid here for recycling, paid by the gov for good deeds and get decent tax breaks.
It is no coincidence that so many companies here add recycling on their registration…its borderline sick.
True. But its a globalised world now, if we shit in the arctic, we understand enough science by 2020 to know it ends up everywhere. Plastic is a good example and one that proves organic food is nearly a historic term. As long a fingers are pointing to someone else, that person isnt doing jack about themselves.
Well, honestly there is NO excuse why PET bottles aren’t being recycled. They can be remelted or chemically processed into expanding foam, which can then be used for home insulation.
But this is something governments need to massively subsidize.
ed if we don’t sort something out. Failure is not an option.