It turns out that people are not always rational. They don’t always do what’s in their own best interests, even when the benefits are completely clear to a development economist.
Or to put it another way – they’re not poor because they’re poor. They’re poor because they’re embedded in a culture of stupid.
h/t Bob
Culture of stupidity and some other less than desirable attributes. I’m reminded of a friend of mine whose father was an ambassador (from a country that will remain anonymous, but it wasn’t the USA) to Afghanistan. While he and his family were in Afghanistan, somebody had the idea of running a pipe to supply some Afghanis with pure water. The pipe was laid, and faucets were installed at intervals. The faucets disappeared in a matter of weeks; some Afghanis stole them to sell them for the brass in them.
Culture is indeed important, and some cultures are simply worse than others.
It turns out that people are not always rational. They don’t always do what’s in their own best interests, even when the benefits are completely clear to a development economist.
I think this applies to Sachs even more than the people he tried to help. He’s a Top Man with an acute case of Fatal Conceit.
And even if you solve those, there’s no guarantee that people will use them for the purposes intended. Sometimes they use them to protect their goats, or to catch fish. The trouble is that malaria is so prevalent that a lot of people treat it as an inevitable fact of life. Years of social marketing campaigns to promote the use of bed nets have scarcely made a difference.
Or, more accurately, than “a culture of stupid”, they have different valuations than First World Westerners.
Trade something you view as inevitable anyway for increased actual wealth and food?
That’s not strictly what I’d call “stupid”.
(Or, to put it another way, people do almost always do what they believe to be in their best interest.
That they don’t agree with Mr. Sachs does not make them wrong about their interests.)
It always puzzled me why Africa was a poor continent despite having coffee, chocolate and petroleum. How can a resource-rich continent be populated with people for whom time and basic commerce mean nothing? Do they set themselves up to fail?
Dombisa Moyo is correct; foreign aid is dead-aid. Aid hinders more than helps. It’s wasted. Any African willing to hustle deserves a fair wage and opportunity; anyone else can be left with squat. They probably won’t notice anyway.
and all those lefty kristians running all over Afreeka wasting time and money and destroying ambition all in one stroke
ET said it concerning Islamists and MENA, it will take time!!
The money-quote?
In other ways, the project did change Dertu. The population exploded from hundreds to thousands. People were attracted to the town by the free food, water and medicine. They gave up their pastoralist ways and built shantytowns. And then the money ran out. The doctor left, and the project manager was fired, and the good times came to an end.
A comment to the article by a commenter C.F. is particularly revealing, as he has lived in Africa for sixty years.
“Tribal and clan conflicts abound. Giving money for a well to provide fresh water to one village, will create envy in others. If the villagers are lucky, the well will merely be destroyed. More often the water will be poisoned.”
“South Africa was a modern first world country, as were Zimbabwe and Mozambique. One of the first decisions of Mr Mandela’s government, was to open up South Africa’s borders to their “African brothers” in the rest of Africa. Millions of people swarmed into the country, with terrible consequences.
Crime rates increased a hundred fold. Thousands of shanty towns sprung up. The once premium state hospitals are no more. Infra structure is deteriorating, corruption is rife. South Africa is the last of the once prosperous countries in Africa that has joined the devastation in the rest of the continent.”
Just like the ME, these people live in tribal ignorance and conflict and their leaders keep them that way on purpose.
Generally trying to teach a man to fish by giving him a boat and tackle does not work out well. He has to want to learn, and have an atmosphere surrounding him to make it possible.
One of my retired farmer cousins has been in a village in Siberia on a dozen or more occasions and even lived there for two years attempting to teach the rural villagers how to become entrepreneurs and self sufficient. Only three men have struck out on their own and built farms. The rest just do not seem to be interested, as any entrepreneurial spirit was beaten out of them over seventy years and are used to the government looking after them. The vast majority of people in Africa are no better.
It took us centuries to get where we are politically and economically, and these people will not develop in a few short years, especially if they do not want to and their governments do not want to.
And to think there are some activists and politician here that want to take us back to basic subsistence.
Oh and another thing, notice the common denominator in the countries that comment C.F. mentions…socialism.
Big screen TVs and fake hunger strikes seem to go hand in glove.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Take a good luck at Africa, that is our Progressive Future. FORWARD!
I agree with Sigivald.. what we perceive as ‘stupid’ often reflects a different set of values, and a different time scale. When life expectancy is 40 years in Somalia, vs. 80 in the West, delayed gratification – which is the basis of civilization – becomes harder to accept. Similarly, the concept of wealth being tied up in the number of camels you have has been handed down for 1,000’s of years. Sachs figured he could change that in a few months. Hubris, anyone?
But when they come here we will change them to be just like us, right…
Never stated but an observable historical fact.
The prosperity of the “West” is the direct result of cultures based on Faith influenced by Christ/creator and laws protecting property rights established by man.
Cultures that reject both result in diminished creativity that has lead to wealth creation enjoyed in the western world.
The prosperity of the “West” is the direct result of cultures based on Faith influenced by Christ/creator
That’s why Catholic Latin America is so prosperous and non-Christian Japan so poor right?
good one Lassie, good one
ivbinconned, have the Katholiks quit stoning witches yet??????
Yes, property rights based on scripture have resulted in the richest countries in history. And the mightiest military in all of history.
Neither Japan or Latin America have Constitutions based in scripture. And neither have been able to build their own wealth. The wealth of the West built Japan.
Neither Japan or Latin America have Constitutions based in scripture.
Neither does America.
Yes, property rights based on scripture have resulted in the richest countries in history. And the mightiest military in all of history.
The Roman and Hans Empire: apparently ‘scripture-based’ (whatever the hell that means).
I think it genetic.. Northern Europeans in order to survive the harsh winter conditions had to hold cooperation, leadership and hunting above all.. It was a matter of survival.. Once established these base survival traits ended up being scaleable on a grand scale…
Yes other cultures had the same learning curve but not the finality of starving to death in February..
Their mistakes could live off the land.. Northern European mistakes ended the genetic line..
This is why we are called THE WHITE DEVIL, and rightly so..
“MAGNA CARTA”
Lassie is a little short on history. He actually thinks the Roman empire was a powerful as the military might of the U.S. of A.
The Founding Fathers absolutely used Scripture as a template. The concept of ‘unalienable rights’ (rights pre-existing any government, therefore cannot be taken away by government) is completely scriptural. That is the backbone of the Constitution.
But, of course, to the Biblically illiterate, such cannot be shown any more than higher mathematics can be proven to a child.
Las and NME667 proves the Bible right again…”the fool said in his heart…”
NME, why don’t you speak English? Decoding your affected spellings is not worth the
trouble.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060614122542AA9JMP1
Las and 666…a link for your enlightenment.
Sorry I should have said “enjoyed in MUCH of the western world.”
In South Africa propertiy rights have been so distorted in recent years they are turning back the clock and the country is getting poorer as a result. Been there seen it first hand.
Japan? Read a good book (America Alone)you two, its future is not so bright.
Exactly!
Sigivald said: “…they have different valuations than First World Westerners.”
KevinB said: “…what we perceive as ‘stupid’ often reflects a different set of values, and a different time scale.”
One of the most insidious lies ever spoken by a liberal is “All cultures are equally valid.”
Yes, African goat herders have “different values” than Westerners. Wildly different on a variety of subjects, such as how many wives one should have, and what constitutes wealth. Those values are what keep them broke and starving in a deteriorating ecological catastrophe, a wasteland of their own making. Goats create deserts.
We used to have an ecological catastrophe right here in Ontario. Pretty much the whole shore of Lake Erie was turned into a sand desert by over cropping and bad land management. My very own ancestors were among the guys who FIXED that little problem. They found or flat-out invented new plowing techniques, grew new crops, fabricated new machinery, planted trees, raised money, the works. They fixed the problem. Because they were a bunch of stubborn Scotsmen who wouldn’t quit.
America had the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. Same problem, orders of magnitude larger scale. Same result, Oklahoma went from a sand desert to the bread basket of the United States in well under one generation.
Africans faced with exactly the same problem… just die. In their millions. And they die despite 100 years of really smart people begging them and even bribing them to do what WILL WORK. It worked here, after all. But the Sahara and the Kalahari just keep getting bigger and bigger.
What’s the difference? VALUES.
All cultural values are -not- equally valid. Some will keep you alive in a hostile world, some will get you killed. Some will get you and your whole friggin’ nation killed. See Rwanda.
Now, as to the militant atheists among us. Many of those Western values that keep us alive are Christian ones. Thou Shall Not Steal is one of my favorites, right up there with Thou Shalt Not Lie. Africans don’t have those.
Some are a little more subtle, like the one where using a government job to collect “gratuities” from the citizenry is both shameful and disgusting. That’s the one that keeps Latin America (and Spain, and Greece, and Italy, and India) in the perpetual toilet. They don’t have that value. Everybody who gets a little power uses it to collect bribes, from the apple stealing cop to El Presidente. No progress.
Currently the West is suffering from a surfeit of riches and a hangover from the party we’ve been having with eighty years of creeping socialism. I think our biggest problem is we don’t have any problems. Not ones big enough to catch our collective attention, at any rate.
God help the poor sons of b1tch3s who make themselves be that problem. Ask the Japanese and the Germans about that.
The West certainly didn’t get ahead by following the maxim “Judge not, that ye be not judged”, which is one of the most atrocious things any man ever said.
“Judge, and be prepared to be judged” — Ayn Rand
And yes there always is a big screen Tv satilite dish…on the mud hut in Zambia. Seen that first hand too. As well as ….ah whatever.
Aside from LAS and the perpetually illiterate and bitter NME666 being idiots again, perhaps one ought to keep in mind that ingenuity and innovation aren’t strong points in parts of Africa where things that should ostensibly be used as mosquito nets are used instead as “goat protectors” (or some such thing). Maybe they should develop the things they need?
er.. no. When you are going to be outside 12 hours a day, and bitten by mosquitos frequently during that time, exactly how much sense does it make to use mosquito netting while you sleep? Especially if that netting makes an excellent net to catch fish, and you are hungry? The Somalis figure, quite rightly in their experience, that you are going to be bitten by mosquitos no matter what you do, so stringing a net over your bed is Kabuki theatre, in much the same way as TSA screening before your flight.
If Sachs had really wanted to change the culture, he should have given all the kids Walkmen or iPods, and provided multiple TV’s with VCR’s and tapes. As Macluhan noted, the mighty wash of electronic media would have easily overcome the oral tradition, and softened the people up for cultural change.
My ingenuity and innovation remark still stands. You use X item when there is nothing else. God forbid someone should develop Y item to make one’s life easier. If the will is not there, let alone ingenuity, aid is a waste.