Reddit reviews The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

My earlier writeup for The Bottom Billion:

I'd humbly suggest The Bottom Billion as the first submission. I chose it because it was touted as the balanced perspective on development economics by the /r/economics sidebar, and I think it represents this subs focus.

The premise is that, since the 1960s, where 1/6th of the world was rich and the rest poor, real strides have been made worldwide, with some 4/6ths of the world being lifted out of poverty to middle income. At the turn of the millenia, this gives us 1 billion rich, 4 billion middle income and 1 billion that has been left behind, with incomes stagnant or falling in this period. Collier than examines why this is, and offers solutions.

I think this is a title worthy of the audience of /r/globalistshills because a) it is heavily evidence-based, but more importantly b) it represents the twin premise of this sub, that the (((neoliberal))) consensus has worked for the betterment of billions of people, but there are still problems in the world, and we need evidence-based policy to solve them.

Obviously we can use another text if of the powers that be prefer, but I think this would be an excellent start.

Caveat that I've not actually got very far in it yet, but I want to discuss it with people when I'm done.

There are two books that I want to recommend:

The Great War for Civilisation by Fisk

https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173

The Bottom Billion by Collier

https://www.amazon.com/Bottom-Billion-Poorest-Countries-Failing/dp/0195373383

These two books changed the way I view the Middle East and we have never learned our lessons from the past.

They got pist because you're dumb. Read a book. Maybe this one, this one, this one, this one, or this one and educate yourself.

Poor Economics for a great discussion on the many small, incremental steps that add up and could help alleviate poverty.

The Bottom Billion for a nice discussion on the various poverty traps a country can get stuck in. This book focuses more on the bigger macro picture, and less on the incentives and lives of individuals.

Why Nations Fail - I'll admit I haven't read this yet, but a lot of people seem to rate it highly. It looks at the broad picture of what determines the wealth of nations, and especially the nature of extractive vs. inclusive institutions.

I haven't heard of anyone advocating that a central bank play a key role in ending poverty. Central banks are there to help smooth output fluctuations, by keeping unemployment near its "natural" level and inflation low and stable. There's nothing in their tool-set that could bring a country out of poverty. Though they're certainly very important as bad monetary policy can destroy a country.

To describe it another way: poverty alleviation is about creating a long-term upward trend in output per person. But there are unpredictable variations the economy experiences around this long-term trend (recessions). The central bank's job is to prevent or minimize these deviations from trend, by preventing recessions. But it does not determine the long-term trend itself.

A good book I enjoyed from my Global Economy graduate class was The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. This covers a lot of what you're interested in learning.

The Bottom Billion

Dead Aid

Neither deal directly with sweatshops but the subject is related.

And you can google some other information, written by people who study this stuff professionally, in defense of them if you want a better understanding of why they exist, their benefits and their faults, etc.

Interesting AMA thus far. I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer in Central Africa, and I worked pretty extensively in aid elsewhere on the continent afterwards. Never been to Malawi, but I'm familiar with a lot of the issues there, as they're typical of many countries in that region.

First off, good for you - getting off your duff and going into the world to throw yourself at a problem you see. I'm glad you're doing this. That said, I'd like to offer some advice, both from someone who cares about global poverty a lot, and as one who's worked in the field and wants to save you some headaches. There's a lot of issues with "orphanages" in developing countries. I suggest you read all the articles here - the gist being that in a cultural context you don't understand, meddling with children and families is fraught with peril.

Before you get yourself into something you don't understand yet, please listen to these concerns:
You've moved into a completely alien society with a culture you don't really understand and language you don't speak. You're on a tourist visa, for god's sake! That's not okay! It sounds like you've inserted yourself into a number of situations - economic transactions, the "briefcase orphanage" scam - that you just do not fully grasp yet, and by doing so you could be putting yourself in danger. You may think you understand a lot more about these things than you do. The longer you live there - give it a year or two at least - the more you will see how little you actually understood when you first got there (that is, now), and how little you actually understand then. Societies are complex that way.

Think of the opposite - an African from some tiny village somewhere who came to live in, say, downtown Manhattan, and how long it would take him or her to actually grasp the finer points of our culture and society. And that's assuming they already speak English. Until you can converse intelligently in Chichewa, you're really just guessing about what's going on around you based on what the very few who can speak English are willing/know how to say to you.

The broad generalizations you're making here - China is ruining Africa; Africa depends on food aid, otherwise everyone would starve; the tobacco trade is bad and destructive - are tell-tale signs of a shocked, fairly naive white person who has just arrived, and who has not yet taken the time to learn deeply about development, global poverty, and African history and economics. Read about the history of Malawi and what the Banda regime was like (reference for redditors interested here. Read Jeff Sachs, and then for the love of god read Bill Easterly, since he's got his head screwed on a little tighter. Read de Soto, and Ayittey and Collier. There is a whole constellation of development and aid blogs out there, all of which you will find instructive. The bottom line being - there are best practices and lessons to be learned out there, because lots of people have done what you're doing and are doing it now. This business you're up to in Malawi should not be about you. It's about them. And when you begin working in aid, it's very important you remember that, because frankly, a lot of folks forget it.

So, finally, my question: what's your endgame? That is, what goal are you trying to accomplish?

I ask because you're presumably not going to live in Malawi for the rest of your life, so you must eventually (1) get this new orphanage sustainably funded and (2) find competent/honest people to run it. That's very, very difficult. Are you applying for grants? Hoping you'll find a church somewhere in America that wants to take on permanent responsibility for funding this? The Malawian government?

>Sure you aren't a trump supporter, you just post constantly in defense of him and happen to think the russian interference is all a big lie despite all the evidence for it. But no definitely not a trump supporter. I'm not interested in reading your smug pseudo-intellectual rants about misapplied theories, and neither are the refugees fleeing Syria, they just want a safe place to go rather than dying in the rubble of their country.

I mean, I defended Obama against the birther shit and Muslim accusations too. I'm sorry if I can't let bullshit slide. But lets step back...What does it matter? Really. What does my affiliation matter? Does it change my arguments? I'm not asking you to believe me based on who I am, I'll gladly defend my positions with arguments and citations.

So why try to push me into an allegiance just so you can ignore me? Isn't that troubling that you're prone to do that? How much information are you missing out on because you label people and toss away information that doesn't fit your world view? Meanwhile, you've insulted me numerous times and I've read every word you said, and responded in good faith.

>There's no evidence that the refugees that manage to escape were the 'best and brightest' and no matter how much you want to keep ranting about the pareto principle and try to twist it into supporting any half baked assertion you make, there's no reason to think the women and children that made it out alive weren't mostly just the lucky ones. The best and brightest family could have been killed by a random artillery shell instead.

Well, you didn't ask. But migration and "brain drain" have been a major policy topic at the IMF and in economics for decades now. We have plenty of evidence illustrating that even under duress, migratory conditions favor those in the upper eocnomic bands. In fact, the worst hit for brain drain are usually under the most duress--either due to poorer than the "developing" world economic conditions or war. That's because countries that are "developing" have such significant amounts of people with tertiary educations that the drain only typically pulls about 5-10% of them. Meanwhile though, countries that have collapsed? Brain drain will pull nearly all of their "best and brightest" (Second paper goes over this.)

>The best and brightest family could have been killed by a random artillery shell instead.

This would be anecdotal, among large populations the idea of a single case being a theme is the sign of...well, someone that doens't know how large populations work. Yes, clearly the "best and brightest" could be killed, and people in the mid and lower band can get lucky. But the averages won't support this, for numerous reasons. The biggest being that the hurdles OUTSIDE the country are just as big as within it. I think, genuinely, some people have a hard time grasping just how long, difficult and complex the journey from Syria would be.


>I'm certainly not willing to tell these families to go die in Syria instead because you're worried they might be contributing to a brain drain there.

Oh there is no need to do that. The most effective method of saving these people has been studied pretty extensively, and our laws are actually set up around it. Quite simply refugee status is restricted to the first safe country you pass through. If the West truly wanted to help refugees, then the goal would be to send money and material aid to those camps, and prepare for the end of the war so they can return and prepare to build.

You should really read the Bottom Billion, so you can know more about what you obviously feel passionate about. Because it seems like you're all emotion with this, without a lot of actual knowledge. Which is fine, its a very emotion issue--but there is a ton of good research on it.

>Oh did you know that 80% of your karma is from the 20% of non-bullshit posts you make? It must be true because the pareto principle is thing.

Well, 80% of my Karma is from 20% of my posts, that's actually true. I'd say "bullshit' is a qualitative quantifier here. But you're absolutely right that the Pareto principle applies to my posting as well. Stochastic distributions that wind up under this principle don't care about your feelings or barbs son--this principle accurately describes the fact that 20% of the population has more than everyone else both globally and then within those global nations there is another split, it describes how citations come from small amounts of work while most papers have zero, its shows that the NBA point distribution per game, the number of championship wins per team in every sports league follows this pattern. Always.

There is only fact, and what's not fact. Your emotions in this are meaningless.