What can charities, companies and world leaders realistically do to help modernize the third world ?
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at
12:10 am
Incentives for entrepeneurs. Increase the circle of income. But their labour force is so low, due to most individuals living subsistently, without the facility to go out and work. High inflation is a problem. Subsidise building projects to solve these basic needs? I.e water pumps and agriculture.
Please offer your ideas.
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There are a number of obvious possibilities; how realistic they are depends on your perspective.
For the world leaders, the biggest benefit they can provide is to eliminate tariffs and other barriers to exports from the third world.
Also important, though less politically acceptable, is to eliminate agricultural subsidies to their own farmers which allow the subsidized farmers to undercut the unsubsidized farmers’ produce in the marketplace.
Companies have little incentive to do anything to help modernize the third world, so there is no point in inckluding them here. (Most world leaders do have good reasons for helping the third world, but most don’t see it.)
Charities can do very little, but what they can do can be valuable. Helping to eliminate corruption by monitoring elections, political promises, third world governments use of foreign aid, etc. can be of great help. Setting up schools, etc. can be very useful, but only when the local social structure is ready to support them (which they rarely are).
Most attempts to build infrastructure – school buildings, clean water supplies, etc. – have failed because the locals did not take on responsibility for maintaining the new facilities. (The schools weren’t there in the first place because the government had no interest in putting schools there. So why would they have an interest in maintaining a school that someone else put up? etc.)
Before looking at the third world, it is interesting to look at the first world and how uneven development has been there. Compare, for example, northern Italy with southern Italy; or why Ireland now and not 50 years ago?