How do you save Cambodia?
How do you save Sudan?
How do you save Bangladesh?
And what does that mean, anyway -- how do you 'save' a country? Are some countries doomed, simply because of their location and their leaders?
No, according to Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's foremost macroeconomics gurus who is trying to figure out a way to stop poor countries from being poor.
His answer, as detailed in a New York Times story that ran last weekend, is simple: Money.
Lots and lots of money.
Simple.
Simplistic?
I kinda think so.
Now, I'm no economist. I took no poli-sci, economics, or development classes in university. (You're looking at a guy who dropped out of Grade 11 Accounting after a month, and whose idea of a good history lesson at the time was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.)
But I'm living in Cambodia, and work for an NGO, so I'll put in my two cents worth.
You can inject all the money you want into these poor, desperate countries in South-east Asia and Africa, and Sachs is probably right -- more money IS what is needed.
The problem, however, is...
1) Where will the money go? Most likely, right into the pockets of the charming, benevolent governments that lead most third-world countries. They don't care about the poor. They care about lining their own pockets with all the goodies that they can.
(Oh, sure, they care, yes, but in the same way that everybody cares about poor people. Nobody likes to see it. Nobody likes to think about it. And it all comes down to the individual and the individual's own life -- if he can improve it, he will. If he can use the money to get him out his own dire circumstances, he will. Why wouldn't he? He's been through hell and back, most likely. He's seen his family starve, die, beg. The biggest governments and wealthiest nations are still just groupings and gloppings of individuals who are looking after their own self-interest first, period. Any good that arises is a trickle-down side effect.)
2) Assuming that the money gets where it's supposed to go, will it be used efficiently? Probably not, because the people in charge of the governments of most of the poor countries in the world don't really know what the hell they're doing. They either siphon the money into their own bank accounts, or, should the money actually be used how it is intended to be, it will probably be used in a wasteful, inefficient manner.
Why? Well, they don't have the skills. They don't have the know-how. They don't have the time or the energy to implement the skills or the know-how, either, because life is short and projects are long and it's difficult to create something out of nothing. Difficult to build castles in the sand. Easier to watch them wash away as you kick back in your villa with a pina colada in one hand and the remote in the other.
This is not to say that there is no hope, because I think there is, but it lies in the next gen -
eration, and the generation after that, and the generation after that. And so international experts -- carrying lots and lots of cash, as Sachs suggests -- have to dig in deep and prepare for the long haul and do the best they can, with what they have, to help train and implement, by hook or by crook, government and community programs that are relatively easy to run. You have to train the young and hope that they can somehow break the endless cycle of dependen-
cy and corruption that so many third-world countries revolve around.
So, I think Sachs is right, to some extent -- it takes cash. But cash alone ain't enough, and I think he approaches everything from a macro-economic perspective.
All well and good, for the big issues.
But life is lived on the ground level, on a micro-scale.
Life is lived in inches.
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