Really insightful to read about your exploits. I’ve certainly traveled along the roads (paths cleared through the jungle) that you speak of, but I’ve never gotten as involved with the people as you have, so the “Hello Mr. John” is quite touching.

I actually wrote my thoughts out before posting them, and then I noticed that “Anonymous” above pretty much echoed what I had to say (right down to including the Millenium Challenge, which is associated with Sachs, below). Here are my thoughts anyway, since every additional voice helps:

The greater intractable problems of poverty, rule of law, and the nature of the West’s help jumped out at me as well. I’ve read the Easterly book, along with another far more utopian book called “Common Ground,” by “The End of Poverty” author Jeffrey Sachs. You really got me with your discussion of the burdened mother pondering a microloan. Sachs talks heavily about the following: a high birthrate is a safety outlet to make sure that at least one child survives until adulthood in a dangerous environment. Unfortunately, people have lots of kids to ensure the safety of one child in places where it’s hard to feed even one child. Thus ensuring more starvation and a future of too many people. So I’d side with him (and you, I think, concluding that population control is a critical concern. Sachs also notes however, that carrot is way better than stick. So instead of China’s (recently disastrous due to faulty school construction) one-child-then-sterilization policy, a far better mode is just to fight tooth and nail against child mortality. Then cultural norms start to change pretty quickly: witness the plummeting birth rates in Europe. For this, I would imagine that implementing Sach’s ideas along Easterly’s local lines is the way to go. That said, you’re in the nexus helping control that: (a) health care, (b) education, and (c) family planning/birth control. Well done. You seem to be in the right spot.

The other major problem is infrastructure (and more importantly, legal rights for infrastructure and property). You’ve noticed that it’s more than a bit hard to get anything done when prices change, bribes work, the rule of law changes day to day and person to person, etc. How can anyone decide how to allocate funds that are given to them as a gift if they don’t know what there electric bill will be, if the roads will connect, if they can’t buy oatmeal tomorrow? How does one make an investment decision when the future of that investment is in doubt or could be stolen? Sadly, those problems are deeper than local. Elimination of corruption is not a bottom-up process. It really, really helps to have a leadership dedicated to the task. Otherwise the whistleblowers tend to be “disappeared.” I can only hope then that in the long run small scale local influences can democratically influence the leadership to set up systems where corruption isn’t tolerated.

Hopefully in a few years time it will be easier for an American visitor to point to our system as an example of how it should be done. I’m recognizing how hard it is to correct the structure of our system in the U.S. to safeguard trust and public good. For you, I am in absolute awe at the hurdles you await. Perhaps instead of Easterly or Sachs, you should give Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea” a read. Even though it occasionally wanders into blockbusterish plotting, the central thesis remains true. Good luck spreading knowledge and compassion.

First, national and transnational institutions can mobilize resources in ways that individuals and local communities cannot. For example, the government of Zambia could–in theory–require the Chinese or the Indians who own the mines to support local services as one of their contractual obligations in exchange for earning a return on their investment in extracting copper. No local authority would likely be capable of that sort of enforcement.

Second, governments and transnational NGOs can (and should) provide the public services that markets usually fail to provide, and it is those very services that build the capacity for individuals to better their own lots. In particular, education and road construction come to mind. There is (usually) little profit to be made in education, yet broad primary education is an obvious prerequisite (necessary but not sufficient) for extensive development. Similarly, the evidence you point to of good roads leading to the copper mines, with other transportation infrastructure degraded, suggests a government that is not able to generate the kinds of public capital that would multiply the productivity of individual citizens and their local activities. Imagine how much more valuable those women’s handicrafts might be if there were a broad, smooth road directly from their village to Lusaka, and cheap flights from Lusaka to London? In a case like that, public and private cooperation could improve citizens’ lives more than either the individuals or the government could do on their own.

Finally, and in my opinion most importantly, governments and multi-national institutions can change institutions and systems. This is controversial, of course, because the evidence is mixed and complex, but I am convinced that demand from below (i.e. individuals or small groups) will rarely if ever be sufficient to generate important institutions such as the rule of law, dynamic free press, oversight of government and private corruption, free and fair elections, and the other institutions that materially developed societies rely on to operate smoothly and develop further. Outside pressure (from international organizations, other governments, transnational funders, etc.) in conjunction with citizen demand can lead to systemic change in the way institutions operate, which in turn can have dramatic impact on the opportunities for individual citizens. The Millennium Challenge Corporation is just one example–and the jury is certainly still out on whether that approach will bear long-term fruit–of how incentives to make systemic changes can improve people’s lives. I’m often reminded of an academic who once pointed out that the productivity of a Mexican immigrant to the United States rises by almost fifteen times by the simple act of crossing the US border; the reason, of course, is that now that immigrant can take advantage of the developed system of laws and institutions that protect citizens and reward industry (however imperfectly!). Compared with the much more arbitrary and capricious system in Mexico (and many other underdeveloped countries), the simple fact of functional legal institutions dramatically increases individual and small-group productivity. That is, it is still individuals and local groups that generate value for society–and as Easterly says, not grandiose “Big Solutions”–but we can’t leave the entirety of fixing systemic flaws up to individuals or local groups who do not have the capacity or the means to make those changes. Large changes need a large lever, and I believe that is the value that government, national and transnational institutions can provide.