This is basically a way of saying, the rich won’t help you unless you help them get richer.
Which is fine, I suppose. It seems to be a force of nature.
Which is fine, I suppose. It seems to be a force of nature.
The parent says that no single technology "solves" the problems of poverty. The biggest strides to improving quality of life measures are made when people are permitted to try to improve their own lives.
Local markets means people from the same economic stratum helping each other. Where do "the rich" enter into it at all? Are you one of "the rich", with a disposable income many times the total income of people suffering from inadequate clean water? Why aren't you "helping"? What would "help" look like, in your vision?
The point being that Capital is interested in “helping” to the extent the “help” generates an ROI.
Many of these countries have local markets.
They also suffer when capital captures regulatory / gov agencies, and those agencies pass laws that benefit capital.
Much of the world is getting by on $350-$750 / year, so my guess is that >90% of folks reading hacker news are making 100x that of these folks.
Not to mention instances where capital leverages local labor and resources and leaves the community worse off. Ie, water being used to make Coke and exporting it.
If a country’s government is ineffective and corrupt they can waste arbitrary amounts of money and have nothing to show for it in the end but some bureaucrats who ate nice meals and had nice cars before the crap roads and lack of maintenance turned them into junk.
Aid just isn’t terribly effective generally. You can’t make incompetent people rich or even middle income and have it stick. If you can help them become competent they’ll deal with poverty themselves.