Poverty Impeding Development

In the 1980s, the advent of some newly-industrializing countries (NICs) in east Asia, such as Taiwan and South Korea, was generating excitement around the world that the gap between the least developed countries (LDCs) and the developed countries (DCs) then had a viable bridge through foreign direct-investment; that is, what had been a dichotomy was becoming a spectrum. The hope that globally-circulating capital might raise even the LDCs out of poverty. Of course, there was scarce any thought that the combined pollution of an economically developing world would raise global air and sea temperatures above 1.5C. Human beings are too near-sighted for that, and, of course, there is the allure of profits and higher salaries and wages. Also, the sheer inexorability, or stubborn persistence, of poverty in scaring off rather than being lifted up from foreign-direct investment may have been minimized by the hope. Roughly forty years later, Oriana Bandiera of the London School of Economics spoke on the theory that economic opportunities are impacted by how much wealth a person has at the outset—the alternative theory being that the opportunities are just as good for the poor as for the rich because differences are due to exogenous (i.e., outside) factors. The micro-level condition of a country’s poor impacts the attractiveness of a country to foreign direct-investment.

 

The full essay is at "Poverty Impeding Development."

On the Key Role of Energy in the Industrial Revolution

Reading from Peter Stearns' "The Industrial Revolution in World History," I'm intrigued with the twin elements of fossil fuels to power the machinery and organizational management to organize the production process, including the continued use of human energy/labor. I suppose Descartes' "mind-body" dualism is getting in the way of my understanding of the industrial revolution from the standpoint of the leap of energy and the related increase in complexity. 

The full essay is at "Key Role of Energy."

An Ex-CEO on U.S. Presidential Leadership: Dissecting Ted Turner’s Pessimistic Stance

The founder of CNN and TNT, two American television networks, Ted Turner maintains that presidential leadership at the federal level is elusive. More particularly, the American electorate’s task is very, very difficult because the federal president must be an expert in so many areas. Ironically, Turner may be overlooking how upper-echelons leadership differs from leadership within organizations, including the U.S. Government.

The full essay is at “Presidential Leadership.”