lack of economic freedom, lack of property rights
The following will make any country RICH!
1) Honest courts and police to enforce contracts and put criminals in prison.
2) profound respect for private property.
3) Free markets
4) Secure borders to keep out invading armies and hordes of refugees.
5) Rule of law and equality before the law.
Democracy is not necessary. If it were Hong Kong wouldn't be the powerhouse that it is.
This hellhole is a typical liberal/socialist dream come true.
Free people are, by definition, free to direct their economic efforts elsewhere if a drought or a plague of locusts attacks the agriculture.
Horse hockey.
It takes a government to make a country poor.
So in essence these so called independant nations currently ruled by tin-pot dictators were better off as European Colonies. Is that what the author is saying?
That the European Colony Pashas or whatever they called themselves gave the locals a better life that the "Elected" Tin-Pot Dicttors and perhaps they'd be better off if they returned to being European Colonies?
So what is different about this country and the entire disease ridden, corrupt, economic trainwreck of the continent of Africa?
This non-sensical sentence always makes me despair of journalism as a serious profession.
Having one eighth the income does not make them eight times poorer. Below a certain level of existence, the comparative is meaningless...
already posted last week
Interesting. However, it raises the question -- why wait for the government to fix the road? Why don't the people band together and fill the potholes themselves?
Richard Lynn, Tatu Vanhanen. "IQ and the wealth of nations" Praeger, 2002, ISBN 027597510.
Two sons of rich politically connected families attend college in the United States together. One is from a Southeast Asian nation while the other is from Africa. Years later, they decide to visit each other to see how they've done.
First, the African man visits his friend in Southeast Asia. As he drives up the highway to the mansion, he sees five Mercedes Benz cars parked in front of a 20 bedroom mansion, with a staff of 20 servants. His friend invites him in and takes him out to the patio in the back, where a highway can be seen in the distance. He gestures toward the highway and says, "See that highway? 20 percent." (Indicating that he skimmed 20 percent from the cost of the highway.)
Then both friends travel to Africa, where they arrive at a mansion with ten Rolls Royce cars parked in front of a 50 bedroom mansion, with a staff of 100 servants. The African friend takes his Southeast Asian friend out to the patio in the back, where nothing but jungle can be seen. He gestures toward the jungle and says, "See that highway? 100 percent."
Basically, in Southeast Asia, the level of corruption is low enough that things still get done while in Africa, the level is so high that almost nothing gets done.
This is not rocket science, and one does not need multiple advanced degrees to see (or infer) the common ingredient:
Ruthlessness.
Elimination of class structure, and a ruthless absolute rejection of corruption in all forms, from the top down.
Marxism is the tempting illusion, but only free market ruthlessness seems to work; whether applied externally by the mean-exploitative colonial imperialists, or (very unlikely, almost impossible)internally from a few competent incorruptible and dedicated local leaders.
Ruthless means exactly that. Draconian, if necessary.
Singapore is perhaps the best example of the success of this paradigm.
Sam Kinison said it best "you people live in a desert! move to where the food is!"
Cameroon IQ, 70 is the mean, Might be part of the problem.