[Mikeb85]

> A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything.

Like nuclear fission? Or how about solar?

Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won't help.

In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc...

The problem is corruption and safety. I've seen it in my wife's country - savings rates are generally high, there's lots of labour, a ton of entrepreneurial spirit and the barrier to entry is more or less zero. The problem is, the second you start any sort of enterprise, someone will rob you. Police will demand bribes. Politicians will demand bribes. If you don't give in, they'll send their criminal friends after you. Even if you do give in, they may anyway. Bandits will come rob you in the night, and if you're unlucky enough to be there at the time, they'll shoot you. If you're lucky, they just take some cash. There's literally zero incentive to do anything, lest you get robbed and/or killed. That's reality. You want to fix the 3rd world, you need to start with law and order. Nothing can happen until people feel safe, and feel like doing something will actually improve their life.

After that, it's infrastructure. Power, roads, emergency services, bridges, etc... Infrastructure enables travel, it enables businesses, lights, and so on. When you have infrastructure you can bring your products to market. And so on (most people know the economic benefits of infrastructure).

In my experience, families in the third world often have the equivalent of thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars saved. Witness how much money Syrians and Afghans pay to get smuggled into Europe. They won't invest that because they don't feel safe, but they have no qualms giving a smuggler thousands of dollars.

So much charity is just a band-aid, or worse, gets siphoned off to corrupt entities. You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new first world. But no, we give charity with one hand, and with the other are propping up horrible dictators, overthrowing democracies for choosing the wrong ideology, and encouraging corruption and oligarchy. Given what's happened in the world since I've been old enough to follow the news, I'm more convinced than ever that the developed world simply wants to keep the third world as dependent colonies.

tl;dr - long rant, something something corruption.

[subpixel]

This rings very true to me.

My wife is also from a so-called third-world country. A stunningly beautiful one at that. Every time I visit I dream of moving there.

Once I found a Swiss guy, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, who had started a small farm and an operation dealing in a very specific kind of beef cattle, and esp. breeding. He even had an awesome little restaurant serving schnitzel and beer. I think he moved there for a woman, and had to figure out how to make a buck. He was living the dream!

A couple years later he was out on his ass, because as soon as his business was successful, local folks stole his cattle. I found a lawsuit he filed in which he explained that he could actually see the stolen cattle from his land. But the proper palms had been greased, and he was completely up shit creek. He made a pretty big stink, right up to the point where he'd be risking life and limb to go any further. But nothing was done, nobody was arrested, and he never got his cattle back.

And therein lies the rub: nobody feels safe enough to endure success.

> You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new first world

I like the sentiment, but in many countries, corruption and safety issues won't even begin to be addressed as long as the business of making/selling drugs for Americans is as lucrative as it is.

[alanh]

Thoroughly infuriating. Enough to make a man go John McAfee, I would imagine.

[danieltillett]

The best thing we could do for the “third world” would be to help develop a non-corrupt legal system. Until this is fixed then all other efforts will just go down the drain.

[bshanks]

Can anyone recommend some introductory textbooks or review articles on how to design institutional structures that resist corruption?

[eru]

The book `Just get out of the way' (http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=51...) addresses this topic. One point the author makes is that honest and competent government officials are one of the most scarce and valuable resources for a developing country, and thus institutions and laws should be designed to lighten their workload.

One example are insolvency laws.

In most countries, there are three options: creditors and debtors reach an agreement. Liquidation. And Administration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administration_(law)) ordered by court.

Administration is complicated, and requires complicated laws and competent and honest officials to administer the laws. So countries, especially poor ones, should not offer this alternative.

If the company is worth more alive than dead, creditors and debtors will come to an agreement. (Especially if you remove the alternative of administration, that gives the debtor an out, rendering the creditors threats toothless.)

[specialist]

Good link, thanks.

Hernando de Soto makes a similar case that societies need some cultural achievements unlocked before their market-based economies can work well. Stuff like property rights, fair and impartial courts, contract law, enforced regulatory authority, professional civil servants, etc.

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

Hernando de Soto (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mystery-Capital-Capitalism-Everywh...

I have friends that work in development who criticize de Soto: a good start, but as one would expect, the story isn't that simple. Alas, I don't recall their upgrades to de Soto's insights.

[eru]

Exactly.

The thesis of the book I mentioned is exactly that you should very carefully economize on the amount of `cultural capital' required to run your economy. A mostly market-based economy is one way to do that, if regulation is chosen carefully.

Societies that have lots of cultural capital, like the Nordic countries, can get away with more socialism without everything becoming corrupt. (It might still be inefficient for them to go that route, but at least they can bear the costs.)

[scubaguy]

Relevant http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Medi...

"One of the most common stories about aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption. It is true that when health aid is stolen or wasted, it costs lives. We need to root out fraud and squeeze more out of every dollar....

"We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop trying to save lives?"

[neolefty]

Moral change is so hard that people assume it's impossible. But if you can tackle it, it makes so many things easier or at least possible.

It's at the heart of the Baha'i approach, which has development as its goal, but starts by training young people in honesty & altruism and developing a community oriented around local service (it aims at adults too, but they're harder to reach unless they are already basically on board). It's a little weird to talk about on a technical forum, since the approach assumes a spiritual view of human nature -- the unifying power of prayer, we have a higher conscience, etc, but I think it's true, and I find it to be systematic and evidence-based.

I think people love being trustworthy, but they tend to develop cynicism about it. They want to be part of a trustworthy society, but they haven't seen it work yet. That makes me think it's possible to grow a society where honesty & justice are the norms, even embedded within a society that is corrupt & cynical, if a small critical mass of people support & encourage each other. They'll attract positive attention and grow, in part because of contrast, if the desire is there among the general population.

It's is a slow process though, and I often feel discouraged because it's the kind of thing that requires generational change, and which I doubt I'll see finished in my lifetime. But when I stop and think about what else I'd work on, I can't think of anything more solid in the long term.

[visarga]

I think the morality based approach is not going to work for the majority of society, as it didn't in the past. Instead, we should take an analytic approach and focus on maximizing integration (freedom to act) and differentiation (freedom to think).

Integration is the idea that we should all have the ability to leave our mark on society. In other words, it means to have access.

Differentiation is the idea that we should be free to be different, that we should not fear for our physical safety. Unless people have the ability to express their creativity without restraint, we will have a society like the old Communist block, and we are headed to that with the latest mass surveillance policies, unfortunately.

An example of a differentiated and integrated society is the Open Source community. Another example is the brain, which has an astounding number of components tightly integrated yet differentiated. A third example would be the free market, where each agent tries to differentiate its offering from the competition and yet also has to be closely integrated with the other agents in order to benefit from the opportunities they create. A fourth example: the ecosystem, where each species is differentiated in order to benefit from a niche yet they also need to be integrated and function as a complex whole.

If we have differentiation and integration in society then our minds can cooperate to build a better future, organically, from the grassroots. In such a society a person would be free to be creative and have a low entry barrier to the market. If we took these two core principles and try to optimize them in society and politics, we'd maximize happiness. A differentiated-integrated system has a superior ability to adapt and find solutions to its problems.

[tryitnow]

I don't know if there's much that Gates can do about corruption. That's something that might have to take it's natural course and weed itself out (like it has partly done in the US and other developed nations).

In the mean time I think Gates wants to do something rather than nothing and things like mosquito nets apparently do save lives. The people whose lives are saved may not be able to prosper, but they're most likely grateful for not dying of malaria.

[DigitalJack]

I don't know. Corruption in Mexico is getting worse. I don't think it's going to work itself out.

[raisedbyninjas]

Maybe Gates can create their own municipality complete with a justice system and law enforcement. Then they redirect all of their aid for that region to within those borders. If the other native cities can adhere to the same standards, then they become eligible for aid.

[ant6n]

Corruption in the US seems to be getting worse too. Also other first world countries.

[Cheezmeister]

"Seems" is not the same as "is". In the US at least, I see not corruption so much as deeply entrenched dysfunctional incentives.

It's not malice or conspiracy or even stupidity. It's simply the way the US's political, economic, and industrial systems (alternately known as THE MAN) co-evolved.

[ant6n]

First world corruption doesn't directly rely on bribes, people wouldn't experience it like they do in the third world. Here it is more advanced. It comes as crazy conflict-of-interest creating campaign contributions, as giving contracts to friends, as corporatism, lobbyists writing laws. A strong sense of plutocracy. Most contracts the public gives out these days seem to have insane costs.

Yes I wrote 'seem', not 'is', because I can't prove it.

[shas3]

Yours is such a tangential comment, it doesn't remotely relate to anything in the Gates's letter. You have just repeated the same old blah about corruption, safety, and infrastructure. All that Bill and Melinda are saying is that solving the problems they classify as energy and time will make the world a better place.

> In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn't education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc...

I don't even know where you pulled that out of. It would be more credible if you could cite some evidence.

[sremani]

There is a paper from IMF, whose authors are current Reserve Bank of India Governor - Raghuram Rajan and India's Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramaniam about How Charity does not work.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2005/wp05126.pdf

[qj4714]

I never liked the word corruption because it lends itself to too many interpretations. I see the problem as tribalism. In most third world coutries, the poitical set up is a couple tribes that share power, control industry, and insulate themselves from the problems of the rest of their country. Everyone else not part of the tribe has to fend for themselves. A tribe is more than a collection of people/families, it is an institution that can impose social mores on its own kind.

What foreign aid does is insulate these tribal systems against change. It often supports repression, but also does provide needed medicine or food to people you would otherwise die. That, to me, is the problem.

[mjklin]

Adding to your point: in a tribal culture within a "state" that began as some convenient lines drawn by westerners, when your tribesman gets into political power it will be expected of him to reward his tribe with jobs and/or monies from the public coffer.

When a common person needs help from above, he or she turns to the tribe strongman rather than a bribe-seeking policeman or bureaucrat.

While this may look like "corruption" to westerners, it is understandable in places that have different political histories than the west.

[xorcist]

Society is built on trust, and if you don't have trust in the energy company, or the justice system, or even your neighbours, then that sets a limit to how high functioning the society can become.

Aspects of these issues can be observed in pretty much every country, no matter how rich or developed. For instance, it is quite clear that because people in the US has no trust for social insurance systems, that puts a cap on how efficient their workforce can get. That doesn't matter economically as long as there is a lot of unskilled labour, but it leaves no possibility for the whole workforce to get skilled and well educated. That could matter at some point in the future.

[justinhj]

Isn't this a chicken and egg problem? Corruption generally thrives where people are poor. In the normal course of their daily lives the government cannot save them from starving or from disease. So with no legitimate safety net you may have to fall to crime to keep your family healthy and fed. Maybe you rob someone, or maybe you take bribes at work. If a charity comes in and provides what you need it is no longer an easy choice to fall to crime. I'm not naive enough to think it's this simple at all, but you do have to start somewhere.

[themartorana]

Is it people are poor, or poor in comparison to the appetites of the ruling class? I look at Russia - not rich, per se, but not exactly Third World - but corruption there is as open as it can be. But even if Russia has a majority "First World" middle class, the appetites of the ruling class are in the billions of dollars. The difference between the middle class and the oligarchy is probably more dichotomous than in third world nations.

[sanoli]

Born and raised, and currently still living in a third world country. What you say is true, except for education. At least, I don't see how you lower corruption as a cultural value without increasing the quality and pervasiveness of education. Where 'having a little on the side' is pretty much a cultural norm, how do you change it, if not via long term improvement of the educational system as the base for all other efforts? I'm actually asking this question, because I don't know of anything that is more important than education. Everything else helps, but unless you change the culture of accepting corruption, and of being a little corrupt, it won't do. And yes, I did say 'being a little corrupt', because it pervades the culture. Whereas big shots steal thousands or millions, the average Joe also tries to get away with not paying taxes, tries to not really work when he gets his government job. This all happens in my country, you'd be surprised how corruption is not something that happens just at the top, but everywhere. The person who takes home the school cafeteria lunch out of greed, just because he can and it is paid by the government is just as guilty as the business man who bribes his way out of paying thousands in taxes. How do you change this culture?

[Mikeb85]

You need to

a) Pay people well enough to not feel the need to take bribes

b) Create harsh enough consequences that everyone thinks twice, and apply it universally. This doesn't mean a police state or even jail, but enough consequences that being corrupt isn't a worthwhile enterprise

My wife's country actually elected a government that isn't too terrible and is trying to change things, but the backlash caused by giving civil servants raises was fairly big. And the old government was undoubtedly corrupt, but prosecuting your political foes can cause issues, even if it's entirely just.

Education can help, but then again, it's not everything, and if there's no demand for educated labour, people drop out anyway.

People need to look at the least corrupt states in the world - we may bitch about it, but our politicians are paid very well, and while some are still corrupt, most aren't, and the scale of corruption here is far less than most countries.

[jaxr]

It sounds like you live next door :). The problem is indeed deep and complex. Educating the young is not nearly enough. IMO, there's a whole issue about educating the educators. I had a teacher in school who would give us the answers to a national standardized test as we were taking it! And I went to a 'good' private 'catholic' highschool! I'm kind of hopefull about initiatives like Kahn academy et al. However, we need to produce much more content in local languages, give access and teach how to self-educate responsibly.

[gbog]

Yes, yes and yes. That's exactly the "secret" of Chinese economy boom miracle: despite all the issues in this country, it's people feel safe enough to invest time and money in some activities that may improve their life, and usually does.

And notice that while still useful in some cases, charities and NGOs didn't play a major role in taking a billion of Chinese out of poverty. Mostly they were given a stable enough environment and did it themselves.

[Edit] And infrastructure, yes again. That's very stunning, when comparing China and, e.g. India.

[tuananh]

improving education,awareness will help reducing corruption too. enable them to fight for themselves.

[citizensixteen]

Corruption is a world-wide problem and that includes all nations.

Corruption is Legal in America [Video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

[kuschku]

Nuclear Fission? Safe?

As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima).

Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt and use money for themselves. Make it a for-profit company, they’ll try to get around every regulation and save money.

No matter what you do, you end up with a potential disaster.

[Mikeb85]

> Nuclear Fission? Safe?

Nuclear power and uranium mining is far cleaner and safer than coal, oil/gas, even hydro. Coal mining, hydro accidents, and the various deaths from oil/gas extraction, power plant accidents, etc..., far outstrip deaths from nuclear power plant accidents. Not to mention the health costs that coal has inflicted on the world, the amount of people displaced and ecosystems destroyed by hydro, and so on. Nuclear power gets a bad rap, but statistically speaking, is rather safe.

[kuschku]

For the people who end up having to live with contaminated tap water and only learn about it decades later (see Leukämiecluster Elbmarsch for example) it ends up having similar, or worse, results than coal, though.

And especially the waste issue isn't easily solvable.

[jdminhbg]

> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima)

And don't even get me started on the rapacious capitalists running Chernobyl...

[kuschku]

Just because — as I mentioned in the original comment, which you would know, if you could read — a state-owned solution is even worse doesn't mean a company omptimizing for lowest quality and highest profits they can get away with is a "good" concept.

[dang]

> which you would know, if you could read

We ban accounts that repeatedly post uncivil comments to Hacker News, so please don't do this.

[kuschku]

Could you please clarify how I should answer when people ask questions that I directly, and obviously answered already?

Especially when multiple – in this case 2 (!) – people ask the very same question, again and again.

Asking redundant questions is also discouraged in the guidelines.

[tomhoward]

Anything that can be said with an insulting implication (I.e., you are illiterate) can be said more effectively without the personal abuse.

When multiple people miss the point you're trying to make, it's safe to assume that you haven't made your point as clearly or convincingly as you'd hoped.

In which case it's perfectly fine to respond and further develop your point, but your point will carry much more weight if you're polite and respectful in the way you phrase it.

[praxulus]

Empirically, nuclear is the safest form of energy generation we have. I don't doubt that we have government regulation to thank for that, but the system as a whole currently working better than all the alternatives.

[ars]

Do you think other forms of energy are immune to this?

Yet, in the actual world Nuclear power kills so many fewer people than any other kind of power - solar included - that's it's not even in the same ballpark.

[kuschku]

And on the other hand we have ten thousands of people directly dying slow deaths due to nuclear power — the leukemia regions in the Elbmarsch, or in southern Bavaria, or around the Asse II come to mind.

Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.

Just counting direct deaths is misleading.

[ars]

Are you deliberately being misleading, or do you not actually check your info?

There were 6 cases of leukemia in Elbmarsch, and it's not clear if they have anything to do with the reactor. Asse II has not hurt anyone. Southern Bavaria is not specific enough to google.

6 cases, and no one died as far as I can tell.

> Areas where nuclear waste or faulty reactors contaminated tap water, and people were never told about it until the leukemia rate reached several hundred times of the normal rate.

What areas?

> Just counting direct deaths is misleading.

Go for it. Count leukemia if you like - Nuclear still comes in far ahead.

[soundwave106]

Ultimately, I think one fundamental "problem" with nuclear power is the worst case scenario at the plant level.

Big picture wise, I'm sure it is statistically be safer than fossil fuels (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process). But looking at the power plant itself, and focusing on the worst case, the only other form of power I can think of with the potential to create a Chernobyl type disaster is hydro (as dam failures can create pretty widespread destruction and kill hundreds of thousands -- see the Banqiao Dam disaster). Coal / oil / gas plants that explode kill people too, but generally only within the plant boundaries.

Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable for 200-300 years, ala Chernobyl. The only comparable thing I can think of in the energy realm that comes close to that is coal mine fires (ala Centralia PA), and that's at the extraction level, not the plant level.

I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar... peer reviewed estimates of Chernobyl vary between 4,000 and 25,000, is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?

[ars]

(Sorry for replying to your points out of order.)

> is there a solar disaster on that scale that I'm not aware of?

And that's exactly the problem! Solar (and coal, etc) kill people slowly, here and there. No big disasters. Nuclear is always a big very public disaster.

Yet the other energies kill in total way more people, but the perception is less. As evidenced by what you wrote.

That makes people think incorrectly about the pros and cons. You have to force yourself to use the numbers, not the perception, if you want to logically make a decision.

> I'm actually struggling with your assertion that nuclear power has killed more people than solar.

You have to calculate deaths per Watt. Solar just hasn't made much energy, yet had a disproportionate amount of deaths (relative to nuclear), roof falls mostly. Nuclear has generated something like half the power on this planet, so proportionally is not as much.

> (counting the problems of fossil fuel pollution and the environmental problems / lives lost due to the extraction process).

Actually, nuclear is better even without counting the environmental problems!! (But yes counting extraction.) If you count pollution, even ignoring global warming, youch, it's not even close.

> Even a hydro disaster won't necessarily make 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable

You'd be surprised at how much land is uninhabitable because of open face coal mining - it's way more than nuclear. And river acidification, and entire areas of land poisoned and basically useless because of 75 year old mines?

Don't forget Chernobyl still has forests and lots of animals. It's just useless for people. It's the same with coal mining - there are plants and animals, but the whole area is useless for people.

Even by this metric nuclear still wins over coal.

[rurounijones]

> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere, and, like we’ve seen before and before, it ends up in meltdowns (for example, due to refusing to maintain the emergency generators properly, see fukushima).

Counter-point: See Onagawa - http://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant-...

[NeutronBoy]

> As long as for-profit companies are running the reactors, they’ll end up saving everywhere

Right, because government never cheaps out on massive infrastructure projects...

[kuschku]

> Any way you try to handle this issue, someone will abuse it. Make it a governmentally funded operation, people will end up corrupt

From my original comment.

So, please learn to read.

[barney54]

And how many people have died or been injured from private companies running nuclear reactors. There should be some good examples, right?

[kuschku]

Fukushima proved we can’t trust companies to run reactors;

Chernobyl proved we can’t trust states to run reactors.

[efaref]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...

It's the safest form of power we have.