The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
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- ISBN13: 9780195373387
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states–home to the poorest one billion people on Planet–pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of tiny nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world’s people, regularly falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders–and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and terrible governance. Standard solutions do not work, he writes; aid is regularly ineffective, and globalization can really make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plot supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions. Collier has spent a lifetime effective to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the fantastic humanitarian crises facing the world today.
“Terrifically readable.”
–Time.com
“Set to become a classic. Jam-packed with statistical nuggets and common sense, his book should be compulsory reading.”
–The Economist
“If Sachs seems too saintly and Easterly too cynical, then Collier is the authentic ancient Africa hand: he knows the terrain and has a keen ear…. If you’ve ever establish yourself on one side or the additional of persons opinion–and who hasn’t?–then you simply must read this book.”
–Niall Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review
“Rich in both analysis and recommendations…. Read this book. You will learn much you do not know. It will also change the way you look at the tragedy of persistent poverty in a world of plenty.”
–Financial Times
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I was glad that Collier addressed issues like “capital flight,” and how damaging it can be. I reflect the Tobin Tax on currency trade across limits would be helpful. Also, simply allowing countries to protect themselves from the disruption of unregulated private funds will keep local economies strong. While many people may be “poor” in the sense that they don’t make much money each year, many of the “poor” have access to a decent livlihood through tiny farms, local fishing economies, owning tiny stores, and additional indigenous economies. When private investment and transnational firms enter a country, sometimes bribing local officials to get free access, tiny farmers regularly end up being dislocated, tiny stores are wiped out by the new Wal-Mart, and giant factory trawlers end up sucking the marine life out of the once fertile seas. Venezuela has made a regulation that keeps factory trawlers away from their shores Chavez, Venezuela And The New Latin America: An Interview With Hugo Chavez. Towns all over the world have been resisting Wal-Marts WALMART-HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE (DVD/FF/FR-SP-SUB). And there are struggles around the world against trade agreements that benefit shareholders at the expense of labor, the environment, consumer groups and additional stakeholders in society The Selling of “Free Trade”: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy.
Collier talks about the corruption of some governments of poor nations, but he doesn’t talk a lot about the corruption of some governments of rich nations. For example, the U.S. government has shifted hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of the upper classes via a variety of measures, like sweet government contracts and tax breaks, and making the money-grab that is the war on Iraq Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. Moreover, oftentimes when a poor country elects a person who isn’t corrupt, then the rich nations demonize them and work to overthrow them, such as Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, and most recently – the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela Bush Versus Chávez: Washingtons War on Venezuela.
Additional corrupting and destructive fundamentals of the rich nations include the actions of what are called “economic hit men,” who go into countries and bribe officials into taking out huge loans that impoverish nations, and that divert their wealth away from social spending and towards banks in New York City in the form of debt service Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. These loans regularly end up being a subsidy for transnational mining, logging, and hydroelectric projects which displace countless people and harm their health as they are forced into the world’s growing mega-slums Planet of Slums.
There are many additional deficiencies of “The Bottom Billion.” Collier doesn’t mention the role of the CIA in fomenting civil wars, and how that benefits some business interests. Ex- CIA agent John Stockwell has written about his experiences in purposely dividing people in Angola so they could be more easily exploited The Praetorian Guard : The US Role In The New World Order. Additionally, there is a lot of money being made in a range of disasters, whether it’s Blackwater doing population control after Katrina or Halliburton cashing in on war The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
For an overview of the problems of unrestrained corporate power, the award-winning documentary The Corporation is not to be missed.
“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we learn the being of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.
Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are quick apt the people’s masters.” – President Grover Cleveland, 12/31/1888 Take up to Congress
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Should be mandatory reading for our elected officials.
Throw in Tom Barnett’s two books and I reflect we will make better foreign policy decisions as a country.
A must read….
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
1. The content is substantive and occasionally provocative, but the writing’s off-putting – didactic, repetitive, pedantic, occasionally patronizing – and altogether too much devoted to the personal pronoun.
2. On second thought – after reading the 1st 98 pages – I realized it was not written for me. It’s written for people at government aid agencies, NGO’s, World Bank, OECD, etc. who may be well-intentioned but who lack common sense about how the world works – foolish or clueless do-gooders. This book should be sub-titled “HELPING OTHERS FOR DUMMIES”.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
this book attempts to present a quantitative analysis of what we know from common sense already. the reasoning is sound but slow-going because the cases are argued from first principles. His prescriptions for solving the poverty problems seem rather naive. Having customary, for example, that poverty breeds civil wars, he proposes much more frequent military intervention by the developed nations. Seems unlikely. Collier also questions the value of aid to the poorest who have no infrastructure to utilize it effectively. Here he’s on solider ground. Overall I establish tthe analysis altogether too literary.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
What do we do with them?
Prof. Collier of Oxford University, has done years of research, publishing, conferences, on this topic. Yet, one-size- fit-all solution never came up.
With civil war, ethnic conflict, fighting for natural resources, terrible governance, terrible neighbors, military power, aids from G8, law, trade policy issues, one would reflect that the solution is not possible.
What is needed is to have a strong and capable leadership at the top. With a strong leader, the country can change.
We need to focus on a group of countries at a time. G8 countries are drilling oil, gas, and minerals in Africa now. China recently sent 500,000 to Africa to erect highway, bridges, telephone systems, etc.
It is possible to accomplish.
But this book does not include any of the African success tales.
Everyone knows the problem. But the solution is the most vital for the bottom billions.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5