Fascinating write up. Congratulations for taking so much perspective on yourself ! This is prime time for you to consider such important life choices, so don’t hesitate to take all the time you need to be sure of your decisions.
Disclaimer: I studied a bit of engineering, a bit of economics in business school, worked in the corporate world and now work in the fight against poverty within a social enterprise. My views are very liberal. I also have a very entrepreneurial character, as reported by my colleagues. I feel our trajectories are not too different—I just have a few more years under my belt I guess.
Reading through your summary of Hickel’s points, my immediate reaction was that he is pushing his agenda pretty hard. As others have outlined, both relative and absolute poverty have decreased as a % of the population. Of course the growth of population has outpaced the decrease in poverty, but that’s a little dishonest to show only this side of the picture.
Regarding neo-colonialism, it’s a mixed bag. Yes, there used to be a lot of foreign interference with coups etc. And it might still be there today—I don’t know that there is a good way to quantify this. Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Changing that is a daunting task, but if you believe you are able to make it happen, then by all means, pursue it at all costs.
I would just expand on a couple of points:
Whether we like it or not, capitalism is the name of the game. I find it more efficient to learn the rules of the game than to try to change it. When you say “For example, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa starve because their produce is undercut by below-cost competition from Europe and the US, where farm subsidies exist in contravention to WTO rules”, I think this shows that whoever’s idea this is does not understand the game. Sub Saharan African farmers are not connected to global markets in any kind of way. Believing that corn or wheat subsidies in the US are causing corn prices to increase in Botswana is delusional. The cost of bringing that corn to landlocked countries is totally prohibitive, and as a result no ear of corn produced in the US reaches these poor countries. There are cases of African governments importing corn from, say, Mexico once the local production has ran out—to avoid famine !
I like to raise the example of two countries to compare the impact of different policies: Rwanda and Burundi. Both countries are very similar in agro ecology, natural resources, population & ethnies, social norms, etc. Following the ’94 genocide, you could say that both countries emerged with roughly the same situation—with the exception that Rwanda had lost 1M+ population in the genocide, while Burundi’s civil war kept going until ~2003. Both countries adopted widely different policies. Rwanda “gave in” to international aid, working with all the traditional donors you can imagine—WB, EU, USAID, etc. Burundi chose self-reliance, and was much more wary of foreign aid. This was reinforced after the 2015 coup attempt—half of foreign aid was pulled out of the country. While the situation is of course more nuanced than what I am describing, Burundi is now the poorest or 2nd poorest country in the world by GDP per capita, with a GDP growth of 2-3% (nominal !), while Rwanda’s GDP has consistently grown by 7-8% over the last 10 years. To illustrate the gap more concretely, let’s mention the Covid situation: Rwanda was one of the few countries that were allowed to resume flights to Europe recently, while Burundi’s president first claimed that “Burundi was favoured by God, and Covid would spare the country”, before his wife was evacuated to Nairobi for emergency treatment, and he himself died of cardiac arrest (probably Covid related).
I could go on for days about this—feel free to reach out directly if you’d like to continue the conversation in private—but in short, I think promoting the sovereignty of a developing country might not be the best solution to accelerate its development. Providing fertiliser to farmers so that they can grow enough food to feed their families, on the other hand, that’s impactful and there’s no question about it.
Thank you so much for this! It’s a very interesting perspective, and you sound like exactly the sort of person I would love to talk to about my next steps!
‘Reading through your summary of Hickel’s points, my immediate reaction was that he is pushing his agenda pretty hard. As others have outlined, both relative and absolute poverty have decreased as a % of the population. Of course the growth of population has outpaced the decrease in poverty, but that’s a little dishonest to show only this side of the picture.’
Yes, I thought this and I got the impression that Hickel’s argument was not very balanced. I guess it wasn’t intended to be.
vaidehi_agarwalla’s comment suggests Hickel may still have a point. Hickel points to the idea that the morally relevant number with respect to poverty is the proportion of poverty that we could alleviate but don’t. There would be a debate about how to measure poverty and counterfactuals here, but the basic idea seems correct.
‘Whether we like it or not, capitalism is the name of the game. I find it more efficient to learn the rules of the game than to try to change it.’
I agree, to an extent. But there are different versions of capitalism. No country has a pure capitalist economy, and the choice of hybrid system seems both malleable and significant.
Capitalism as it is currently practised is also ecologically unsustainable, so it will have to change in some way, whether by force of argument or nature.
‘When you say “For example, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa starve because their produce is undercut by below-cost competition from Europe and the US, where farm subsidies exist in contravention to WTO rules”, I think this shows that whoever’s idea this is does not understand the game. Sub Saharan African farmers are not connected to global markets in any kind of way. Believing that corn or wheat subsidies in the US are causing corn prices to increase in Botswana is delusional. The cost of bringing that corn to landlocked countries is totally prohibitive, and as a result no ear of corn produced in the US reaches these poor countries.’
This is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s correct, since exports from SSA could still be impacted by global prices and so subsidies—unless, as you say, ‘Sub Saharan African farmers are not connected to global markets in any kind of way’. That said, I’m not an expert.
Looking at papers like this one (from the EU itself!) there seems to be a consensus that market price effects did exist and affect ‘developing countries’; ‘decoupling’ may help but the paper admits that there might still be distortionary effects. (The quotation below doesn’t mention poor countries, but they’re mentioned elsewhere in the paper.)
‘With the change from price support to direct payments, the CAP’s distorting effects have been reduced. Direct payments, initially introduced in the CAP’s 1992 reform, have mostly been decoupled from production since the 2003 reform. While it is widely recognised that commodity-coupled support created market distortions, decoupled support is not in principle supposed to have an impact on production. … However, while significant progress has been made to reduce the distorting effects of CAP payments, direct payments might still impact agricultural performance and markets outside the EU. First, … this is because of decoupled payments’ indirect effects, which may enhance the competitiveness of EU farmers on global markets. Second, this could also result from some coupled support still existing under the Voluntary Coupled Support (VCS) scheme.’ (p.18)
The Rwanda and Burundi case is very interesting—thanks for bringing it up. I’d have to read more about it and figure out if it’s exceptional, since I don’t have enough knowledge on the topic yet. I’m sceptical of Hickel’s all-out attack on the WB, IMF, and WTO: I expect there are incremental systemic improvements that would have a huge effect but there are also things they have done well.
Thanks again, and I’d love to talk more! I’ve sent you a message.
Hey !
Fascinating write up. Congratulations for taking so much perspective on yourself ! This is prime time for you to consider such important life choices, so don’t hesitate to take all the time you need to be sure of your decisions.
Disclaimer: I studied a bit of engineering, a bit of economics in business school, worked in the corporate world and now work in the fight against poverty within a social enterprise. My views are very liberal. I also have a very entrepreneurial character, as reported by my colleagues. I feel our trajectories are not too different—I just have a few more years under my belt I guess.
Reading through your summary of Hickel’s points, my immediate reaction was that he is pushing his agenda pretty hard. As others have outlined, both relative and absolute poverty have decreased as a % of the population. Of course the growth of population has outpaced the decrease in poverty, but that’s a little dishonest to show only this side of the picture.
Regarding neo-colonialism, it’s a mixed bag. Yes, there used to be a lot of foreign interference with coups etc. And it might still be there today—I don’t know that there is a good way to quantify this. Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Changing that is a daunting task, but if you believe you are able to make it happen, then by all means, pursue it at all costs.
I would just expand on a couple of points:
Whether we like it or not, capitalism is the name of the game. I find it more efficient to learn the rules of the game than to try to change it. When you say “For example, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa starve because their produce is undercut by below-cost competition from Europe and the US, where farm subsidies exist in contravention to WTO rules”, I think this shows that whoever’s idea this is does not understand the game. Sub Saharan African farmers are not connected to global markets in any kind of way. Believing that corn or wheat subsidies in the US are causing corn prices to increase in Botswana is delusional. The cost of bringing that corn to landlocked countries is totally prohibitive, and as a result no ear of corn produced in the US reaches these poor countries. There are cases of African governments importing corn from, say, Mexico once the local production has ran out—to avoid famine !
I like to raise the example of two countries to compare the impact of different policies: Rwanda and Burundi. Both countries are very similar in agro ecology, natural resources, population & ethnies, social norms, etc. Following the ’94 genocide, you could say that both countries emerged with roughly the same situation—with the exception that Rwanda had lost 1M+ population in the genocide, while Burundi’s civil war kept going until ~2003. Both countries adopted widely different policies. Rwanda “gave in” to international aid, working with all the traditional donors you can imagine—WB, EU, USAID, etc. Burundi chose self-reliance, and was much more wary of foreign aid. This was reinforced after the 2015 coup attempt—half of foreign aid was pulled out of the country. While the situation is of course more nuanced than what I am describing, Burundi is now the poorest or 2nd poorest country in the world by GDP per capita, with a GDP growth of 2-3% (nominal !), while Rwanda’s GDP has consistently grown by 7-8% over the last 10 years. To illustrate the gap more concretely, let’s mention the Covid situation: Rwanda was one of the few countries that were allowed to resume flights to Europe recently, while Burundi’s president first claimed that “Burundi was favoured by God, and Covid would spare the country”, before his wife was evacuated to Nairobi for emergency treatment, and he himself died of cardiac arrest (probably Covid related).
I could go on for days about this—feel free to reach out directly if you’d like to continue the conversation in private—but in short, I think promoting the sovereignty of a developing country might not be the best solution to accelerate its development. Providing fertiliser to farmers so that they can grow enough food to feed their families, on the other hand, that’s impactful and there’s no question about it.
Thank you so much for this! It’s a very interesting perspective, and you sound like exactly the sort of person I would love to talk to about my next steps!
‘Reading through your summary of Hickel’s points, my immediate reaction was that he is pushing his agenda pretty hard. As others have outlined, both relative and absolute poverty have decreased as a % of the population. Of course the growth of population has outpaced the decrease in poverty, but that’s a little dishonest to show only this side of the picture.’
Yes, I thought this and I got the impression that Hickel’s argument was not very balanced. I guess it wasn’t intended to be.
vaidehi_agarwalla’s comment suggests Hickel may still have a point. Hickel points to the idea that the morally relevant number with respect to poverty is the proportion of poverty that we could alleviate but don’t. There would be a debate about how to measure poverty and counterfactuals here, but the basic idea seems correct.
‘Whether we like it or not, capitalism is the name of the game. I find it more efficient to learn the rules of the game than to try to change it.’
I agree, to an extent. But there are different versions of capitalism. No country has a pure capitalist economy, and the choice of hybrid system seems both malleable and significant.
Capitalism as it is currently practised is also ecologically unsustainable, so it will have to change in some way, whether by force of argument or nature.
‘When you say “For example, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa starve because their produce is undercut by below-cost competition from Europe and the US, where farm subsidies exist in contravention to WTO rules”, I think this shows that whoever’s idea this is does not understand the game. Sub Saharan African farmers are not connected to global markets in any kind of way. Believing that corn or wheat subsidies in the US are causing corn prices to increase in Botswana is delusional. The cost of bringing that corn to landlocked countries is totally prohibitive, and as a result no ear of corn produced in the US reaches these poor countries.’
This is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s correct, since exports from SSA could still be impacted by global prices and so subsidies—unless, as you say, ‘Sub Saharan African farmers are not connected to global markets in any kind of way’. That said, I’m not an expert.
Looking at papers like this one (from the EU itself!) there seems to be a consensus that market price effects did exist and affect ‘developing countries’; ‘decoupling’ may help but the paper admits that there might still be distortionary effects. (The quotation below doesn’t mention poor countries, but they’re mentioned elsewhere in the paper.)
‘With the change from price support to direct payments, the CAP’s distorting effects have been reduced. Direct payments, initially introduced in the CAP’s 1992 reform, have mostly been decoupled from production since the 2003 reform. While it is widely recognised that commodity-coupled support created market distortions, decoupled support is not in principle supposed to have an impact on production. … However, while significant progress has been made to reduce the distorting effects of CAP payments, direct payments might still impact agricultural performance and markets outside the EU. First, … this is because of decoupled payments’ indirect effects, which may enhance the competitiveness of EU farmers on global markets. Second, this could also result from some coupled support still existing under the Voluntary Coupled Support (VCS) scheme.’ (p.18)
The Rwanda and Burundi case is very interesting—thanks for bringing it up. I’d have to read more about it and figure out if it’s exceptional, since I don’t have enough knowledge on the topic yet. I’m sceptical of Hickel’s all-out attack on the WB, IMF, and WTO: I expect there are incremental systemic improvements that would have a huge effect but there are also things they have done well.
Thanks again, and I’d love to talk more! I’ve sent you a message.