South Korea and Taiwan had no problem with Malaria killing children in which the society invested resources.
I don't understand why Van der Vossen thinks that there is clear evidence that the difference between what happened in a country like South Korea and what happened in subsaharan Africa has nothing to do with genes. Of course that's the politically correct belief. But standing there and saying that development economics proved it beyond all odds seems strange to me.
The rule of law does happen to be an important ingridiant to producing wealth but I don't think you get rule of law directly through buying iPhones.
To the extend that you believe that the rule of law is very useful in helping third world countries the next question would be whether there are cost effective interventions to increase it. That's a standard EA question.
Again, the consensus in development economics is not that the Third World needs us to give them grain, but, on the contrary, that the Third World needs our governments to stop subsidizing grain production in the first world, so that we First Worlders instead buy our grain from the Third World.
That seems like something nice to say, but politically it's very hard to imagine that a First World government gives up the ability of the First World country to feed it's own population without being dependent on outside forces.
Politically it's easier to ship excess grain from Europe to Africa than burning it but the excess grain doesn't get produced with the goal of feeding African's at all but to have European farmers that provide Europe with a food supply that also can supply in times of crisis.
thinks that there is clear evidence that the difference between what happened in a country like South Korea and what happened in subsaharan Africa has nothing to do with genes.
Well, let's see. It's quite convenient for us that there's a country right next door to South Korea, called North Korea. North Korea has the same genes as South Korea, and yet its economy is much more similar to the economy of Sub-saharan Africa than South Korea. Sure, that's just N=1, anecdotes are not data and all that, but I'd call that pretty good evidence.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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