Change and The Bottom Billion

For Social Studies this weekend, we were supposed to read the first chapter of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion, a book addressing the issue of the poverty of much of the world (link to Wikipedia page). So on Saturday, I sat down to read it. A little while later, I looked up at the clock and realized I had been reading for a few hours. Then I looked at the page number and realized that I had just read more than a third of the book. Of course, I regret none of it; it was obviously very interesting, and I would have had to read it later anyways.

Much of the book, as one might imagine, focuses on African countries, and it identifies several traps that failing countries can get caught in. It struck me how easy the traps were to enter, and how difficult they were to exit. For example, it just takes one person with $10,000 to start a rebellion, but once started, the chances of future conflict increase dramatically. All the while, the country gets poorer. Or more accurately, it sometimes gets poorer and often doesn't change.

And that's the really striking thing about the traps; those horrifying changes in the country's political and economic statuses essentially halt change in incomes. That may not seem like a huge problem until you realize that as the income of the rest of the world is steadily climbing. However, in Africa, that isn't happening because the traps prevent economic growth, and the countries of the bottom billion end up with stagnant economies.

Now that was an interesting concept, at least to me. The worst thing about the changes that these societies face is the lack of change that it engenders. What struck me as worse was that our attempts to fight these changes have, ironically, remained largely static. As Collier discusses, after 9/11 (possibly the most world-changing event thus far in the 21st century), US aid to failing states didn't really change other than increasing by 50%. While this may seem like a major change, it really wasn't, for one major reason: it doesn't work.

We have empirical evidence that simply throwing money at the problem doesn't work. And yet, we still continue to fight our problems in the same way. It's as if we believe that the situation really isn't all that different from what we've faced before, such as with Europe after World War II, and that if we stay the course and don't get tempted to change, we will succeed.

And so, we have an interesting and tragic situation. The countries of the bottom billion, most of which are African, faced changes (namely, decolonization) that led to other changes that ended up creating stagnation. Their response to the change was to largely flounder and keep doing what they were doing.  Over here in the United States, we tried to fight those changes by essentially not changing our plan, but rather, staying the course more strongly than ever.

Both societies didn't know what to do in the face of such changes, and so, they largely decided that the current way was the only way. They resisted changes to their plans of action.

And all the while, the divide between the countries of the bottom billion and the rest of the world only grew -- and grows -- larger.

The Nobel Prizes

It's been Nobel Prize week, when the world learns who the most influential and world-changing pathblazers have been in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, literature, peace, and economics. (Mathematics, sadly, is not represented.)

Many of this year's winners (link to source)did indeed lead the world through fundamental shifts in the understanding of their respective fields. The prize in physics went to researchers who developed the groundbreaking theory of the Higgs boson. The prize in chemistry went to researchers who developed a new field, computational chemistry. The prize in physiology and medicine was awarded for for discovering the mechanism by which vesicle traffic is regulated. The prize in economics went to three professors for fundamental analysis of asset prices. The prize in literature went to Alice Munro for mastering the short story. It would be an understatement to say that these researchers revolutionized their fields.

What those researchers found are both fundamentally important and interesting to anyone who enjoys those fields (and even those who don't). But the one that really piqued my interest this year is the Nobel Peace Prize.

Unlike the other prizes, this prize is not issued by Sweden, but by Norway, and in the past, the prize committee has been willing to push the envelope a little bit. This year, the prize was awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a small organization which, as the name suggests, works to prohibit chemical weapons. This group has come into the spotlight recently with the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The organization has, reports suggest, entered Syria and begun the process of destroying chemical weapons.

Of course, this is fantastic news. Nobody wants those weapons to be used again, and the group is certainly to be commended for beginning that mission so swiftly. But this prize is the most interesting because, unlike the other prize recipients, the winner did not change the world dramatically. In fact, it did quite the opposite. OPCW's greatest contribution to the world was to maintain the status quo.

Until recently, the status quo had been one in which chemical weapons were not to be used. Period. This status quo has faced some challenges, but since the Geneva Convention, it's largely held. The recent events in Syria have challenged that status quo, and OPCW has started to work on restoring that. While this is a good thing, it is hardly synchronous with the rest of the prizes awarded this year. The prizes from this year have been ones that have celebrated change at its best. And yet, the committee chose to stand away from the change in awarding the Peace Prize, choosing instead the status quo.

That's a rather strong choice to make, implying that the current situation is acceptable as is. Of course, that's oversimplifying the situation a bit, but by choosing a status-quo-maintaining organization to receive the prize for furthering the efforts of peace the most, the Nobel committee has said that maintaining the status quo is more significant than some of efforts to change the world for peace. They are excluding the efforts of others, people who don't just do their jobs for upholding a norm, albeit a very important one, but who work to further peace and understanding, even through personal danger.

Many other nominees, most notably Malala Yousafzai, would have satisfied that criterion easily. It's a little strange that when they had a chance to celebrate real progress towards greater peace, the Nobel committee chose to back away from change and celebrate the current situation.