A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE (Part 6). Continuation of the review of The Nature of Mass Poverty by John Kenneth Galbraith
Four success stories
Since World War II, four hitherto poor communities have enjoyed a great and sustained increase in widely distributed income – Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Israel. None is favored as to land or natural resources. Iran and the Arabian peninsular are all rich in the currently most cherished of resources, which is oil. The ordinary citizen of Iran and most of those of greater Arabia live brief lives in a squalor not appreciably improved over that of their forebears in the then-embracing empire of the Sassanids and Shapur I.
West Virginia and Connecticut
In the United States, West Virginia, a state with a singularly rich store of natural resources – water, power, forests, superb seams of coal – regularly ranks among the bottom five states in per capita income. Connecticut, with poor land, no natural resources beyond some long-exhausted iron mines and a few underprivileged forests, ranks first. The relation of resources to well-being is so erratic as to be flatly worthless.
The next most commonly offered explanation of poverty
The next most commonly offered explanation of poverty and well-being invokes the nature of government and the economic system. The people are poor because they have not perceived the advantages of free enterprise, free competition and the market. Their energies, accordingly, are frustrated by a stupid and costly bureaucracy. Alternatively, they are poor because they are exploited; the surplus that they produce is appropriated by predatory landlords or capitalists. And this poverty persists because, since all goes to the owners of property anyway, there is no incentive to improve.
The unwisdom of stressing the economic system
Since the period immediately following World War II when both, in effect won independence, China under Communist auspices has almost certainly done far more to conquer mass poverty than has India, which, while it employs socialist rhetoric, remains a property-owning republic with capitalist entrepreneurs who, for studied rapacity, can probably claim to be the equal of any. But Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have all made greater progress than China. All are indubitably capitalist. Eastern Europe, at a somewhat higher level of well-being, shows the practical unwisdom of stressing the economic system as a cause of or an antidote for poverty.
Other simple-minded explanations: #1
Another set of causes, which, in fact, could be consequences, are more self-evidently simple-minded. Thus it is regularly said that the country is poor because it lacks capital for development. It is fully as informative to say that it lacks capital for development because it is poor. Savings for investment accrue only when there is a surplus beyond what is required for immediate consumption. Where poverty is general, there is no such surplus.
Other simple-minded explanations: #2
Similarly, it is said that the country is poor because it lacks trained, educated, or experienced technical and administrative talent. Educated manpower is likely to be scarce in a country that has been unable, because of its poverty, to afford an educational system. Industry is also an aspect of affluence – of a standard of living that goes beyond food, elementary clothing, and elementary shelter that come from the land. If, being poor, the country has no industry, it will be devoid of people trained and experienced in the management of industrial enterprises. If the absence of trained and experienced people is a cause of poverty, it is surely a result.
Cause and consequence are interchangeable
Cause and consequence are equally interchangeable in the common assertion that poverty is the result of ineffective, erratic, corrupt, or otherwise inadequate government. The quality and character of government is a function of the income of the people by which it is supported. Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of what Gunnar Myrdal has called the soft state. This last point is of much political importance, for on no matter has the effect of uninformed action been more distressing.