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How to Eliminate Corruption in Politics and Business
A Journey through Economics and Development: Unpacking the Impact of Aid, Power Structures, and Leadership Strategies
I was reading The Edge of Chaos by Dambisa Moyo recently. She is a world-renowned economist. I remember her when she worked at the World Bank and dared to say that aid was bad for developing countries. I was a development economist at the time, providing “capacity building” and “technical assistance” to “developing countries.”
Consequently, I was intrigued by her thesis. I later agreed with her. Aid has too many strings and asymmetry in power structures to be helpful. Often it creates a dependency on outside solutions for local economic problems. I believe global south countries should use the expertise of their economists and policymakers to implement viable solutions because they know their economy more than outsiders.
There are many points in her book that I can’t entirely agree with. I don’t think, for instance, that citizens having weighted voting powers would help against an electorate voting for an incompetent and corruptible person. You know who I am talking about!
The mere mention of such a system reminds people that their parents had to guess how many jelly beans were in jars…