Paul Collier. The Misery Club

Original Language: English
Títutulu Original: The Bottom Billion
Translation: Víctor V. Úbeda.
Year of publication: 2007
Valoración: interesting

Maybe that “interesting” something warm could be accompanied by a “but quite depressing” depending on how, almost two decades later, there is the world. Especially for what is produced just the year in which it is published. A nth global crisis that sharpens the inequalities, add a new stretch of the world population that occurs, in one of the countries that appear most in this text, and it can be restless to think that the premises of the book remain in force, that many of the cases that are cited in it are still pending resolverin short, that the text could be published right now without major structural changes. In fact, it has a continuation that I will try to read, although I do not know if an additional content would justify a return to the theme in the form of a new review.

I go to The Misery Club It is mentioned in several times in the last colony as one of the texts to go to check the unequal (that is, very bad for many, acceptable or good for a few) becoming of African nations, once their decolonization, even if it was on paper, became effective, and their governments were chosen in more or less clear processes and preferably by its inhabitants (very deep -de -deep inhabitants. The result is bleak and Collier, which as Sands is fundamentally a technical position, in this case in banks, university institutions or adjacent to the administration, tries, with the help of specialists in matrity – economy – both global and local scope, develop a structured text addressing, in a pragmatic and somewhat desolate way, what are the problems that are faced – Of all attempts, they have not managed to get their populations from misery and precariousness. Relate these problems leads us to dreaded and known territories: from the climatic factor and the dependence of their own geographical locations and neighboring countries to the poverty of infrastructure, of health and educational systems, the trap of the dependence of a certain resource and its extractive process, and, of course, political instability and the tendency to fix things to coups. AND, last but not least, the corruption that pringes everything.

Collier exposes objective data and, I reiterate that this is almost a technical text, a study with approaches and conclusions, leads to certain approaches that can be shocking: from criticism to the same parts to authoritarianisms of the left and right to the defense, cautious but defense, of the military interventions of precise and limited scope in justified cases (…).

I will not deny that reading is somewhat bleak, especially if one belongs to one of those countries, instead of the comfortable homes of the West, but their demographic growths, its boiling as a continent, many small factors are already added so that we have clear that looking the other way that it has long since it ceased to be an option.