I've been diverted from puzzling over nothing to puzzling over development. It may be the same thing. I hope not.
You see if I look back to the county where I was born, and the time when I was born, that area was "underdeveloped." We lived on a dirt road and had no electricity or indoor plumbing. When I was born the farm belonged to my grandmother. Dad bought it in 1941. In order to make a living he farmed and worked as a driller on the gas wells. While we didn't have much we were better of than many in the area. Over time things changed in the community. Farms like ours got consolidated into bigger farms of they were left to grow-up in brush and then trees. There were about 3000 farms in the county in 1940, by 2003 there were about 400. Along with the loss of farms the county has lost population.
While it was a center for mining, timbering, brick and tile production, and natural gas production, these were extractive industries and the extraction process is almost finished (except for natural gas which is experiencing a boom). I don't mean an explosion, prices for gas are rising and more drilling is occurring.
People in the county currently work for light industry (trailer plants and fiber board plants), for the University, for local or state government, for retail (Wal-Mart), or the service industries.
Since I graduated from highschool young people have fled the county to find employment. We were lucky we had some place to go. And those who stayed had sufficient resources among them that they could maintain a standard of living that was not to bad. I guess that the area is developed to the extent that the resources support the population that remains.
I think the difference between my experience, the county's experience and what happens in the LDCs is that I could get an education, had the freedom to migrate, and had someplace to go.
In the LDCs, there is little opportunity for either an education or migration and unless capital moves in , or the opportunity to migrate is opened up, population growth is going to put greater pressure on already scarce resources.
1 comment:
I think that you are right about education and mobility being two necessary elements of development or improved quality of life. Education is a dangerous thing, though, and in most places, corrupt governments don't invest in education, particularly higher education, because they are afraid. One of the best things the US could do to instigate development would be to support tertiary education and to create an education "market", where tertiary insitutions demand more and more qualified high school graduates.
Underdevelopment exists in all countries to greater or lesser degree. Perhaps what we really need to focus on isn't what has been called "development" for the past 60 years, but rather on "human thriving". How do we create more opportunities for human beings everywhere to move toward their potential and contribute to society writ large?
-MJR
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