Well, kudos to you, Foolkiller for getting where you are. đź‘Ť But like I've said, there's always some who can get out of that rut... and more often than not, they deserve to.
Guys, I seriously don't think we can see it from each other's points of view. I understand where you guys are coming from, but I've seen honest, hard work and ingenuity go to naught when people are in a situation where they can't take advantage of it. Like I've said often before, there's poor and then there's
poor. I've seen some who consider themselves poor who are actually doing well, making enough to live and provide education and a possible future for their kids... and those who scrape by, due to lack of education, opportunity, capital, whatever, and can't seem to make dent in their situations, no matter how hard they try.
It's hard to use an American example as a background for the entire world. Yes, people had it hard in the beginning... very hard... but they had a lot of land to expand across, and no borders to their opportunities... much like in the example given.
In Modern America, you can be dirt poor and still get three squares and a good education, and use that to kick yourself out of the rut, through scholarships, grants, student loans, and the like. My Mom came from that background. Her family was pretty poor when she was small, because Grandma was a Japanese immigrant, and this was right after the war, when the US Government disenfranchised the lot of these people. They lived a simple life, getting by on Granddad's paltry salary as a railroad worker (he was also a second generation immigrant... German Irish, I think). Through hard work and study, she and her siblings got out of that hole, she to become an accomplished academic, the others to find good jobs and/or successful businesses.
But I've seen lots of very intelligent, capable and hard-working students quit school simply because there isn't enough support or scholarships to keep them there. Work to study? Would be possible if there were enough jobs and enough cheap education at the tertiary level, but sadly, that sometimes doesn't happen.
The point is: There are people who are poor and can work. In the end, though, through lack of better opportunity, they don't go very much higher up the food chain, if at all. And some people, through no fault of their own (natural disaster killing crops, business edged out by bigger business), slip back down.
(And yes, I acknowledge that there are poor people who are just plain lazy... of course, those are the ones you see all the time... the ones who are working are too busy to sit around for photographs)
In many places of the old world and third world, there isn't that space or resources to expand or to exploit. Some get by by sticking to what they know: slash and burn farming, subsistence living off of game... but if they live near others, they can get crowded out by the more modern cultures, as modern society needs a
lot resources to service itself.
Those who convert to a western or modern mode of life are stuck with the need to buy modern services... which means using modern money, which means competing on a capital market in which they are not competitive. I've got friends who farm. Modern methods, very good. In many tropical third world countries, though, these farms have been hit by the inability to compete... fewer growing seasons, more disasters, and cheap imports from big suppliers. Yes, it's sometimes about quality product, but what I'm trying to get at here is
cost-effectiveness. If Country A can produce a million times what Country B can produce, it can undercut Country B's prices and still make a tidy profit and drive them out of the market... bankrupting businesses and farms. So switch to another market, you say? Try again. Country B has Country C and D to deal with, too. There's a pie there... but it's huge. The problem is, some of the players are huge, too. And cheap transport (due to scale) makes those players more competitive than the locals.
In an ideal capital system, there are limitless opportunities to create capital. But in reality, there's a limited market to buy some of that stuff, which is why it's usually the big suppliers or cartels that thrive. Fine create another new product... as long as it hasn't been patented, copy-protected or thought of a million times before... creating a product with more value for money, or a new product that creates its own market often costs money. And some people have more money to begin with.
I'm not espousing a communist system, mind. That's worse. By rewarding non-performance in the same manner as performance, they reduce economics to the lowest common denominator... the "average" worker. And as people receive less and less incentive to achieve, that average gets lower.
It's just that the ideal capitalist system kind of turns into something else once you apply it over a wider field... which, again, is why there's such resistance to the WTO. I never really understood it, myself, seeing it from the side of a consumer who's happy with the lower cost of goods... but some years down from the lowering of tariff barriers, after talking to and meeting with business owners all over, I can finally see how they're getting the short end of the stick. It wouldn't be so bad if everyone started from the same place... but if you're thrown in the middle of a game of Monopoly when all the other players have been playing for twenty turns or so... you get what I mean.
I'm participating as an observer / advocate / consultant for one project that aims to make a local automotive cottage industry competitive with the big boys. Do I think we have a chance in hell? Not really. But if there's a chance to create a few jobs and get someone's kids in College, we'll give it the old college try. The group I'm in talks with
is trying to get government help, but only to bootstrap research and development, which they can't afford. As for licensing technology... forget it... we've tried with no luck. If any of you guys know someone who's willing to sell even obsolete technology for very little to us, send me a call. Not even the Chinese will sell at a good price, as they have their own products to protect.
RE: Proton versus Perouda: I need to read up on that more... forgive me for that... we use Proton as an example of what happens when you get complacent under government protectionism. And what happens when you start to source your parts from the lowest bidder..
