Position paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Position paper - Essay Example This, in spite of the fact that for the greater majority, or about four billion people, and certainly for those living in most of the developed world, the economic systems in place have resulted in improving incomes and a good measure of financial prosperity. The impact of the economic collapse in the failed economies extend beyond incomes, and impact the very sustainability of their entire social fabrics. The strain on the social systems is evident in what Collier sees as poverty traps. There are the civil wars, for one, that are really more about young people wanting change in order to improve their financial lots in life. There are the circumstances thrust upon people due to their location in certain geographies, where countries have the bad luck of being located amidst a generally â€Å"bad† neighborhood. Even natural resources in large quantities, such as oil and minerals, are seen as poverty traps too, because they breed conflicts. Finally, a fourth poverty trap is wides pread corruption brought about by immature political systems and general bad governance structures. These are confluence factors that all heighten the forces that derail the bad luck countries on skid row, so to speak, and these act like powerful downward forces that prevent these countries from escaping a terminal vortex of misery. Externally the forces of globalization and the imposition of global free markets, instead of helping these countries move up, are actually driving them to poverty even more, because the effect of such forces is to funnel growth and development even farther away from the impoverished billion and toward the developed world, which has the infrastructure and the inertia, as well as the resources, to continue to benefit from the existing order, while the unlucky billion continue to wallow in a vortex of poverty. Collier asserts that there are no easy answers, and that solutions lie sometimes in armed interventions, as well as in the intervention and policing of powerful organizations such as the European Union in order to bring about lasting economic and democratic reforms to the impoverished. This paper takes the position that indeed, the problem for the bottom billion is one that is characterized by a high degree of complexity, and the solutions are there, but executed badly Collier; The Observer; Goodreads; Riedel 519). Part of the problem with execution is that there are few organizations with the clout and the wherewithal to enforce changes and to see through them in such a way as to effect lasting structural changes (Collier 1-13; The Observer; Goodreads; Riedel 519). Part of the problem of execution too is that the tools have so far been misunderstood, and used in a bad way, and again these issues go back to the general complex nature of the problem and the very massive resources and effort needed to be used in a sustained manner in order to make the proper changes to rescue the downtrodden billion. Moreover, the incentives for h elping the poorest of the poor are not apparent on the surface, because as it is those who are profiting from the global economic order are comfortably living without the participation of the poorest. These things take long-range planning and thinking, and the concerted effort and goodwill of those who are in the developed world. Apart from all this, the paper also makes the case for the economic viability of making everyone on the planet, including the bottom billion, ride the economic boat to prosperity. The poorest, when they