Note to Self: _A Comment on Development Engineering: With...

Note to Self: _A Comment on Development Engineering: With respect to "doing good versus doing well"...

From an economist's point of view, the economy is a decentralized societal calculating machine. It looks at everybody, and tries, in a utilitarian way, to increase social welfare���which it roughly defines as summing everybody's well-being, with each person's well-being weighted by their lifetime wealth. This produces a system in which incentives are, and "doing well" achieved by, increasing resources that produce things for which rich people have a serious Jones.

Serving the global poor is not going to do that. Som making a living serving the poor requires focusing on one of two things:

Finding an organization���a government or an NGO���that is willing to some degree to commit resources to bend this market logic of "to those who have, more shall be given"

Find some people who have skills and resources and industry that are somehow blocked from the sight of the world market, and figure out a narrow strategic intervention that will makes those resources visible���and hence valuable.

#notetoself #berkeley #equitablegrowth