whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...ts benefits ... to attract, not force. And that is why I declare that the informal market offers an immediate sense of how attractive formal market policies are. If there is an informal market the...

2.
(Comments)

... of genius you may be you need to work you way up. Same goes for wealth. You may not like all the intermediate steps mucking about on the way up, but that\'s the way it works. Consider China whic...

3.
(Comments)

What is wikimedia doing to promote it\'s web properties on the mobile platform? Is there a meaningful way to interact with something like Wikipedia through a mobile phone?

4. Xenophobia and the end of the African Renaissance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ul growth to absorb job-seekers and so reduce some of the frustration that underlies the violence. The immediate result to our economy appears to have been minor. The rand has not dived against compa...

5. When big businesses stop submitting to autocrats
(Analysis/Analysis)

... what all companies do when governments rewrite the rules on them. They whimpered a bit, smiled for the media ... and acquiesced. It is difficult arguing that Chavez' nationalisation was a bad t...

6. Searching for objective measures of value
(Analysis/Analysis)

...a the US dollar.  The US became the reserve currency of the world. The problems for the US began immediately.  In order to ensure liquidity – an availability of US dollars that other...

7. China, Toys And The Tragedy of Xenophobia
(Analysis/Analysis)

Over the past two months a tragedy has been playing out in Europe and the US. Mattel, the world's largest toymaker, has recalled more than 20 million of their products, including Fisher Price and

8. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t in a reward. A society learning how to work on its own must set itself meaningful goals that are of immediate value. For instance, simply building a useful and well-maintained highway between the ...

9. Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch
(Analysis/Analysis)

... newspapers have huddled together for mutual support and commiseration. Except for Rupert. The Murdoch media empire does make money. It's astonishingly profitable. News Corporation is even, as...

10. Department of inJustice: the corruption of high office
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Tshishonga then decided to take matters into his own hands. He called a press conference and handed the media two reports that had been compiled on the matter. At this point, the tide seemed to turn...

11. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

... then the following has happened: Mugabe unilaterally declared that all prices must be halved; the immediate run on goods emptied stores and transferred all goods to the informal sector where pric...

12. Two Frontiers: wars of liberation and of determination
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ngton. Without insight and analysis news risks becoming irrelevant. "Reader's can suffer from media indigestion," says Denis Muzet, director of the Mediascopie Institute in France. &qu...

13. The Golden Pen, Yahoo, and the worst country in the world to be a journalist
(Analysis/Analysis)

...the massacre at Tiananmen Square. You may never have heard of him, but Shi is the first casualty in new-media's complicity in yielding up its users to brutal regimes. Shi is currently serving a ...

14. Freedom of speech is fine, just don't try to use it, says Patricia de Lille
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t Democrats, has an unusual relationship with free speech. A few examples from her opus of quotes: On US mediation in the ongoing Palestinian Israeli conflict:  "The ID believes that the US ...

15. The future of newspapers II: of shock-jocks and self-made media-stars
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ritical insight that unlocks events and brings down corrupt elites. Competition between journalists and media companies has been the stuff of compelling drama for generations. Now the vast range of ...

16. The future of Newspapers, journalistic integrity and the battle for Google's soul
(Analysis/Analysis)

In 2005 a major media company with an international presence handed information on the activities of its journalists to an autocratic police state. A few of these journalists were subsequently arrest

17. Government to gag South African bloggers?
(Analysis/Analysis)

....  Khulekani Ntshangase, spokesman for the department of Home Affairs declared, "We prefer the media to regulate itself but in the event that those organisations can't do that, then what...

18. The Jimmy Wales interview: Wikipedia and Lessons in Globalisation
(Analysis/Analysis)

... be careful; we cannot lose our neutrality and independence." While Wikia, another component of Wikimedia, hosts advertising and makes a small amount of revenue from Google Adverts, Wikipedia wil...

19. Jimmy Wales, Digital Freedom South Africa: What would you ask him?
(Analysis/Analysis)

On Thursday, 19th April, Jimmy Wales - of Wikimedia fame - will be in South Africa to present at the Digital Freedom Expo at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Says Professor Derek Keats of U

20. Unlearning helplessness: how donors reinforce poverty and dependency
(Analysis/Analysis)

...g. And, no, it isn't exploitation to aim products at the poor. Exploitation is when you allow intermediaries to purchase bulk quantities of your product, dilute it and repackage it in smaller qu...

21. Leveraging your good name; the power of a positive credit rating
(Analysis/Analysis)

...y has grown larger and – more importantly – as our interactions have become entirely disintermediated across the distant-proximity of the Internet we have found it harder than ever to know...

22. From Linux to Mozilla: donations mean that open-source isn't really free
(Analysis/Analysis)

...on, they would be able to supply ITC with a better quality of product at a better range of prices. Intermediaries under-paid farmers, mixed the soya beans together in a jumble of low and high value b...

23. AIDS and the cost of doing nothing
(Analysis/Analysis)

A report released today by the HSRC gives an unequivocal cost to South Africa of their government’s ambivalent approach to dealing with HIV / AIDS. The incidence rate of infection is given at

24. While no-one was watching
(Analysis/Analysis)

...left.  Smiling and glad.  Then, delighted, she left.  Without saying a word. While the immediate danger for these children appears to have been reduced there is still tremendous concer...

25. Joost minds the baby: what happens to state control when technology passes them by?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...finite choice, and TV that is truly interactive.”  The revenue sharing model is attractive to media producers, and gives them the opportunity to reach an international audience directly. M...

26. We're from Mars and we want to help: four lessons in development
(Analysis/Analysis)

... that development so that they may learn; don’t keep these stories just to the elite but work with media organisations to disseminate that information; asymmetrical control of information create...

27. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...or that development so that we may learn; don’t keep these stories just to the elite but work with media organisations to disseminate that information; asymmetrical control of information create...

28. So how exactly do you invest in the Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid?
(Analysis/Analysis)

....” Investments follow positive information.  Presenting poverty as a basket-case requiring remedial support is only half the story.  The other half is presenting exactly what those sa...

29. The ANC government of South Africa declares its comfort with violence and brutality
(Analysis/Analysis)

... vision to the world. In 1990 Aung San Suu Kyi won elections in (then) Burma decisively.  She was immediately detained and placed under house arrest by the military junta who are still in power.&...

30. What do toilet paper and state monopolies have in common?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...poly does.  They cap bandwidth.  They cap telephone bills.  They cap lines. Reuters, the media and information group, which has been expanding in countries such as India, is not invest...

31. AIDS-related illnesses cost South African businesses up to R 2.2 billion per year
(Analysis/Analysis)

“It is essential for SA companies to follow global trends in corporate wellness to proactively ensure the health and improved productivity of its workforce while providing an effective tool to m

32. No matter how hard you try bad environments lead to bad results
(Analysis/Analysis)

((George W Bush)) has been mighty surprised by the tenacity and persistence of the instability and violence in ((Iraq)).  Since 1958 Iraqis have been ruled by a series of tyrants culminating in t

33. The quiet nobility of the men by the side of the road
(Analysis/Analysis)

...d from any responsibility for their people’s well-being. Social development focuses more on the immediate needs of survival than in supporting those who are helping themselves.  So there a...

34. The danger of wanting to believe in the power of good intentions
(Analysis/Analysis)

...that there is a massive assumption that the organisation you're giving to (mostly a third-party intermediary) knows who to give the money to and how to go about it. Gifter.org, an online charity ...

35. BBC: Disaster funds 'unfairly divided'
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ors, countless other crises were neglected, it says.  It calls on governments, aid agencies and the media to redress the balance.  More than 99,000 people were killed and 161 million affecte...