whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

... is due to entrenched models of wealth/power distribution by those already in power. If so, it makes the resulting poverty doubly tragic....

2.
(Comments)

...shangase sounds like a Nat cabinet minister -- I\'m sure several of them said things like that. Is that a result of the ANC swallowing van Schalkwyk & Co, or it is just another incidence of all power ...

3.
(Comments)

I look forward to the results

4.
(Comments)

...it is an important example of what is possible. We should be complete on the survey by end-May and the results will be posted here....

5.
(Comments)

...ctate the nature of much of their working environment and ultimately levy significant \\\"taxes\\\". This results in the majority of the realtive wealth generated ending up in the hands of a few who h...

6. Dealing with the consequences of Zimbabwe
(Analysis/Analysis)

... more. A political decision in 1998 not to invest in new power stations – for instance – can result in catastrophic power failures some ten years later. Now we have Zimbabwe. The result...

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

...th 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 comparable m...

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

...;, but he is in a bind. His "people's revolution" has hollowed out local manufacturing and resulted in massive net imports of most essentials (including food). Without foreign capital ...

9. Taxing the Future, Confusing the Present
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e reduction of the retirement age to 60 by 2010 introduces significant costs to taxpayers. Firstly, as a result of increasing life-expectancies (assuming that you don't contract HIV and die befor...

10. The hazard of market dominance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...duce their price by studying the actions of different manufacturers. It should be unsurprising that the result has been collusion and price-fixing amongst small manufacturers and service providers. ...

11. When no-one is held accountable, everyone suffers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s catastrophic consequences that ripple out far further than you can predict. Kenya's elections have resulted in violent conflict stemming from the failure of two men to agree on what is best for...

12. Funding departments instead of people cheats everyone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...romised a service – quality education and health – and failed to deliver on its promise. The resulting skills shortage and illness leads to reduced economic growth, limited production cap...

13. Higher food prices mean downgrading that Turkey to a Chicken
(Analysis/Analysis)

... not climate change ... not yet anyway. We have come out of a long period of declining food prices. The result is visibly apparent in any economic survey of agriculture. In the developed world agri...

14. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ority, and the tiny minority of entrepreneurs priced in their risk and made a choice. Unsurprisingly the result has been growth, but with fewer jobs. Business owners will make a similar choice once ...

15. This festive season: the accumulating effects of individual activity
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ity on ordinary PCs to sift through radio-telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The results are sent back to Berkeley. More impressively, Stanford University, using a similar sy...

16. Contradictions resolve in ways you don't intend
(Analysis/Analysis)

..., if you're aiming for the long-term, you don't take short cuts even if they look lucrative. The result is a contradiction: proclaiming one thing while acting in quite the opposite way. The ...

17. The Miracle of Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...certificate of need so that government can decide whether investments are good ideas or not. Imagine the result. As rents are artificially lowered, not through competition, but through an act of par...

18. Killing the Golden Goose, a lesson in Economic Freedom
(Analysis/Analysis)

...mutual advantage. Since democracies prize collective bargaining over win-win transactions the inevitable result is lobbying where special interest groups campaign to have their own needs prioritised....

19. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...increasing the value of the economy. This may lead to the short-term illusion of economic growth but the result is inflation as too much money chases too few goods. Worse for the economy is that com...

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

...rest of the world wants to buy. The "China factor" has held down inflation internationally and resulted in the long Bull Run that has driven up consumption and asset prices around the world...

21. The spectre of loyalty over ability
(Analysis/Analysis)

... It is the spectre that rewards loyalty over ability; craven sycophancy over talent and innovation. The result is lost opportunities and a diminished economy. The most important thing that every pe...

22. Black Swans, Cost Overruns and Industrial Tariffs
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ost businesses in South Africa require critical components of their supply chain to be imported. The net result is that local goods are much more expensive than they need to be. Not only does this m...

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

... off the nationalised services and created the direct form of a free-market state. It was a disaster and resulted in the backlash that installed Vladimir Putin and cemented authoritarian rule. The ...

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

Corruption is a result of poor disclosure and weak systems and institutions. The bankruptcy process in South Africa is from the Victorian era and tends to place a terrifying burden on all involved. Th

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

...oreign-listings is anyone's guess. What he intends to do with valueless shares is another matter. The result is that the only formally employed people left in the economy are working for the state...

26. Science gone wrong: when self-delusion leads to death
(Analysis/Analysis)

...drug. His research was not authorised and he was not qualified to undertake it. Worse, he announced his results prior to any peer review. There was so much wrong with his approach and methods that ...

27. Everything is coming up Capitalism
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ctatorship. As Iraq has proven to any doubters, simply handing responsibility to people unused to it can result in chaos. This is something that gives the Chinese politburo the quivers. They have d...

28. Zimbabwe: recovering the irrecoverable
(Analysis/Analysis)

...at low prices to benefit the poor. And, when business owners flouted those rules, he arrested them. The results have been precisely what market-economists, such as myself, have said would happen. A...

29. South Africa's two tiers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...pliance increase the costs of running a business. It can be debated endlessly as to whether these things result in a better life for all. What is beyond doubt is how much the informal and formal sect...

30. People, Planet and Profits: the complexities of corporate governance
(Analysis/Analysis)

.... Germany is a perfect example. Corporate Boards in Germany must have representatives of workers. This results in very large boards and a system of co-determination. "Co-determination is a ve...

31. After Enron: the Corporate Governance of Corporate Social Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...their corporate social investments are not just seen to be good, but are achieving meaningful development results. The ICGN conference concludes on Friday with a session led by Mervyn King, chairman ...

32. Getting Home in Zimbabwe: The impossibility of public transport
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t on the list and are usually unable to access this fuel. They then stock up on the parallel market. The result is a vast difference in fares charged by these operators. For a distance of 20 km &ndas...

33. The tragedy of innovation: how brilliant ideas are criminalised
(Analysis/Analysis)

...dreds of millions of people. The engines are not totally efficient and release tons of carbon dioxide and results in global warming. Let's scrap air travel." Revealed Shortfalls I'd li...

34. Dave Bullard and Graham Knox: "We can't walk on water so why not try wine?"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ne as cheaply as possible. These wines are blended, adulterated, and bottled with unique labels; the end result is cheap table plonk. "We have the assets that can allow better quality wine,&quo...

35. "Be sure, we will be watching you," the other GB and the pursuit of social justice
(Analysis/Analysis)

...eyond the law and we couldn't do anything," says Bizos. And the press, by exposing the stories, resulted in censorship and attack against newspapers. This is the experience of journalists i...

36. Start your business in Johannesburg but hire your advisor in Cape Town
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tants in the Western Cape endeavour to provide this anyway while virtually no Gauteng consultants do. The results are visible in significantly higher implementation rates in the Western Cape. Gauteng...

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

...s and responsibility is all-consuming. You can be ignorant or you can be involved. Attempting to be both results in chaos and anxiety. Knowledge is a forbidden fruit and, once tasted, can never be re...

38. The efficiency of markets and how protectionism leaves the poor behind
(Analysis/Analysis)

...n wireless sensors are to be mixed in with the soil to send even more data to computerised tractors. The result of this in both Europe and the US has been that farms get by on less water and less lan...

39. Do you hate the poor enough to be charitable?
(Analysis/Analysis)

... opportunity to help themselves and trade their way into wealth. At the same time images of poverty have resulted in massive relief efforts by charities. Another famous stereotype of Africa is the r...

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

...mselves; so they pirate content. And the mother lode of content providers is, of course, print media. The result is that good (and bad) articles circulate the globe, and both media companies and journ...

41. Sarkozy's French Election: when elephants fight only the grass gets trampled
(Analysis/Analysis)

...p; The companies who have been affected promptly declare that the imported products are only cheaper as a result of commercial dumping; the process by which companies sell products at less than their ...

42. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

...and that the ACP countries were even worse than Latin America was moot. It was flagrant protectionism and resulted in years of jokes about France banning bananas based on their curvature. Protection o...

43. One Laptop Per Child, now costing 75% more ...
(Analysis/Analysis)

...y-box case hides a very sophisticated interior.  And no-one is declaring that poverty in Africa is a result of a lack of MRI scanners at their hospitals; no matter how much this sophisticated pro...

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

...n't care about their reputations with the poor or about the integrity of their products. And the end result will be that they will lose their future revenues. The same products that are being de...

45. Demonstration Enterprise Development Consultant B
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...nt of its own and utilises the services of a network of consultants.  This model is flexible but can result in inconsistency.  Keeping track to ensure quality relies on sophisticated systems...

46. The US$ 5 trillion market at the bottom of the pyramid
(Analysis/Analysis)

...in order to offer your product.  Aravind has been profitable since they started. The most startling result, though, is this:  products developed to be used by the poor rapidly become innova...

47. Unions, the leverage of the highly skilled, and the future of work
(Analysis/Analysis)

...addition to their staff.  The increasing complexity of products, distribution and marketing has also resulted in a wider distribution of labour.  Unions now represent “blue collar&rdqu...

48. Cricket, corruption and the match-fixing that leads to murder
(Analysis/Analysis)

...be made on a hair’s-breath.  If one player should play unusually well, or unusually badly, the result can still be tweaked through subtle changes in field placement, slowing down, or speedi...

49. Development organisations need to engage with ratings agencies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...vest wisely but would certainly still spend.  Neither would there be a feedback mechanism that would result in an ever-improving standard of investments and products.  It would be inefficien...

50. Climate Change: measurement, responsibility and risk
(Analysis/Analysis)

...to be over the short- and medium-term. The problem with impartial observers and scientists judging their results and offering “blame” is that it risks triggering defensive responses.&nbsp...