About Zamorano and the use of country systems

I posted this because today World Economic Forum @wef posted a tweet that said "Denmark is building a school where students have to grow their own food". I already saw such a school, way back, in Honduras, in Zamorano.

This is a copy of an informal memo sent to my colleagues Executive Directors at the World Bank in 2004, as extracted from my Voice and Noise of 2006.

About Zamorano and the use of country systems

Dear colleagues,

Traveling in Honduras recently, I heard on the radio the old rock band Enanitos Verdes singing about having to run the risk of getting up, in order to keep on falling, and it reminded me of our recent discussions about “use-of-country-systems” where I gave you my mumbo jumbo about having to let them go, since this is the only way they could learn how to ride a bike. 

I was on my way to visit the agricultural school Zamorano, cajoled (with no major effort needed) by one of its graduates—a friend of ours, Jorge Wong, and little did I know I was heading into true learning-how-to-bike land. The motto of this most amazing school is “learning while doing” and … Boy, do they! Boy, do they learn!

In Zamorano, kids have a school year of 11 months and are rigorously awakened every morning at 5 am—hellish but I tell you that it has been a long time since I’ve seen such a group of enthusiastic, happy, and feeling-good-about-the-future young faces. There are about eight hundred boarding students, of whom more than two hundred are girls. They come from many Latin American countries, from all backgrounds, and any differences are neutralized with education, companionship, and uniforms. 

Along with their formal academic classroom studies, the kids, from seventeen to twenty-three, are taught about every imaginable (and also some you-do-not-want-to-imagine) agricultural and farm chore there is, by being handled full responsibility for doing them. They grow crops, milk cows and in the industrial installations where they produce cheeses, juices, marmalades, sausages, and much more that they sell in Honduran supermarkets, the managers are the students from senior grades and the workers their younger friends. 

And Zamorano goes way beyond teaching knowledge. When I heard some kids explain to me about the biologic pesticides they develop and market all over Central America, could it be to make it the “Green Subcontinent”? It became clear that besides algebra, they must have gotten lectures on confidence building, communication skills, and character formation too.

Although I was told that in the dry season the landscape changes somewhat, El Zamorano as I saw it lay snuggled in a beautiful valley, where it has about 10,000 acres of land and great and functional facilities. This Zamorano seed effort is more than ready for some heavy-duty scaling-up, and they have already started doing so with some interesting and substantial extension programs, reaching out to their neighboring communities. Envying their tremendous educational expertise, I am already on my knees, begging them to branch out into my favorite Central American growth program—you bet, those who know me: educating doctors specialized in geriatric ailments and bilingual nurses, certified by schools and health authorities of developed nations.

In the last couple of weeks we have been reminded of some of Ronald Reagan’s “one-liners” (slogans), among them, “trust but verify.” It is clear that we face serious challenges when monitoring or verifying the results of our projects, but, frankly, after having been in Zamorano, I am convinced that it is exactly in the trusting department where we really are in the backwaters. We need not worry, though. Zamorano was founded three years before the World Bank, and so we still have a chance to catch up. 

Back in D.C., on my radio, Joan Manuel Serrat was singing about Africa—something about the world not letting it go, yet not holding onto it.

Here you find Wikipedia information on Zamorano

I suggest you scroll down and read: Enterprises 

For countries to develop... please... let them learn to bike... on their own

The following is extracted from my Voice and Noise. It reflects what I said to my colleagues at the World Bank Executive Board while discussing in 2004 the issue whether developing countries should be allowed to use more their own country systems.

Intro: Whether to let the countries learn and develop on their own in their own way and assisting them by freely giving some of the very scarce resources or whether to impose some conditions on how they are to manage these resources is one of the most difficult balancing acts of any development policy.

There must be thousands of examples of how development funds have been squandered to no avail by bad governments and crooked politicians, and certainly there are thousand of examples of how good-intentioned agencies have, in a quite similar and yet opposite way, squandered these scarce funds by imposing absolutely misplaced rules and conditions.

As I never believed that you could create good artists by having students practice painting by numbers, this little spot number 17 blue, and as those wanting to impose more and ever stricter conditions on the borrower were in the clear majority, my devil’s advocate instincts and my normal tendency of siding with the weaker inspired me to take a very strong position in favor of allowing for a more frequent use of the countries’ own systems... and so... please...

Let them bike

Friends, listening to your exhaustive list of concerns [about how the World Bank could best assist countries in their development] I was reminded of the moments when I had to teach my daughters how to ride their bikes: I heard their mother’s anxious calls in the background; I felt my own nervousness; nonetheless, I just knew I had to let them go.

One could find and read thousands of manuals about how to put a bike together safely; about all the safety implements a kid should wear, such as helmet and wrist-guards; about all the precautions he or she needs to take, not going downhill or out on the main road; but nowhere can you find even a single manual that clearly and exactly instructs you how to learn to ride a bike. Left leg up, right leg down! Or was it right leg up first?

We need to understand that development is a bit like learning how to ride a bike and, at the end of the day it is something that must be done on one’s own. In fact, no matter how much we could help in the preparations, we will not stand a chance to achieve lasting results if we are not willing or do not know how to let them go.

It is not easy to let go, I probably even closed my eyes for fractions of seconds after letting my girls roll away on their bikes, but I let them go and they know how to ride a bike now.

So, my colleagues, in these discussions, not as caring parents but as caring development partners, let us try to act accordingly, letting them go, always remembering that, at the end of the day, countries need to do it on their own. What else could ownership mean?

Of course, anyone might fall trying, but that is exactly the risk we need to be able to take if they are going to achieve real sustainable development results and, if they fall, there is probably nothing more to do than to help them rebuild their confidence so that they can just have another go at it.

Moreover, if you try to hold the bike while they ride it, the bike might not really behave like a bike, and so they might never get the hang of it. What we really should be concerned about is that they have what is most needed at the time of trying: sufficient confidence in themselves. In fact, what unwillingly might be the first victim of all our other secondary concerns is precisely that, their confidence.

So, my colleagues, let them go, again and again and again, learning to ride their bike, and as they believe a bike should be ridden.

I know it is not as easy as it sounds and in fact I would only give someone the freedom to try it on their own whenever he or she convinces me he or she is truly ready for it, in a sufficiently confident way.

.

Let us keep the eyes on the ball!

If we want good government results that have a chance of doing what is humanly good for humanity, in a shrinking world, that could only happen through more credible and better governed multinational institutions. But in this case, while rolling up or shirtsleeves to get going at it, we must also learn about how to prioritize our efforts.

Instead of beating the good guy on the head, just because he is more amenable to being beaten on the head, and start with a World Bank and that no matter Wolfowitz and some others, in relative terms, still stands out as a shining example of relative good governance in the world, we should all concentrate more on where good governance is much more lacking and much more needed, namely the United Nations.

May I humbly suggest we keep our eyes on the ball!

Per Kurowski
Chairman
The Voice and Noise Foundation for International Development and Global Strategic Action

Is inflation really measuring inflation?

Sir, over the years, the Central Banks have grown a lot more independent, which is good, as long as it does not diminish their accountability and allow them to focus blindly on goals of their own choosing, monitor the results, and live forever after happy in a big club of mutual admirers.

Inflation is the number one of those monsters that central bankers proudly show off as having been tamed but sometimes we must have our lingering doubts about whether it really is so. In an economy where whatever few savings we can set aside buy fewer and fewer assets like houses, it is sometimes hard to accept that there is no inflation, no matter how much central bankers tells us so. 

As inflation is just the result of the formula, or the basket, or the sampling techniques that we use for measuring it and is therefore a truly incestuous economic concept, there might be very good reasons for revisiting the whole issue of what, how, and why we measure it, even if this means some new hard work load for our overburdened central bankers. With the world going through major changes, inflation, as we think we know it, might very well have degenerated into something quite different from what we initially had in mind when we first thought about how to measure it. 

Meanwhile just to put some check on their egos, every time I see a central banker, I urge him to take a shopping trip to the closest IKEA so as to see who really should get the credit for controlling inflation as we currently know it.

Extracted from my Noise and Voice 2006

And on the same theme in Financial Times May 2006

And here, warning the Financial Times in August 2020, that the inflation had already returned. 

November 2021: To help moor (my) inflationary expectations, get rid of what facilitates it.

PS. The Consumer Price Index is calculated based on actual consumptions. But the real inflation that consumers register, is that of the products and services they no longer can afford to buy as prices have gone up too much for their diminished budgets. What would be the inflation rate on the consumer basket of e.g., two years ago?

PS. #AI #OpenAI #ChatGPT: “If you had access to real time data provided by a great number of outlets and other sources, would you be able to provide reasonable inflation figures estimates without us having to incur in current time lags?”

 

The truth, in theory and in practice, is that everybody's inflation, might be nobody's inflation.

"The Elusive Quest for Growth" by William Easterly

The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Russell Easterly

Subtitle: An Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002: 

The Roman philosopher Seneca defined luck as the moment when preparation meets opportunity, and in this excellent book Easterly analyses some big-bang moments of development luck, and even extends the concept to include the possibility of unpreparedness meeting opportunity—for instance when not being held down by merely recent technology allows for a better use of the very latest. 

The book makes a great case for PPPs Private Public Partnerships or, as one famous president of Venezuela would have put it, “It is not the private sector or the public sector but just the opposite.” 

The book explains very well the need for developing the right incentives for development, although in doing so it might not emphasize sufficiently those other variables that help the sustainability of development, such as a reasonably equitable income distribution. 

Also, a book that discusses the benefits which development receives from “knowledge leakage” but also promotes strong intellectual-property rights as incentives must, obviously, enter into some contradictions. But, then again, with no contradictions, what would be the role of luck? 

The book is crystal clear about the destructive role of bad governments. When Easterly calls for banning the concept of a financial gap, I feel much at home with my arguments against debt-sustainability analysis.

When the author writes, “Thinking about luck is good for the soul. It reminds us self-important analysts that we might just be totally witless about what’s going on,” I know that William Easterly is one of those rare Ph.D.s whom I could gladly consider inviting to my “Guaranteed Ph.D.-Free University.” 

PS. A quite interesting spin on the issue of whether “To write or not to write … by hand” is made by William Easterly in his book The Elusive Quest for Growth. In it, when he argues, “the productivity gains of the computer are slow to be realized . . . because there are still too many traditional people out there with ink and paper,” he is actually making the point that perhaps we should prohibit handwriting as such, so that the world can move forward.

[Jim, my editor: “Plato suggested—I suspect jokingly—that the invention of writing was a bad thing that ruined human powers of memory.”]

Extracts from my Voice and Noise 2006.

The World Bank and IMF, should give the whole world, Mother Earth and the Global Rovers, more voice at its Executive Boards.

Many seem to opine that if only the votes and the composition of the Executive Boards of the World Bank (and the IMF) reflected better current economic size, then global imbalances had a better chance to disappear, like magic. It might not be as easy as that, and just for a starter why would GDP or the market share of the world trade be more important than market capitalizations for assigning voting power. Also if we are at it, why should we not then go for a full Monty on democratic reform and use population as the basis?

If and when a possible reshuffling of the current 24 Executive Directors should happen, I hope it will be to give representation, perhaps not to Civil Society, which is sort of intangible, but to that very tangible piece of land, water, and air that we all know as planet earth.

Although we proudly name ourselves the World Bank, the fact is that we are more of a “Pieces of the World Bank”, with 24 Executive Director representing parochial interests. As a consequence I sadly had to conclude in that the World itself, call it Mother Earth if you want, in these times of globalization, is in fact the Bank’s most underrepresented constituency.

This needs to be fixed, urgently, as we need to be able to stimulate a profoundly shared ownership for the long-term needs of our planet, if we want to survive as a truly civilized society, worthy of the name civilization. As I see it, adding a couple of truly independent seven-year-term Executive Directors, whose role would be to think about the world of our grandchildren, way beyond the 2015 of the Millennium Development Goals—could be what the World Bank most needs now.

And, while at it, we should perhaps also ask one of the current Directors to give up his Chair for a new constituency—call it, if you will, the Constituency of the International Rovers, by which I mean all those workers, skilled or unskilled, legal or illegal, who nowadays represent jointly one of the largest economies of the world. By the way, the first thing that the Global Rovers’ ED would need to do is to make clear the enormous difference that exists between an immigrant with a long-term plan to emigrate from motherland and forever assume a new nationality, and, on the other hand, a temporary worker who just wants to make a buck in order to help his family to a better life, and who wishes with all his heart and soul to return home as soon as possible. Forcing temporary workers to swear allegiances to foreign flags, just so that they can have the right to a better income, cleaning toilets, seems only like a new generation of artificial trade barriers.

Currently we are too stuck in the geography of the non-globalized world to be able to see what is truly happening around us. For instance, El Salvador has about 2 million of its people working abroad, more than a third of its total workforce and so if to the current GDP figures of El Salvador we add what these workers are earning, gross, well then perhaps El Salvador’s growth rate could actually be higher than China’s. And you tell me, why should we not do it this way? Is not an El Salvadoran still a real El Salvadoran just because he or she is working abroad? The internal emigration in China from west to east might take a Chinese from 50 to 150 dollars per month, but the El Salvadorans going south to north go from 120 to 1.200, and no one is heard complaining about an over or undervalued currency.

(Extract from a presentation of Voice and Noise at InfoShop on May 16, 2006)

Out of the box tourism: Lessons from Florence

THE CONTEST!

My apologies to the Florentines, but their beautiful city is like the Magic Kingdom of the Renaissance. The inexhaustible flow of tourists, hotels, prices, and lines for attractions, fast or slow meals, and souvenirs, all makes one question, between Medici and Disney, just who copied the model of whom. In my opinion, not only are the gelatos of Florence richer, but also, with the possible exception of Goofy, Michelangelo’s David and the frescos of Fra Angélico are far superior to Mickey, Pluto, and the rest. 

What an inheritance the Medicis left to their city! The Florentine economy will always be easy to manage, since the only thing that their Paperon de Paperoni (Scrooge McDuck) has to do is fix admissions prices. The one little cloud on the horizon could be the quantity of English, Venezuelan, German, and other immigrants who try to take advantage of the infrastructure. What would Machiavelli have thought about entering the European Union?

We know that despite all its possibilities, Venezuela, in a local saying, still has not managed to connect the foot to the ball when it comes to developing its tourism industry. This will never be resolved by naming ministers who spend their time conducting publicity campaigns, or visiting Orlando and Florence. We are not proposing that other Medicis substitute for those who govern us—we can discuss this on another day. But in the meantime, we could emulate the experts.

In Florence 500 years ago, the contest system was used to assure that the best artistic proposals were utilized to adorn the city. So let’s organize a grand contest.

It will be a grand contest to choose a grand team and a grand plan for the strategic development and management of the tourism sector for the next 30 years, with an estimate of costs and results.

A qualified panel of judges should choose the best three proposals, and the proposals should be publicly debated on television. The losers will receive an important prize, and the winners will be commissioned to execute their proposal during thirty years, with a significant fixed, indexed and guaranteed annual budget.

Since televised public contests enjoy high ratings, this contest could also be a way to build pontes novos, new bridges, in our divided society.

The Santa María del Fiore Cathedral took more than 100 years to construct, and for a long time everyone thought its dome would be impossible to build. And so, friends, let’s not lose the hope of finding a local genius like Brunelleschi for our Helicoide (a local 45-year-old monstrous white elephant). 

From El Universal, Caracas, April 10, 2003

Extracted from "Voice and Noise" 2006