"Donald Trump is the greatest utopian thinker of our time."

This is Rutger Bregman's audacious claim in a recent podcast interview with The Economist. He says that what makes him great (no pun intended) is not only his ability to conceive of grand disruptions in the socioeconomic status quo - aggressive deportations, Islamophobia, and sexism - but more importantly, his ability to transform them into reality. This identity war is not new, but he has single-handedly been able to manipulate small pockets of opportunity (read: the disenfranchised Rust Belt working class) in order to materialize his dream.

I would immediately argue that the world Trump believes in and unfortunately, we now live in, is not utopian, but rather quite the opposite. But the troubling thing about any world that has more than one person is that utopias are, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. Needless to say, the "utopias" that Hitler and Stalin have conceived of in recent history are anything but. However, ideas are only as good as their execution, so in that sense, they were contemporary masters of shaping their own utopias. The problem, therefore, partly lies with the progressives' tendency to ignore any utopian reality that may not align with their own.

"But why has the right have better fortune than the left in shaping their utopias?" Anne McElvoy then asks Bregman. He argues that the left has had its turn in shaping its utopia in the 1950s during the neoliberalism era. However, the world became disillusioned with these policies, because they only caused stagflation and oil crises, and the pendulum swung back into populist favor. I don't fully agree with Bregman's analysis. For one, neoliberalism and its discontents were caused by Reagan, a Republican president, while the oil crisis was caused by Nixon's Operation Nickel Grass. Admittedly, I am not an expert on 20th century Latin American or Middle Eastern politics, and the economic ramifications of the events of the time are certainly more complicated than the left-right dichotomy to which we have become accustomed. But my point still stands that, at least in living memory, the right has wielded more influence than its counterparts, with the exception of President Obama. But where has that led us now?

I think the issues stem from both the right's strategic advantage with activating popular support - which appeals to emotion rather than logic - and the left's lack of clear communication. The criticism I often hear about the left is that the message is unfocused; the Woman's March was dismissed by many for the perception that it was a pity party for a large group of marginalized groups with no unifying rallying call. With the right, the message is easy to digest: our problems are caused by other people, often foreign people, and we need to keep them out in order to achieve our own potential. I think any policy based on excluding others is dead on arrival, but my emotional investment in this issue is besides the point.

Call me an idealist and so be it, but the way we craft our utopias have become too compartmentalized. We aren't dreaming big enough, and perhaps simple enough. When policymaking becomes too complicated, it may help to take a step back and reevaluate what values you have, what your community has, what your country has. If the U.S. truly espouses equality above all, then the utopia we should imagine, should be quite simple. (P.S. It's not Donald Trump's.)

Weekly Development Brief

1. Towards Inclusive Growth: The elusive buzzword is made (slightly more) tangible with specific policy objectives on how to achieve it: increasing productivity, decreasing inequality, promoting equal access to employment opportunities, creating inclusive financial instruments, and developing and safety net infrastructure for people most vulnerable. Nothing new is revealed; although, on a purely self-serving perspective, it behooves emerging economies to include financial inclusion in their policy agenda because it has shown to be the engine for sustainable long-term growth. (Tao Zhang, IMF)
2. Rethinking GDP: Some new measures are proposed, such as natural capital and its rate of loss, externalities, welfare, etc. It's easier to criticize rather than change something, however, and the article acknowledges this. GDP's shortcomings are explained, but unless something simple and exhaustive can replace it, this measure is here to stay. It presents modern challenges to measuring GDP. Evolving technology and the blurring between household work and "legitimate" work (rightfully decried by feminist champions) are a few examples. Nonetheless, the key takeaway from reading this article is that my memory is abysmal. A lot of these concepts shouldn't be refreshers, but they are. I need to be more disciplined in my learning. (Diane Coyle, IMF)
3. Getting It Right: Behind every sexy new robot is a less sexy policy agenda that is just as important in spurring innovation. And it's just as complicated to conceive of, develop, and create: while patent box policy is effective in some countries, it can have adverse effects on others. I believe innovation isn't created by a once-in-a-lifetime-wunderkind-who-achieves-beyond-all-expectations. Wunderkinds are cultivated through time, with long-term educational planning and proper fiscal incentives that encourage innovation. Now that's sexy. (Ruud de Mooij, IMF)

Weekly Development Brief

1. There is a $215-$430 million philanthropic gap that can flow in from Indian high net worth individuals (HNWIs), but they choose not to give. Why? They don't trust NGOs and they aren't sure how to give. Motivational and structural barriers need to be addressed. (Dalberg)
2. "Poverty alleviation" is no longer in my vocabulary. It's all about that "prosperity creation". The article rightly asks, "What's the point of sending all children to school if they can't get jobs when they graduate?" The problem is not a lack of resources, but a lack of processes. We have to develop institutions that incentivize people to lift themselves from poverty. Hope is better sown in the heart rather than on our hands. (The Guardian) 
3. Education should prepare citizens for citizenry rather than consumerism, argues The Economist. The case study is American, so the extent to which this applies to Filipino democracy is anyone's guess. Mine is that it's rapidly deteriorating, evidenced by people's lack of patience and trust in due process, and the easy way we fall prey to single-issue candidates who are willing to sacrifice whatever fragile democracy we hold in exchange for persecuting the vulnerable. (The Economist)

Amira Bliss, Social Impact Leader

Last week, SGD co-hosted Amira Bliss together with the NYUAD Office of Community Outreach as part of the Social Impact Leader Series. As senior program associate, Mrs. Bliss designs and implements a strategy to catalyze innovation at the Foundation and in the social sector more broadly. She leads the innovation workstream of the Food Waste and Spoilage initiative, aiming to surface and scale innovative solutions to post-harvest food loss affecting the livelihoods of African smallholder farmers. Her lecture came at the perfect time as SGD dedicates this month to learning more about food security.

Mrs. Bliss first described the current trends in food security initiatives around the world. “Imagine if 1/3 of goods never make it to the customers,” she tells us. In fact, this staggering statistic is our current reality due to the broken linkages between farmers and consumers that make the food supply chain inefficient at its best, wasteful at its worst. For example, in Nigeria, where most of her work related to food-security is located, food processing plants built in the northern part of the country have become obsolete because of the lack of road access connecting them to other major cities.



In 2016, The Rockefeller Foundation launched YieldWise, a $130 million initiative, with the goal of demonstrating how the world can halve food loss by 2030, one of the UN’s sustainable development goals. By changing society’s attitudes to food waste as an unacceptable occurrence, the Foundation aims that these will influence food production and distribution strategies in lasting and impactful ways. Mrs. Amira Bliss tells us that a combination of innovative finance tools, supply chain management, and collaboration with local policymakers are key avenues to achieving this goal.

Mrs. Bliss is an engaging speaker who wants to make the lecture as participative as possible, asking as many questions from the audience as much as she receives. During the Q&A session, I asked Mrs. Bliss what her thoughts were regarding unintended negative effects that legislation can have on food security. Although France’s recent ban on throwing away unsold food in supermarkets may initially seem like a good policy shift, is it possible that these also have deleterious effects on the supermarkets’ supply chain? She says yes, laws intended to improve food security can definitely have unintended negative effects, but that different actors in the supply chain respond to the shift accordingly. Going back to her example of Nigerian farmers, she says that unsold cassava in supermarkets become reprocessed into flour that have longer shelf lives. If agents across the supply chain are open to adapting to these constantly changing business environments, there are creative ways to prevent food from being wasted.

For more information about Amira Bliss and the Social Impact Leader Series, please click here.

POLSC-AD 161 | "Reviving the Wild Heart of Africa" and other stereotypes

Uff, this video is heavy. I've taken enough classes about postcolonial representations to know a problematic one. He begins to describe Africa as a "great, primordial continent". He beats his right hand over his chest and proudly claims, "I am an African", as if to inspire oohs and aahs from the crowd. It's hard to judge, because I'm not from the continent, but as the other articles will also touch upon, the idea of a Pan-African identity seems to serve only the interests of foreigners who will waste no time understanding its component parts. For regular Africans, the definition of Pan-Africanism is much like the discourse of "development" that surrounds it: inspirational, but mostly insipid.

- Reviving the Heart of Wild Africa, by Steve Boyes

The contrast between monolithic African humans -- hungry, suffering, foolish -- and complex African animals brought me the most distress. Although African literature deserves more unsensational narratives, for the sake of balancing its more hyperbolic tendencies, some speciesism is at work here. Both humans and animals deserve equal attention. The maltreatment of the former is noteworthy nonetheless:

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people’s property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

- How to Write about Africa, by Binyavanga Wainana

 I've always been skeptical of Jared Diamond. His geographic deterministic argument always appeared too simple, but I've never actually read Gun, Germs, and Steel. As a first encounter with his writing, I now begin to see the appeal of his arguments. Obviously, Africa's development, or lack thereof, is a much more complex explanation than the fact that local flora and fauna were difficult to domesticate, but it does offer a seductive answer.

Ironically, the long human presence in Africa is probably the reason the continent's species of big animals survive today. African animals co-evolved with humans for millions of years, as human hunting prowess gradually progressed from the rudimentary skills of our early ancestors. That gave the animals time to learn a healthy fear of man, and with it a healthy avoidance of human hunters. In contrast, North and South America and Australia were settled by humans only within the last tens of thousands of years. To the misfortune of the big animals of those continents, the first humans they encountered were already fully modern people, with modern brains and hunting skills. Most of those animals—woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, and in Australia marsupials as big as rhinoceroses—disappeared soon after humans arrived. Entire species may have been exterminated before they had time to learn to beware of hunters.

- The Shape of Africa, by Jared Diamond 

You know I love data visualization. Let it speak for itself:

"Because "Europe" is used to describe the European Union and "America" is used as a synonym for the United States, the coverage of Africa can only be compared with that of Asia. See how the Guardian, for instance, uses "Africa" as an all-purpose word to describe anything from Tangiers to Cape Town. Comparing the mentions of the three biggest African economies with the three biggest Asian ones, we see how much less precise reporting of African countries remains." 

- Africa is not a country, Nicolas Kayser-Bril for The Guardian 

ECON-AD 213J | Class 15 Reflection: The future of Cape Town

The Slave Trade helped develop the Carnival musical culture that tourists enjoy around the world. When are we going to stop oppressing each other and start treating each other as equals? 

Our last class concluded with a discussion on what policy prescriptions we can offer Cape Town, after three weeks of intensively studying development and urbanization issues in South Africa. The class has been actively thinking about these issues throughout the course, and so contributions were lively. There was no ambiguity in the fact that the legacy of the apartheid persists in the way the city is organized: Cape Town CBD is located in low-density area mostly inhabited by the wealthy white population, while the majority coloured and black population live in slum areas in the CBD’s outskirts, where flooding is common and diseases rampant. Due to topographical constraints, large government housing subsidies, and simultaneous lack of rent control in informal settlements, the housing market has an inelastic supply that makes the transition into proper living conditions difficult.

Although we do not know what the proper answer is, it is clear that the current status quo cannot stand. If left unchecked, the inequality between white and black populations will continue to widen, which may pressure the latter to take measures outside proper political processes to change the situation. The CBD is a prime location for densification, because of its valuable location both in terms of property value and number of businesses set up there. Ultimately, the local government should construct a long-term plan for this transition into densifying the CBD, by first identifying the most effective ways to migrate people into the city. Buffer zones offer a promising solution. These undeveloped areas originally meant to separate races in neighborhoods can and should be developed into high-rise buildings where middle-income people can migrate. The housing that they depart from, therefore, can be used by low-income households migrating into the city. Concurrent to these urban policies, government should update its bus rapid transit (BRT) to decrease transportation costs for people migrating from Khayelitsha into the CBD, which can cost up to 25% of daily income for these families. 

This class has been phenomenal, I now see cities in a different light, in a way where I know what questions to ask with purpose and direction. I learned that changes do not happen overnight, and it requires thoughtful and engaged action, where every phase is evaluated and reevaluated in its given sociopolitical context. On that note, development projects like Wespark in the north of Cape Town as a solution to its housing problem are nothing but a pipe dream because it attempts to circumvent this process of evaluation when it is an imperative step in sustainable urban policies. We must always pursue what is right, even when the process seems arduous. Even though I may not have all the answers, knowing which direction to inquire is a powerful tool. I am excited to take the course Comparative Politics in Africa with Professor Peter van der Windt in the Spring semester, where I will continue this quest for understanding.

ECON-AD 213J | Class 14 Reflection: RCT and Angry Birds

Today, our class focused on urban theories as it applies to South Africa. It is really fascinating to learn about these topics. I’ve lived in large cities all my life - Manila, Jakarta, New York, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Abu Dhabi - and while I can describe the differences between them, I did not consider its larger macroeconomic implications.

Glaeser’s Triumph of the Cities is our primary reading today, where he argues that cities are mankind’s greatest invention, as the headquarters of the industrialization revolution that brought much of the world’s prosperity today. I agree that cities have been an invaluable part in pulling the world out of subsistence conditions in the way that it conglomerates people, capital and ideas in dense locations that facilitate rapid production and consumption. I am relieved, however, that he does not overstate its benefits and makes sense out of why wide, recreational spaces like parks exist as well. These spaces exist not only to raise property values of nearby houses, but also as insurance against the opposite of the “eyes on the street” effect. If buildings are so high that people do not feel any responsibility for its maintenance, then high-rise buildings may not drive growth. Parks, however, may help people feel a sense of ownership to the location, because the value that parks add to their property is dependent on its safety.

I am interested in the role of parks in cities not only because of the subtle ways that it adds value, but also in how humans are inherently drawn to these places for rest. This interest stems from my enjoyment of parks such as Central Park in New York and Parque de Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, and partly due to how the comedy Parks and Recreation glamorizes government work. My friend who works at the Monocle, a magazine about global affairs, business, culture, and design, created a short video documentary about how urban planners are reimagining recreational spaces and integrating it into regular city life. Although the projects the film features appear exciting, I am conscious about the breadth in which these resources are shared, because it appears to cater to only the urban elite. Parks should be the most democratic places in the city, where everyone has equal access and stake in its preservation.

In the second part of class, we watched a video where Angus Deaton placed doubts on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the panacea in the methodological constraints that development studies frequently face. Afterwards, Prof. Buckley shared with us another short video where he compares RCTs to the popular mobile application “Angry Birds” describing them as a frantic and misguided games of trial and error. On that comparison alone, I would disagree with Deaton. RCTs, as described by Ester Duflo in Poor Economics, have a specific strategy in identifying the parameters of the experiment before evaluating a project. When addressing the problem of teacher absenteeism in India, for example, Duflo did not utilize farfetched ways to try and solve the problem. Instead, she used cameras as a tool to reinforce accountability, and it was effective in improving teacher attendance. What this ultimately produces is concrete evidence of whether a particular strategy is effective or not, and making adjustments accordingly. (On another note, Angry Birds employs the same identification strategies as RCTs. Rather than blindly shooting the birds at farfetched directions, a skilled player should make an educated guess on the angle and force by which to release the birds on the pigs. But I digress.)

Of course, this is not to say that RCT is not without its problems: its three main issues would be the size of its impact, its large time horizons, and sampling errors. RCTs make small adjustments within a specific set of variables, and therefore its impact after the study will not be significant. As with the case of teacher absenteeism, although introducing cameras increases teacher participation, the quality of the education requires further testing. In addition, some treatments require years before its findings can be identified, which means the implementation of its policies may be outdated by the time of its implementation. Habits do not change overnight, and this has to be reflected in long-term trends in data. Therefore, RCTs are limited in the scope of its effectiveness. Moreover, Deaton argues that RCTs have sampling errors because it is selected out of convenience, then randomized. This part confused me, because I don’t think that it causes much of a problem. Say, for example, that an NGO wants to study the impact of a new savings program on a village in India. Therefore, from all the households in the village, the NGO will select half through a randomized program for its treatments and the rest for its baseline. Even though the village was conveniently chosen to begin with, the village itself is precisely the target of the policy intervention. In that sense, Deaton concedes that RCTs, in these and other similar instances, are precisely the type of program that delivers the exact data that policymakers need. Other methods need to be explored, however, if we want to make quicker change.