Thank you, Aid Watchers

I was going to write about the problems I saw with Paul Romer’s idea for charter cities. However, I knew it would be a long-ish post, so have been procrastinating. Laziness, fortunately, paid off for me this time as Laura Freschi at Aid Watchers has written a better version of what I was going to say:

It has always been true that no matter where you go, you take yourself with you—culture, history, habits, attachments and animosities come along like a skin you can’t shed…

Early development economists working at the hopeful dawn of colonial independence believed that they really were starting from scratch. The last fifty years have shown us that they weren’t, and this has been—and remains—one of development’s biggest blind spots.

As the gang on King of the Hill would say, “Yep. Yep. Mmhmm. Yep.”