Essential Reading
Topic: Misc.
I have added two more links to the Essential Reading section. Please check them out.

The first is 'Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States'. It's written by Ralph Peters, who also wrote the 'Stability, America's Enemy' piece that I mentioned last week. In 'Spotting the Losers', he says "National success is eccentric. But national failure is programmed and predictable. Spotting the future losers among the world's states becomes so easy it loses its entertainment value". He then identifies seven predictors of national failure:

1) Restrictions on the free flow of information.
2) The subjugation of women.
3) Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
4) The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
5) Domination by a restrictive religion.
6) A low valuation of education.
7) Low prestige assigned to work.

The second piece, 'Inequality and Risk' by Paul Graham, explains why policies aimed at reducing economic inequality punish risk-taking and retard economic development, all of which harms the poor. If you really want to make the poor better off, it's better to accept that doing it successfully will involve increasing inequality.

Graham explains that the vital issue is not reducing inequality, but reducing the corruping effect of wealth in private hands. He concludes by expressing the need for greater transparency to prevent corruption.