Independent Institute: 'Making Poor Nations Rich- Entrepreneurship and The Process of Economic Development'

Source:The Independent Institute- a book about economic development. 

"Why do some nations become rich while others remain poor? Traditional economic theory has done little to answer this question. Now, through case studies from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, Making Poor Nations Rich argues for examining the critical role entrepreneurs, private property rights, and free trade and other economic freedoms play in economic development.

This volume begins by explaining how entrepreneurs create economic growth and why some institutional environments encourage more productive entrepreneurship than others. The book then addresses countries and regions that have failed to develop because of barriers to entrepreneurship. Finally, the authors turn to countries that have developed by reforms that protect private property and grant greater levels of economic freedom.

Making Poor Nations Rich demonstrates that pro-market reforms are essential to promoting the productive entrepreneurship that leads to economic growth, and where this institutional environment is lacking, sustained economic development will remain elusive."

From The Independent Institute

Let's say you have a country that has a decent amount of land or even a large country physically like Libya or Somali and even has a considerable amount of natural resources as at least in Libya's case, but you have a moderate size population or are even lightly populated like both Libya and Somalia and you are third- world country definitely in Somalia's case that couldn't even govern itself up until recently: so you have this country and you can do with at you please as a country and you have a population that wants to make this country work, but all you need is direction to make that happen. What should you do how should you build your country?

It starts with good governance, not Big Government or Small Government, but Good Government. A responsible executive, legislature hopefully both elected by the people themselves and a responsible independent judiciary. 

Let's say you've already figured out your national constitution and what the role of of government should be in your country, how the national government relates to the state, or provincial and local governments and what they should be doing. And you have a national constitution that doesn't make the national government, let's say Federal Government in Somalia's case a dictator or have most of the power, but with enough power to govern the country and deal with things like the currency and economy. 

Once you've developed your responsible, constitutional, and elected government and a constitution there to protect the people's constitutional rights and guide government as far as it an operate, what it can do, and how it should serve the people, with all the right checks and balances and divisions of power in place and it's there only to serve the people and protect their freedom, now you've formed a system where the people will be free to operate and make their best out of their own lives that they possibly can. 

You can talk about economic growth, free trade, property rights, all you want, but if you don't have a government that respects those things, none of those things are going to happen. And whatever the economy produces, the national government will end up pocketing most of those resources for themselves, at the expense of their people.