Travels to the Ends of the Earth

I just finished a fascinating book by Robert Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth, about his travels to places I probably will never go, like West Africa and Central Asia and Cambodia. Some of the more interesting things I learned are:

• that nation-states only exist on paper in much of the world, such as in much of West Africa where governments and national unity are weak and borders inconsequential. It’s sourly amusing that Sierra Leone is currently Hollywood’s favorite codeword for violent African sh*thole with both Blood Diamond and Lord of War set there.
• that Samuel Huntington got it wrong about civilizations clashing on religious lines. In much of the world, it is rather on ethnic and tribal lines that they clash. In the Caucasus, Shiite Azeri Turks see themselves more as Turks than as Muslims and are hostile to Shiite Iranians, who side with Christian Armenians, who themselves see the Azeris as Turks and therefore related to the same Turks who perpetrated the Armenian genocide of 1915.
• that the word Turk comes from the Chinese tu-kiu. What a rich and diverse history these people have, spread as they are from Turkey to Central Asia to Western China to Mongolia and Korea, and as the inheritors of Greco-Roman traditions during the days of the Byzantine Empire.
• that if I were religious, I would probably be a Sufi.

But the most interesting thing I read today was this:

“Culture is renewed when people from the city, with intellectual resources, settle in the villages.” … [That] is the lesson that the shah of Iran and other third world despots never learned: that the village, not the city, is the key to modernity; that a nation cannot be modern while its villages are still medieval.

He is talking about how cultural-religious conservatives were able to hijack Iran’s trajectory of modernization because modernity had spread too unevenly among its people. It is the same challenge that faces India, where water scarcity and religious violence and vestiges of the caste system weigh on the villages even as the cities produces computer programmers aplenty. And that faces China, where the villagers in many parts are as poor as they were 20 years ago and still suffer the corruption of the same local officials even as their country becomes an economic powerhouse.

Ever since I took that class with Abbas Milani, I have believed that how successfully a people embraces modernity is the single most important question they face. With a modern culture, they shed feudal allegiances and grudges, begin to think of themselves as united people, educate themselves and build strong economies, and generally take responsibility for their own national fates. Without it, they slide into fundamentalism, insularity, and factionalism.

Proud to be Back

On my last night in Rome, I decided to see Harry Potter, which was playing in English at a Warner movie theater. Apparently they play commercials before the previews, and they showed this ad for Italian skin lotion. It showcased this beautiful beach body obviously loving her lotion, which makes sense because she can show a lot of moisturized skin, except that she was TOPLESS too. HP is rated PG-13, but it’s a kid’s movie! This in a city already full of statues of naked people. rotflol

Modern Rome (and by gross generalization all of non-UK Europe) really doesn’t do it for me. They are so screwed in terms of being prepared to compete in a 21st century global economy. Even as they face increasingly crushing competition from a developing Asia and elsewhere, their Maserati and luxury textile economy lacks emphasis on technology or improving efficiency. I couldn’t even use my credit card in most places! While it is important not to overemphasize the importance of trade in economic posterity – much of what is produced in diverse regional economies like Los Angeles is also consumed locally, and I believe the same is true for the EU – I imagine Italy will continue to grow sluggishly and fade in relevance, best case scenario. (Paul Krugman, “The Localization of the World Economy”)

I feel I may have come back from my travels more of a redneck: I love America as a land of efficiency and deep diversity. We may not have old buildings or an old civilization but our culture produces science fiction and entrepreneurs. Even much of the music Europeans listen to is produced by African Americans, and much of what they themselves write is at least influenced by the same. Hot dang!

When I crossed US customs in Toronto, my customs officer asked me what I do and where I work, then told me that he stamps many work visas of Canadians going to work in Silicon Valley. He then says that he does what he could to protect me from foreign competition. As my passport was already stamped, I didn’t feel like that was the right time to debate the merits of technology policy, not to mention how my parents were able to immigrate here. I guess my neck was not the reddest in the airport. Hot dang!

The first thing I did when I got back was appreciate how many choices besides pasta I have available to me. In the past week I’ve had Japanese, Mexican, Shanghainese, Hong Kong-style tea (not dimsum), Whole Foods pizza, and ClifBars, all delicious and in American-sized portions. Californians are so culinarily blessed.

Ostia Antica – Some Things Don’t Change

After a few days in Rome, I made an excursion out to Ostia, the old port city that Rome used to import grain from Spain, Gaul, Greece, Egypt and Tunis. The tile mosaics (click for my pics) at the top of this photo each represent one of those lands – they’re hard to see but the crocodile represents Egypt. The great thing about Ostia is that you can walk through a fairly well preserved Imperial Rome-era city. (Pompeii is an even better preserved city from which we have learned the most about ancient life, but Ostia’s former importance as Rome’s trade port had my interested piqued.)

In Ostia I saw ruins of restaurants, public baths, commercial squares, and apartments. Here is a millstone used to grind the grains used to bake bread, which were then sold hot across the street. We still enjoy dining out, fresh-baked bread, taking baths, farmer’s markets, and goods transported via complex trade networks, and it strikes me how little life has changed since 2,000 years ago. Some residents live in crappy tenements, and some live in luxury apartments. Our cities are still laid out with city hall at the center, with a “main street” lined with important institutions, commercial centers, residential areas, and there are still seemingly a temple every other street corner.

The Temple of Mithras was a true archaeological gem hidden in plain sight unless you know what you are looking for. I would have missed it too had I not been traveling with a learned scholar. These seven mosaics represents the Seven Heavens of the cult of Mithras, an ancient religion that originated in Persia sometime very much BC. This concept, so the theory goes, became the seven heavens of Christianity! In fact, Mithraism is famous for this and other similarities to Christian doctrine such as a Christ-like figure of miraculous birth who performed miracles in life and was resurrected, the crucifix, water baptism, wine as the blood of the saviour, and the idea of hell as the antithesis of heaven. As Mithrais was a competitor religion of Christianity in those days, it really makes me wonder what the world would be like had Constantine felt differently on that fateful day. All the long lines at the Vatican may instead be lining up at this pile of stones.

Eternal Rome

Considering its 2500 year history, a week was about the right amount of time to spend in Rome. There I found an Old Rome that is absolutely amazing. The ancient Romans were superb builders of empires and of buildings, and the signs were everywhere.

From the classical era: The Colosseum (click for my pics) was massive and majestic, as was the Pantheon, which doesn’t look special until you stand inside the open dome and wonder as the Medieval Europeans did at how it doesn’t collapse under its own weight. The knowledge of Roman dome building was lost in the dark ages, and apparently the secret is in building the top of the dome with much lighter material than the base, as well as the concentric rings around the base that are heavy enough to withstand the outward force of everything above.

I wish I had a picture of this because the St Sebastian catacombs museum doesn’t allow photography, but the best example I saw of quality Roman building was of a 2000 year old brick wall right next to a 19th century brick wall. The latter was built to facilitate excavation and preservation of the catacombs, and it was sloppy as junk, with lopsided-placed bricks and smeared cement. In contrast, the old Roman wall was smooth and looked machine-made.

My favorite archaeological spot of them all, though, was the bunch of open-air ruins at the Forum, where I spent a good hour imagining how it must have looked when Roman senators and caesars walked those streets.

At the Vatican: Stepping into the hall of St Peter’s Cathedral, I was immediately reminded of LOTR when the fellowship entered the Great Hall of Khazad-Dum. Expansive and inspiring, it must have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Moria.

From the Baroque era: In Rome there is an art museum filled with the most exquisite paintings and sculptures seemingly sculpted of white chocolate. No pictures, as photography was not allowed here either, but the story of how such a collection was gathered is almost as good. It is a hilarious irony that Scipione Burghese, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, used his power to get his hands on all the art he regarded as top-quality via blackmail and threats, and then go preach sermons and sell indulgences in church. He would have made Don Corleone proud! But gosh, what a collection – I have never seen lumps of stone come alive before as I did at the Museum Borghese.

Rome album1, album2, album3

Foreign aid needs some creative destruction

I recently read a fascinating book that has me now convinced that we approach foreign aid for economic development in completely the wrong way. The US gives billions and billions of foreign aid every year in large grants to other nations and through massive centralized efforts like the World Bank and this new (red) campaign. Unfortunately, much of that money comes back to the West by way of corrupt officials and businesspeople who open high net-worth accounts with the major banks. Another big chunk of that aid falls ever so short of doing any real good because they follow a pattern of central planning, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone. What does a economics PhD in Boston really know about helping Ugandans build their economy? What does Bono really know about helping Africans?

The book included a great anecdote about how Western rock musicians responded to reports of mosquito-borne malaria in Africa by hosting a charity concert and shipping lots of mosquito nets to Malawi. Once the nets arrived in the capital, they were never distributed to the countryside where they were needed the most. The city residents, however, each received multiple nets. In their hands, the nets were turned to other uses besides covering beds, and a black market developed for others who wanted to purchase the supposedly donated nets. Compare that to the NGO that operated like entrepreneurs and charged small fees for the nets. Although the NGO initially was criticized for charging the poor, they were ultimately more successful than the pop musicians because, with the small fees they collected from the poor but willing customers, they developed a supply chain that successfully delivered nets to the countryside!

Another telling example is how we are spending our money on AIDS medicines versus how those drug recipients would rather that money be spent. The West spends $1500 to prolong the life of an AIDS patient each year, yet when asked directly what they most want for themselves, the patients overwhelmingly response with the same set of priorities: jobs so that they can support their children, education for their children, avoidance of HIV transmission to their children, and jobs once their children finish school. It both warms and breaks my heart that the first thing those HIV-positive Africans want is to work and ensure a future for their children. Perhaps this is a harsh way of putting it, but the truth is that there are more worthwhile ways to spend aid money than to keep throwing money at an incurable disease. (Yet we’ll keep sending nets and AIDS cocktails because those efforts are big and newsworthy and easy to put on a political resume.)

Homegrown entrepreneurism versus central planning from afar – I think I know where I’d place my bets. This is something that resonates strongly with me, as I see this kind of decentralized market development in Silicon Valley as a key reason for its vibrancy and success. Private enterprise are naturally more oriented toward efficiently finding and delivering what people need. And government initiatives that incorporate elements of demand analysis and market feedback tend to be more successful.

I imagine that American foreign aid policy could be far more effective if it ceased most of its foreign aid and instead established “venture” funds to finance entrepreneurs with specific plans to build businesses in developing nations. These entrepreneurs can be Americans (the most diverse citizenry on earth) or local companies in need of capital to match their dreams. These development “venture” funds would differ from microfinance funds in that they would be able to finance larger projects than your typical www.kiva.org project. I can see these funds financing ranches and roads and whatever proposed by local entrepreneurs – and that’s the point, to listen less to ourselves and more to the developing nations. Repayment plans would be lenient, and whatever money returns to these funds would be reinvested for future projects. To discourage fund recipients from cheating the system, the funds would keep records on those recipients and their employees the same way technology VCs do.