Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter
&gt; A cheap, clean source of energy would change everything.<p>Like nuclear fission?  Or how about solar?<p>Anyhow, while I think the intentions are good, my experience in 3rd world countries has me convinced that all the charity in the world won&#x27;t help.<p>In general, the problem in 3rd world countries isn&#x27;t education, or sanitation, or lack of capital, or mosquito nets, etc...<p>The problem is corruption and safety.  I&#x27;ve seen it in my wife&#x27;s country - savings rates are generally high, there&#x27;s lots of labour, a ton of entrepreneurial spirit and the barrier to entry is more or less zero.  The problem is, the second you start any sort of enterprise, someone will rob you.  Police will demand bribes.  Politicians will demand bribes.  If you don&#x27;t give in, they&#x27;ll send their criminal friends after you.  Even if you do give in, they may anyway.  Bandits will come rob you in the night, and if you&#x27;re unlucky enough to be there at the time, they&#x27;ll shoot you.  If you&#x27;re lucky, they just take some cash.  There&#x27;s literally zero incentive to do anything, lest you get robbed and&#x2F;or killed.  That&#x27;s reality.  You want to fix the 3rd world, you need to start with law and order.  Nothing can happen until people feel safe, and feel like doing something will actually improve their life.<p>After that, it&#x27;s infrastructure.  Power, roads, emergency services, bridges, etc...  Infrastructure enables travel, it enables businesses, lights, and so on.  When you have infrastructure you can bring your products to market.  And so on (most people know the economic benefits of infrastructure).<p>In my experience, families in the third world often have the equivalent of thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars saved.  Witness how much money Syrians and Afghans pay to get smuggled into Europe.  They won&#x27;t invest that because they don&#x27;t feel safe, but they have no qualms giving a smuggler thousands of dollars.<p>So much charity is just a band-aid, or worse, gets siphoned off to corrupt entities.  You fix corruption and safety issues, and the third world is the new first world.  But no, we give charity with one hand, and with the other are propping up horrible dictators, overthrowing democracies for choosing the wrong ideology, and encouraging corruption and oligarchy.  Given what&#x27;s happened in the world since I&#x27;ve been old enough to follow the news, I&#x27;m more convinced than ever that the developed world simply wants to keep the third world as dependent colonies.<p>tl;dr - long rant, something something corruption.