"This guy is just another reductionist sociologist trying to come up with that one...one...one...reason why an extremely complicated situation is perpetually botched."<p>He didn't strike me that way (I read the whole book, not just this chapter on Cameroon).  Granted, the answer to "why are countries poor?" can never be one thing.<p>I think his point wasn't so much that the government was stealing but that the government created a system that reduced people's incentives to be productive.