When We Build More Around What Waits
Public goods infrastructure—the science, the inputs, the credit—sits lightly used in narrow economies where we in Development work.
When public goods wait unused, the response is to build more around them. Access, information, and delivery are adjusted. Programs are built to pull producers toward the conditions. Why what is already there goes unused does not enter the frame before building more.
But each producer operates on the PPF, the Production Possibilities Frontier. They act within their own tradeoffs—what they have, what they give up, and what they can turn into income. The trade-off on the PPF is settled before production, not after. Lack of public goods access is not what keeps the producer from moving; the absence of visible income does.
Building more public goods to fix unused public goods misses the wait. The conditions do not wait because delivery is broken. They wait because income is not in sight.
A Reader Observation from Broadacre Farming
Based on an observation shared by Nic Fulton following publication of Unquestion #3.
An old friend from my time at the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, Nic Fulton, who worked in precision agriculture with Canon in Australia, shared an observation from broadacre farming.
"Some changes are easy to see. Laser leveling. New planting patterns. Different varieties.
Others like precision technologies remain invisible. A field can look much the same while the technology being used is not. The 'over-the-fence' effect is low because neighboring farmers cannot easily see what changed."
Two producers may operate under the same conditions and still arrive at different outcomes. Sometimes only a question remains:
"How could Bill afford a new BMW?"