There’s a peculiar dynamic at play in global conversations about economic development. When policymakers, academics, and commentators from wealthy nations discuss poverty reduction, infrastructure gaps, or industrial policy in the developing world, they do so from a position of profound psychological distance. They have, quite simply, less of a chip on their shoulder and far less skin in the game than their counterparts in the countries being discussed.
This isn’t meant as an indictment of individual character or intentions. Rather, it’s an observation about how economic security fundamentally shapes our relationship to development questions. When your country already has reliable electricity, functioning courts, widespread literacy, and robust social safety nets, discussions about building these things elsewhere become abstract intellectual exercises rather than urgent existential matters.
Consider the development economist at a prestigious Western university writing papers about optimal agricultural policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her career advancement depends on publishing rigorous research and contributing to academic debates. Whether smallholder farmers in Ethiopia actually see their incomes rise by ten percent matters to her professionally and perhaps morally, but it doesn’t determine whether her own children eat well or receive good educations. She can afford to be patient, nuanced, and cautious in her recommendations. She can privilege theoretical elegance over messy pragmatism.
Contrast this with a minister of agriculture in that same Ethiopian context. His political survival, his reputation, and his sense of national pride are all bound up in whether agricultural productivity actually increases. The pressure is visceral and immediate. Every percentage point of GDP growth represents real improvements in the lives of millions of his fellow citizens, including quite possibly his own extended family. The stakes are written on the faces of constituents he encounters regularly. He cannot afford the luxury of waiting for perfect information or ideal conditions.
This gap in urgency extends beyond individual psychology to entire institutional cultures. International development organizations headquartered in Washington, Geneva, or Brussels operate on comfortable budgets, offer their staff members excellent salaries and benefits, and maintain prestigious reputations largely independent of whether their projects succeed or fail in any given country. A failed microcredit program or an infrastructure project that runs over budget might generate some critical reports and uncomfortable meetings, but the organization continues, the staff remain employed, and everyone moves on to the next initiative.
Meanwhile, a government in a developing country dealing with that same failed project faces potential political crisis, capital flight, damaged credibility with investors, and genuine hardship for citizens who were counting on jobs or services that never materialized. The margin for error is much thinner when you’re working without the cushion of accumulated wealth and institutional stability.
The chip-on-the-shoulder dimension is equally important. When you come from a country that has already achieved development, there’s a tendency toward a certain complacency about the path that got you there. Historical amnesia sets in. Americans forget the massive state intervention that built their railroads, the protectionist policies that nurtured infant industries, and the morally questionable aspects of their own industrialization. Europeans conveniently overlook colonialism’s role in their capital accumulation and the often brutal conditions of their own industrial revolutions. East Asians who lecture others about free markets sometimes downplay the heavy government guidance that characterized their own developmental states.
This amnesia allows wealthy country observers to adopt a posture of detached reasonableness when discussing what developing countries should do. They can afford to be patient advocates for good governance, environmental sustainability, and democratic norms, all while forgetting that their own countries often achieved development first and worried about perfecting these other dimensions later. The luxury of this stance only becomes apparent when you realize that no wealthy country representative is losing sleep over whether their recommendations might slow growth by a crucial few years or cause their own nation to fall behind.
People from countries still in the development race, by contrast, often carry a chip on their shoulder precisely because they’re acutely aware of how recently they or their neighbors were poor, or how easily they could slip backward. They remember what it felt like to be patronized by richer nations, to have their currencies collapse, to send their brightest minds abroad because there weren’t opportunities at home. This lived experience of vulnerability creates a different mindset entirely, one that’s less inclined toward gradualism and more willing to take risks or cut corners that make wealthier observers uncomfortable.
The skin-in-the-game distinction also manifests in how people think about trade-offs. A World Bank consultant might write a thoughtful memo about how a proposed dam project could displace indigenous communities and damage ecosystems, recommending a slower, more consultative approach. She’s almost certainly correct that these concerns deserve serious consideration. But she flies back to her comfortable home in a developed country where reliable electricity is so taken for granted that people barely think about it.The developing country official reading that memo is weighing those valid concerns against persistent blackouts that shut down hospitals, prevent children from studying at night, and make it nearly impossible to attract manufacturing investment that could employ hundreds of thousands. Both perspectives have legitimacy, but only one person has to live daily with the consequences of continued energy poverty. Only one person will face angry constituents if the lights don’t come on. Only one person’s political future and national pride are on the line.
This dynamic creates a subtle but pervasive imbalance in global development discourse. The people with the most influence over development policy and narrative, those who staff major international organizations, write for prestigious publications, and teach at elite universities, are disproportionately from countries that have already solved the problems they’re advising others about. They can afford to emphasize process over results, sustainability over speed, and caution over ambition.
None of this means that their advice is wrong or that concerns about governance, environmental protection, or social equity are misplaced. These things genuinely matter. But the difference in urgency and existential investment is real and consequential. It helps explain why developing country leaders sometimes pursue policies that make Western observers uncomfortable, why they might be more willing to work with authoritarian partners or accept environmental trade-offs, and why they occasionally bristle at advice that seems to prioritize perfection over progress.
The uncomfortable truth is that having less skin in the game can make it easier to be right in an abstract sense while being unhelpful in a practical one. It’s easier to advocate for ideal policies when you’re not the one who has to implement them under severe resource constraints, political pressure, and urgent timelines. It’s easier to counsel patience when you’re not the one running out of time.This isn’t a call to dismiss expertise from wealthy countries or to excuse poor policy choices in developing ones. Rather, it’s a suggestion that humility is warranted on all sides. Those of us fortunate enough to live in already-developed countries might acknowledge that our detachment, however intellectually sophisticated our arguments might be, comes from a place of privilege. We have the luxury of being cautious because our own societies are no longer balanced on the knife’s edge between poverty and prosperity.
And perhaps we might listen a bit more carefully when people from developing countries seem impatient with our measured advice, not because they’re unsophisticated or don’t care about the concerns we raise, but because they’re playing a different game entirely—one where the stakes are higher, the margin for error smaller, and the rewards for success vastly more meaningful to their daily lives.
