Why is it that this question is never answered?

Maybe it is because the answer would make many with power and influence very uncomfortable.

'Why so much discontent?' is an important questions, and deserves a thoughtful answer. Over the last five years, since the banking and finance implosion of 2007/2008 there has been a huge amount of analysis, but nothing that seems to get to the root cause of the problem. Because of this, the question of how to fix the problem remains unanswered.

I was a problem solver in in my corporate career. My job was to help the company earn more profit. Describing the performance of the company was not enough. The question of how the company was performing was important and helped give some idea of how much better the performance could be. Financial accounting reports told us the performance of the company, but it was the analytical accounts that gave us measures of how the company was performing. The analytical data helped us to identify what needed to be fixed.

What happens when why is asked?

The culture of decision level management requires that the why is never asked. There is no career path for staff that ask these questions and nor any future for consultants that ask these questions.

I was not good at adopting to this culture. I have been described by some of the World Bank staff as a consultant who would give an honest report on an analysis of the situation but not necessarily the answer that the World Bank would want. This was not good news for my career. Few World Bank staff members wanted to have to handle a result that they did not anticipate and could not control.

I have worked for some companies that wanted objective analysis, and it has been very satisfying to see the results. Most of the organizations in modern society are functioning a long way below their potential, especially when viewed through the lens of society as a whole rather than simply the money profit and stock price perspective.

This chapter gives an overview of the problems that seem to be causing socio-economic discontent. The problems are many, but the analysis of the problems seems to be framed within a context that itself is flawed. The problem of not enough development resources. The problems of the development process. The problem of information in development. This chapter starts to move beyond the symptoms of the problems to understand the root causes that are the underlying reasons for development failure. This chapter starts to identify systemic factors. A start is made to go beyond the NORTH's perceptions of development problems as commonly portrayed in the media to a view that reflects more of the SOUTH's view. Being realistic about the why and how development has failed is very uncomfortable. It might even be dangerous. But the cost of failed development is huge, and will get worse.