The Millennium Village Simulation was extremely frustrating. Regardless of what I did or what strategy I took, I could never collect enough funds for the village or the family to improve their living conditions significantly. In order to make money for the family, I constantly tried to make investments into the family business. Cotton growing wasn’t an option because we lacked the means to transport the cotton. It cost too much money to transport the cotton into the village to create profit. I attempted to focus farming on maize to create a little bit of profit for the family and satisfy their subsistence. However, the second there was a bad crop year, a water shortage, or any other issue the family was ruined. Whenever one of the villagers died, the economic output was ruined. It was somewhat feasible to continue surviving, but upwards economic mobility was impossible. The furthest I got was year 12.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t imagine having to live in those conditions. For billions of people around the world, the sim is a representation of their life. During the simulation, there were a few opportunities to purchase infrastructure for the village at a government-subsidized price. But the amount of money that was required to make the purchase was unattainable. Government intervention or some sort of international intervention seems as if it is the only possibility to develop these communities. Without it, I don’t think it possible for these communities to have any sort of upward mobility. This sim shows the importance of how developed nations or global organizations like the UN need to interact with these communities. Without it, they are stuck in a poverty trap with no reasonable means to get out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Millennium Village Simulation was extremely frustrating. Regardless of what I did or what strategy I took, I could never collect enough funds for the village or the family to improve their living conditions significantly. In order to make money for the family, I constantly tried to make investments into the family business. Cotton growing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5093,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5093"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6922,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6910\/revisions\/6922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}