I was walking on the beaches of Marinduque, Philippines when I stopped and turned to my Filipino constituencies and asked if they wanted to learn a little about economics. They didn't protest enough for me to stop. Looking out I saw about 40 canoe sized boats with fisherman not too far from the shore. Farther out in the richer waters were larger boats. I asked how many men could be put in each smaller boat. "2". Then I asked how many would be in the larger boat. "5". Then we discussed how much more fish the larger boat could catch. We settled on about 10 times as much. When asked why anyone would use the smaller boats the answer was money, they can't just go buy a bigger boat. Then I laid out the following scenario. A business man and politician wanted to increase the amount of fish that could be produced fisherman in that area, but wouldn't do it because of the political effects. First of all I pointed out it would take 4 of the larger boats to replace all 40 of those boats. The number of men thereby employed would be 20. Each of those fisherman would make more money, enjoy better hours, and would have the added benefit of reducing the pains their hit or miss way of fishing was causing. Politically it would be disastrous, for sure those 20 men and their families would vote for him, but he would face strong opposition from the 60 whose lives were now ruined. Politics and progress. Most of the time these two are very incompatible.