That's a brilliant idea. As an economist I know that ownership/internalisation is essential for prosperity.I feel deeply for the third world. My lifes work is devoted to the cause. However I do not contribute to charities because I think that they are going about it the wrong way. In many cases aid has been counterpoductive, simply because of bad management. Your idea would encourage creative soutions with thaught and understanding, rather than just buckets of money.

One problem I can see with it is that it sounds a little patronising/imperialist. It may struggle for acceptance. Adopting a country properly implies more than just money, aid needs to be tied to sound policy and so fourth. The stick as well as the carrot. Recent events in Iraq highlight the problems with this approuch. Can you think of a way (PR) to overcome this problem? Perhaps a diffent name, like brother/sister country.

P.S. This is a timely issue that I think would attract interest from the white house. The US has recently been embarking on a radical reform to its aid program and its starting to move in the direction you have sugested, as is the world bank. The new sytem is somewhat like a scholarship program: with aid going to those that meet certain requirements. The world bank and IMF have encountered ploitical resistance in getting countries to meet its requirements. Vested intersts and recalcitrant regimes portray these programs as exploitation and western imperialism. Uneducated constituents are easily led by these creatures er people. The PR campaign needs work.

This may be less intimidating if it is done by individuals and small groups--exchange programs can be set up where we learn each other's languages and culture. It's less patronizing and large countries (like the US) could apply their resources to several smaller countries. These organizations could have names like "the American-Israeli friendship league" (which is effectively handled by American synogogues). There are also many sister organizations, for example, my church in the USA has a sister church in India. We help them to improve their school.

Anyway, it seems that the big picture would be to establish these international friendship leagues that are not based on ethnic heritage or religious denomonation, try to get them integrated into the schools (foreign languages) and try to get everyone involved in one of them.

Yeah I know how this would work..... take basically a country like Congo it has 60 million population and a GDP of about $40 billion US dollors. This means that the USA could agree that of their 300-member Transitional Constituent Assembly 100 of these will be duly elected US citizens and that Congalise politicians would gain perhaps three senate seats in return (obviously the US senate or Congress is perhaps thrity times more powerful) Each migrant politician would have an appointed overseer and vice-versa on the congalise side.

Now the US would have a vested interest in looking after it's little brother. If the congo were to fall into a civil war then this could have serious repercussions for the USA. There would have to be single line goals and objectives over perhaps 20 years...... It's radical but might work. Espeicially if it looked like everyone agreed. I could forsee hundreds of nations lining up to intgrate for these 20 years with the US or China or Japan or the EU (which is wealtier than the US even if they do waste a lot in farming supsidies and general shananigans)

There is a flaw in the thinking here. If only there was more charity in the world... but can top-level "techniques" like this really change the raw nature of mankind?

Similar to perpetual motion machines... it just "seems like" there should be a way to squeeze more goodness out, some how. But I am not so sure... Worth a try, I guess.