Here's a Limits to Growth in international development policy.
Condition: level of economic prosperity in a rural region.
Growing Action: international development programs (UN,
religious groups, USAID, etc) As more development programs come
in, the level of economic prosperity of the region begins to improve.
Slowing Action: repressive actions on the part of the economic
elite against the cooperatives that the rural people have formed.
Limiting Condition: The economic and political elite of
a country (this was certainly true for Guatemala) actually depend
upon the people in rural areas staying "underdeveloped".
These rural people provide a cheap labor force to the city businesses,
the plantations, and the city elite as housemaids, cooks, etc.
The LAST thing the political elite want is for the rural villages
to become prosperous and stop providing a cheap labor force. In
Guatemala, the Army eventually went out into the villages with
lists of all the heads of cooperatives and killed them for being
"communists".
This is all very well documented in Cultural Survival and other
areas.
How to get around the "limiting condition"? We need
international pressure to be brought to bear on the national elite
along with some assistance in making the activities of this elite
more productive so that they can compete in national and international
markets without the repressive policies against ethnic groups
within their borders.
Many thanks to Kathleen Truman,
Environmental Studies Program, University of Nevada Las Vegas,
for submitting this example.