H&N Turnpike

I borrow the term turnpike from Bob Townsend, who used the term to explain "valued money as a way to facilitate trade between agents who meet as strangers in spatially separated isolated markets with no communication or transactions between the markets at any time."

OK, that was a mouthful, I admit. Sometimes, my former economist avatar peeks through. To simplify, you're talking about two markets that never communicate, and thus will never converge into one.

I just experienced a non-convergence first hand yesterday. I organized a meeting comprising of two groups of people, the health people and the nutrition people. What's the difference you say? Oh, but in the public health sector, it's like north and south pole.

Full disclosure, I'm in the health camp. I view issues from a standard health lens and am not ashamed to admit it. When I was working overseas two years ago, the N people were like those annoying relatives who showed up at inopportune times, demanded your undivided attention to a minuscule problem of theirs and would just never leave.

So, for this meeting, I spent about a month meeting different people, and trying to understand each of the camp's viewpoint.

One camp's stance was that if the child dies, who cares about other things. The other camp speaks that if the child is malnourished, then surviving is as bad.

I felt that each see the other as a threat as public health funding is drying up globally, and therefore some hard choices need to be made on the donors part. And as topics, they are competing for attention, and can not collaborate.

The meeting was a success by any standard. The people came, they said the right things. Promises were made. But at the end, I was left feeling that the children were cheated, as these two camps will continue to go their own way.