Essays, cases, and commentary by John A. Donaldson on sufficiency-first, small works, and the politics of poverty reduction.https://johnadonaldson.com/en-ushttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/power-to-all/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/power-to-all/Ever go to bed on the 21st night of September? Or wake up to a lovely day? A playlist with no downers, no repeat artists, and a soft spot for 1970.Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTLiving Documenthttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/a-bowl-filled-to-the-brim/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/a-bowl-filled-to-the-brim/Sufficiency First now has a logo: a bowl filled to the brim, with a sun rising above it. Three shapes carry the whole argument.Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTNotehttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/my-father-lifetime-achievement/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/my-father-lifetime-achievement/Tulsa Global Alliance honored my father, Dr. Robert H. Donaldson, with its 2026 Lifetime Achievement award.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTNotehttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/singapore-craft-beer/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/singapore-craft-beer/Where I drink craft beer in Singapore, and where I still mean to: taprooms in shophouses, a stall in a hawker centre and a quietly dog-friendly favourite.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTTravel notehttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/singapore-rum-bars/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/singapore-rum-bars/A to-try list, not a review: six Singapore bars with a reputation for serious rum. I haven't been to any of them — yet.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTTravel notehttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/singapore-speakeasies/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/singapore-speakeasies/A map of the hidden bars I've collected in Singapore — behind unmarked doors, up back staircases and tucked inside grand old hotels.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTTravel notehttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/what-is-the-dialectic/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/what-is-the-dialectic/Progress builds; the dialectic breaks. Why the difference confuses almost everyone, and why both ideas deserve more suspicion than they get.Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/what-to-do-in-singapore/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/what-to-do-in-singapore/My standing answer when visitors ask what to do in Singapore — outdoor spots, museums, hawker centres, the better-known sights, and an hour's ferry ride to Bintan when two days somewhere else appeals.Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTLiving Documenthttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/non-broadway-showstoppers/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/non-broadway-showstoppers/A working list of songs in which someone crosses a line inside themselves, and the music turns that crossing into an event. Started as prog rock; ended somewhere stranger.Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTLiving Documenthttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/movies-without-tension/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/movies-without-tension/A working list of films that never reach for your pulse — parody, comic competence and formal artifice — assembled for a teenager who bolts at the first sign of tension.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTLiving Documenthttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/nation-at-250/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/nation-at-250/A holiday note on America's 250th — turning to Amanda Gorman on nations that see themselves striving toward their ideals rather than claiming to have arrived.Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTLiving Documenthttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/china-local-government/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/china-local-government/Five levels, forty thousand townships, and a single word that means four different things — a primer on why China's local state defeats the people who study it.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTField notehttps://johnadonaldson.com/personal/academics-who-can-write/https://johnadonaldson.com/personal/academics-who-can-write/A growing list of academics and academic-adjacent writers who produced clear, readable prose without sacrificing rigor — and the question of how they did it.Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTLiving Documenthttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/end-of-the-gross/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/end-of-the-gross/A new UN commission wants to move beyond GDP. The trouble: the UN built the architecture that makes GDP mandatory in practice — and a dashboard of voluntary indicators won't dethrone a metric that's required to belong.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/montana-and-guizhou/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/montana-and-guizhou/A ranching town of 140 in Montana, a poor province in southwest China, and the same bargain made in two languages. On data centers, the 'scissors gap,' and what self-rule turns out not to deliver.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/taiwan-two-clocks/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/taiwan-two-clocks/What Taiwan forgot about its own pathway out of poverty. On TSMC's triumph, two divergent clocks, and the difference between an economy that includes its poor versus one that just redistributes to them.Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/nepal-small-steps-big-gains/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/nepal-small-steps-big-gains/Nepal cut poverty substantially over three decades despite slow growth, weak governance, and stalled land reforms. Co-authored with Siddharth Poddar for Stonebench's Perspectives blog — what actually worked, and why.Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTOp-edhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/what-is-sufficiency-first/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/what-is-sufficiency-first/The idea that poor people benefit more when you generate opportunities that are small in scale and low-tech. Obvious as a prescription — heretical in development.Tue, 10 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/the-end-game/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/the-end-game/If we brought sufficiency-first to its logical conclusion, what would society look like? On scale, Kuhn, and the call for an epistemic community.Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/large-scale-from-small-scale/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/large-scale-from-small-scale/KFC, Nescafé, vegetables, cut flowers — all sourced from small Chinese farmers. How land rights kept agribusiness small-scale, for a while.Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTNotehttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/organic-alternative/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/organic-alternative/Lessons from Isan, the rice basket of Thailand, on what it takes to shift small-scale farmers into certified organic production.Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTNotehttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/cash-crop-alternative/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/cash-crop-alternative/Most poor people in poor countries farm. When subsistence becomes unviable, mainstream economists prescribe scaling up. But there are other ways.Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTNotehttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/the-journey-begins/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/the-journey-begins/My 'discovery' of a fifty-year-old idea. How a puzzle about two neighboring Chinese provinces led, eventually, to what I now call sufficiency-first.Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMTEssayhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/commentary-china-100-years/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/commentary-china-100-years/Op-ed for Channel News Asia on the centrality of poverty in Chinese politics, a century after the founding of the Communist Party.Fri, 11 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMTOp-edhttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/bbc-radio-xi-jinping/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/bbc-radio-xi-jinping/A brief interview on BBC Radio's News Day discussing the announcement that China had eradicated absolute rural poverty.Sun, 28 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMTBBC Radiohttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/poor-people-in-china-today/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/poor-people-in-china-today/A short video on the persistence of poverty in China — a reminder that the 'end of absolute poverty' is not the end of poverty.Fri, 26 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMTVideohttps://johnadonaldson.com/writing/lies-damned-lies-scopus/https://johnadonaldson.com/writing/lies-damned-lies-scopus/On the seductions and distortions of citation databases — from someone who has spent a lot of time reading them.Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMTEssay