I stumbled upon this interesting youtube video on Nauru - an island country I've probably heard of as background noise, but don't know anything about. It's a pretty fascinating story of rags to riches to rags, corruption, and all around bad planning.
At one time in the 1970's, because of the phosphate deposits, it was the richest country per capita in the world, with residents sitting around collecting $176,000 per year from the government. The US per capita at the time was $44,000. The government first used much of that money to build luxury hotels all around the world. This all went to hell in the 1990s-2000s, with phosphate drying up and them having to sell all their international hotels. With the result that Nauru is now one of the poorest countries in the world.
For a while after the phosphate ran dry, they had a deal to take in "unwanted refugees" from Australia, mostly composed of Afghanis, Iranians, and others from that region. They were making a profit of $500,000 per refugee. That dried up too, with the refugees living in horrendous conditions, practically outside, for years. Disease and suicide took many. Of the others and where they went, no one on the island talks about. In fact while a visa for tourists (less than 200 per year) is $50, a visa for journalists runs $8000, to discourage reporters.
The phosphate mining destroyed most of the island for agriculture, so now the vast majority of food is imported processed food which has led to them being the most obese country in the world. Apparently diabetes runs rampant. They also pretty much polluted the only natural fresh water source on the island and now get their fresh water through desalination.
Next up with the phosphate gone, they are working with Canada to mine the near shore waters for rare earths and metals.
Anyways, I found this to be a very interesting 16 minutes.
https://youtu.be/x1KrGZRzVGY
