In this article for Liberty Unbound, I write from Iquitos, Peru, a town encircled by the Amazon jungle, and examine what life there reveals about poverty, development, culture, and the limits of material prosperity.

Iquitos has space, resources, food, and access to the outside world, yet it also shows how economic growth without reason, planning, hygiene, self-restraint, and intellectual development can lead not to civilization, but to noise, disorder, overconsumption, and stagnation.

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