The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00IUO2SLW | Format: EPUB
The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor Description
Over the last century, global poverty has largely been viewed as a technical problem that merely requires the right "expert" solutions. Yet all too often, experts recommend solutions that fix immediate problems without addressing the systemic political factors that created them in the first place. Further, they produce an accidental collusion with "benevolent autocrats", leaving dictators with yet more power to violate the rights of the poor. In The Tyranny of Experts, economist William Easterly, best-selling author of The White Man's Burden, traces the history of the fight against global poverty, showing not only how these tactics have trampled the individual freedom of the world's poor, but how in doing so have suppressed a vital debate about an alternative approach to solving poverty: freedom. Presenting a wealth of cutting-edge economic research, Easterly argues that only a new model of development - one predicated on respect for the individual rights of people in developing countries, that understands that unchecked state power is the problem and not the solution - will be capable of ending global poverty once and for all.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 15 hours and 58 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Recorded Books
- Audible.com Release Date: March 7, 2014
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00IUO2SLW
William Easterly, an economics professor at NYU, has written several iconoclastic books on economic development. His latest book is his best, in my view. The book provides a history of development policy from the early twentieth century onward. Easterly analyzes how what he labels "authoritarian development policy" -- state-run, top-down policy -- came to dominate the field of development so thoroughly.
Easterly sees the consequences of this dominance as being tragic, with governments and their hired experts having run roughshod over the interests of poor people. His book provides many examples of callous remarks by development officials dismissing the hardships their policies have imposed on people whose lives were plenty hard enough to begin with. Easterly is skeptical of the technocratic, data-driven policies that Bill Gates has been associated with in recent years, doubting the reliability of both the data these policies are based on and the rosy assessments of the outcomes of the policies.
Easterly worked for years at the World Bank and had a ringside seat at the formulation and implementation of the Bank's polices, most of which he now sees as ineffective and, often, counterproductive. He certainly has the credentials to make these arguments; it will be interesting to see what counterarguments the development policy establishment makes. I would hate to think that Easterly's arguments will be ignored, but he notes that similar arguments in the past have been.
Much as I like the book, I do have a few caveats. I like the fact that the book is fairly brief and very readable -- I probably wouldn't have read it if it hadn't been! -- but the scholarship seemed a trifle thin to me.
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