- ISBN13: 9780143038825
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
From one of the world’s best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man’s Burden is his widely anticipa… More >>
“White Man’s Burden”
This book by William Easterly is obviously correct in so far as it details that huge bureaucratic programs for poor people, organized by the UN, IMF, and World Bank, have not worked. The author’s best example pertains to various malaria programs. He claims that 12 cents per person worth of malaria medicine is all that it takes to save a life, but, despite $trillions spent, most of the money has not gotten through, and millions continue to die, slowly, painfully and needlessly.
The weakness of the book lies in its small mindedness. It dares not point out that the world’s love for and implementation of goofy, inefficient, and often deadly bureaucratic programs everywhere has essentially the same effect everywhere. Welfare programs for American Blacks amounted to near genocide, Communist programs in the Soviet Union and China impoverished and killed millions, kids riot in France in the silly belief that gov’t programs can guarantee lifetime employment even as unemployment rises and income continues to fall dangerously.
The main source of the idea that gov’t bureaucracies can be like Santa Claus was Julius Caesar, George III, and Karl Marx, and is now the Democratic Party in the United States. The intellectual antipode to this antediluvian thinking comes from the Republican Party, also in the United States, which believes, not in gov’t bureaucracies, but in law and order, capitalism, limited bureaucracy, and religious/family values. Easterly’s book is wonderful in detailing the precise failings of the UN, IMF/World Bank but is ultimately politically correct, meaningless, without context, and non-actionable, having failed to trace backwards to the Marxist/Democratic origins of the particular bureaucratic cancer about which he writes so scholarly.
Also posted to TheDumbDemocrat
Rating: 3 / 5
The author makes a well intentioned effort to cover the material but it’s often superficial. He tries to simply cover too much material. He has a bad habit of making jokes regarding the poor judgment of the players involved. Its not that the jokes aren’t clever, but they come off as superficial and take away from the seriousness of the subject matter. If you know nothing about the topic it’s a good first read, but that’s where its usefulness ends.
Rating: 2 / 5
Whilte the author has some important and sometimes hard-hitting points to make about foreign aid and its effectiveness (or lack thereof), it’s obvious he still wants to get invited to the cool cocktail parties in New York. He correctly focuses on the aid community’s penchant for big projects with no specific accountability vs. smaller, user-oriented ones. However, he seems obliged to maintain a veneer of “neutrality” by opposing military operations despite their proven success in cases like Japan and South Korea. He also over-uses statistics in questionable circumstances that make for heavy going and undermine his credibility. It’s also a little pathetic that he has to make clear from little family vignettes that he is a vegetarian and imposes an artsy-fartsy lifestyle on his kids. Not a surprise that he’s divorced. Still worth the read.
Rating: 4 / 5
All of the reviews given are by stakeholders who are reviewing for the sake of agreement. I am writing as a practitioner as well, but as a book and resource it reads like an expanded Economist article, and less dry. Easterly can be considered as an iconoclast, and sufficiently gives some solutions at the end to address the inadequacies of the system. Sen of “Developmental as Freedom” has derided his book as simplistic, and I would agree with him. It is a “fun” read, in a tongue-in-cheek way. Any economist that can talk about “Company A making and selling crap to Company B” or talk about flatulence in an economic sense based on what his children’s anecdotes or jokes sardonically that the only good to come out of the Vietnam war was good Vietnamese restaurants (”Cambodian food is pretty good too!”) should get my vote. It may be “simplistic” and dumbs down a lot of complexities, but like his last book, he stands by the maxim of “People react to incentives”; you can’t tell people what they want, you have to help them “search” for their best solutions.
As I write this, I am watching the Frontline special on AIDS funding, and Easterly talks briefly on the treatment vs. preventation debate and how/why AIDS is getting/not getting the attention it has. Overall it is a worthwhile read. He has a lot of knowledge but personally I would prefer more data rather than just anecdotes. He has them but chose not to overwhelm the reader
Rating: 3 / 5
While in my late twenties I traveled throughout the third world for nearly four years like a forerunner to the present day backpackers. Of the zillions of situations I encountered while staying in flea bag hotels, riding chicken buses, going deck passage on over crowded freighters, hitch hiking through central Africa, one memory stands out. I was crossing through Tanzanian immigration near Arusha. The Black Tanzanian immigration officer asked an older Austrian gentleman in front of me what his occupation was. The Austrian in broken English replied, “I’m an expert.” To which the Tanzanian remarked, “Just what we need, another expert!”
I can wait for the paperback to come out. I’m still a penny pincher.
Rating: 5 / 5