A review of a book on the shortfalls of our approach to economic development:
- “In the realm of benevolent intervention, the standing rule has always been that you can walk into a poor country and, with enough experts, supplies and bureaucratic correctives, make it rich and alleviate the woes of poverty. But according to Easterly, this is a fatuous idea that has sparked more havoc than good.”
- “According to Easterly, a deep racism and willful neglect of history have informed much of the West’s relationship with ‘the Rest,’ the poverty-challenged Southern Hemisphere.”
- “The result is a kind of development-office blindness, a failure to see that the poor deserve individual rights as much as any citizen of a flourishing society.”
It would be interesting to see a comparison of US economic development efforts in rural areas in America.