The White Mans Burden

Posted on 06 July 2018 by William Easterly

A professor of economics pens an informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West s efforts to improve the lot of the so called developing world, and provides constructive suggestions on how to move forward From one of the worldas best known development economistsaan excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the Westas 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 Manas Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunchaa brilliant and blistering indictment of the Westas economic policies for the worldas poor Sometimes angry, sometimes irreverent, but always clear eyed and rigorous, Easterly argues that we in the West need to face our own history of ineptitude and draw the proper conclusions, especially at a time when the question of our ability to transplant Western institutions has become one of the most pressing issues we face. Free Read [ The White Mans Burden ] Author [ William Easterly ] – kino-fada.fr William Easterly s poorly written challenge to Jeffrey Sachs and the global aid machine entitled, White Man s Burden, was a selection from my Global Issues and Ethics book club at the Elliot Bay book company Here is a link to an excellent review of Easterly s book www.foreignaffairs.org 2006030 I agree almost completely with the author Easterly has important points to make about accountability in global aid dispersement but his message is drowned in this book with his abuse of colleagues William Easterly s poorly written challenge to Jeffrey Sachs and the global aid machine entitled, White Man s Burden, was a selection from my Global Issues and Ethics book club at the Elliot Bay book company Here is a link to an excellent review of Easterly s book www.foreignaffairs.org 2006030 I agree almost completely with the author Easterly has important points to make about accountability in global aid dispersement but his message is drowned in this book with his abuse of colleagues that disagree with him and a...The New York University professor and former World Bank economist, Bill Easterly, provides a scathing critique of the grand plans to transform entire Third World societies through development aid, as promoted by academic and other luminaries such as Jeffrey Sachs and Bono, as well as by many bilateral and multilateral devel...Overall a pretty disappointing sequel, of sorts, to his earlier The Elusive Quest for Growth Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics The latter remains one of my favorite books, examining as it does the long, convoluted history of economic thought on development and how different theories, from Rostow s Takeoff to a singular focus on population control, or education, have, when implemented, failed to lift the Third World out of poverty It was both a wonderful intellectual Overall a pretty disappointing sequel, of sorts, to his earlier The Elusive Quest for Growth Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics The latter remains one of my favorite books, examining as it does the long, convoluted history of economic thought on development and how different theories, from Rostow s Takeoff to a singular focus on population control, or education, have, when implemented, failed to lift the Third World out of poverty It was both a wonderful intellectual history and a history of how ideas have real, though in this case unfortunate, impacts on policy.This book is messier It veers all over the place, briefly discussing things like radios and TVs per capita in Africa only to start talking about safe drinking water programs It makes a too pat division between aid searchers, who try to find small solutions to poverty, and aid planners, who seek to deal with macro problems He says all successful foreign aid ...Aren t you all so happy that now that I m in school, I can copy and paste my reading journals as goodreads reviews I ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I was excited to get started on it The first chapter, I wasn t feeling so sure about it His introduction to global development issues seemed to be very market heavy, and I kept thinking Can we pursue this line of thinking without acknowledging the role that globalized market capitalism has played in creating the very economic i Aren t you all so happy that now that I m in school, I can copy and paste my reading journals as goodreads reviews I ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I was excited to get started on it The first chapter, I wasn t feeling so sure about it His introduction to global development issues seemed to be very market heavy, and I kept thinking Can we pursue this line of thinking without acknowledging the role that globalized market capitalism has played in creating the very economic inequalities that we all find so reprehensible My misgivings stayed with me throughout the book, due to little details like a complimentary nod to the Chicago boys in the context of Chile s history Which is a shame, because there was a lot I liked about this book I am mostly on board with Easterly s critiques of the World Bank and IMF, and I really like his ideas about bottom up development and the importance of accountability in development work I thought Part III o...I have been really primed by all of the other authors in this field about what this book is about, so it is hard for me be be impartial in my review of this book That being said this book is good but I have some reservations in saying it was great At times I felt like it was a little bit insulting to my intelligence while at the same time it was interesting because of the counterarguments to traditional thinking in the development field he makes This book is almost a direct response, or count I have been really primed by all of the other authors in this field about what this book is about, so it is hard for me be be impartial in my review of this book That being said this book is good but I have some reservations in saying it was great At times I felt like it was a little bit insulting to my intelligence while at the same time it was interesting because of the counterarguments to traditional thinking in the development field he makes This book is almost a direct response, or counter argument to Jeffery Sach s The End of Poverty which argues that aid works and we needaid to make the world a better place Instead, Easte...This is one of thedisturbing books I have read, in the sense that it challenged my world view and made me question my field of study at the time international development In fact, this book really steered me in another direction at a crucial time in my life, while I was in grad school at NYU where Easterly is a professor For those who work in international development, the idea that such well intentioned projects may actually doharm than good is deeply unsettling Evenso be This is one of thedisturbing books I have read, in the sense that it challenged my world view and made me question my field of study at the time international development In fact, this book really steered...Found this on my friend s bookshelf in Lima From what I remember of Malcolm Gladwell s Tipping Point I read a few chapters at a book store cafe a while back , Easterly has a similar approach of simplifying a complex phenomena by coining terms here, Planners and Seekers and employing a ton of analogies like every other paragraph to make his argumentaccessible to a larger audience He also repeats emphasizes his points a lot, perhaps for the same reason. which I found a little annoyin Found this on my friend s bookshelf in Lima From what I remember of Malcolm Gladwell s Tipping Point I read a few chapters at a book store cafe a while back , Easterly has a similar approach of simplifying a complex phenomena by coining terms here, Planners and Seekers and employing a ton of analogies like every other paragraph to make his argumentaccessible to a larger audience He also repeats emphasizes his points a lot, perhaps for the same reason. which I found a little annoying.As I started reading, at first I had a negative reaction to his choice for the title, to say the least, which references a particular poem As much as I ...Easterly s conclusion is controversial because he recommends a market solution to the problem of poverty in Africa He argues that the best relief efforts are spear headed by searchers those who work locally to address real needs that emerge through effective systems of feedback Planners, on the other hand, develop big plans for saving Africa, like buying a million mosquito nets and shipping them to Africa, where they sit in crates in warehouses unused Easterly is acerbic, sharp, often Easterly s conclusion is controversial because he recommends a market solution to the problem of poverty in Africa He argues that the best relief efforts are spear headed by searchers those who work locally to address real needs that emerge through effective syste...I thought I would hate this book, because it is often trotted out by Conservatives Libertarians as an excuse to leave the developing world to its own devices and abdicate any global responsibility for the poor The book is a foil for Jeffrey Sachs cheerleaderish The End of Poverty Easterly s major argument is that Western aid efforts are often paternalistic, bureaucratic, wasteful, and counterproductive The main beneficiaries of the humanitarian industr...As with all development books, some of the data here is hotly contested Shortly after reading this book, I stumbled across a different study of mosquito nets in Africa that reached the opposite conclusion from the study that Easterly cites His overarching point seems in general to hold the solution is to decentralize aid It s a general economic point that I think most people ca...

English
06 July 2018

William Easterly