Good...a little too far to the right for me, though

books:


	• The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good William Easterly Penguin Press HC, The, 2006 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 51 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Good...a little too far to the right for me, though

Provides a good balance to Jeff Sach's "The End of Poverty." If you haven't read Sach's book, read it first, then Easterly's "The White Man's Burden." Both provide a solution for increasing development among the world's poorest populations. As with most arguments, I think the answer lies somewhere in between their points of view. Read it with a grain of salt and it will temper your idea that MORE money is the ONLY answer.

Despite the title, a little to PC to be effective

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.

for more information click here

Want to understand the World?

I highly reccommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the world as it is. Economic, political, and historic factors make the world we live in, with the sharp contrasts inside and inbetween countries. Easterly efficiently describes why such constrasts exist, and what can be done to reduce inequality, at several levels (e.g. national policies, political programs, local development). For anyone interested in social development, or just in knowing why some people don't have food in their tables everyday, three times a day.

Make yourself conscious of the world you live in, and, even better, take action to modify reality.

for more information click here

White Man's Burden

White Man's Burden - An absolute masterpiece. The book clearly describes the differences between the two main development-schools as represented by Easterly & Sachs. A must-read for anybody interested in the field of development.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

An informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West's efforts to date to improve the lot of the so-called developing world, with constructive suggestions on how to move forward.

William Easterly's The White Man's Burden is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty. The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it. We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second.

The ironies are many: We preach a gospel of freedom and individual accountability, yet we intrude in the inner workings of other countries through bloated aid bureaucracies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that are accountable to no one for the effects of their prescriptions. We take credit for the economic success stories of the last fifty years, like South Korea and Taiwan, when in fact we deserve very little. However, we reject all accountability for pouring more than half a trillion dollars into Africa and other regions and trying one "big new idea" after another, to no avail. Most of the places in which we've meddled are in fact no better off or are even worse off than they were before. Could it be that we don't know as much as we think we do about the magic spells that will open the door to the road to wealth?

Absolutely, William Easterly thunders in this angry, irreverent, and important book. He contrasts two approaches: (1) the ineffective planners' approach to development-never able to marshal enough knowledge or motivation to get the overambitious plans implemented to attain the plan's arbitrary targets and (2) a more constructive searchers' approach-always on the lookout for piecemeal improvements to poor peoples' well-being, with a system to get more aid resources to those who find things that work. Once we shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do that's focused and pragmatic to improve the lot of millions, such as public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives. We need to face our own history of ineptitude and learn our lessons, especially at a time when the question of our ability to "build democracy," to transplant the institutions of our civil society into foreign soil so that they take root, has become one of the most pressing we face.

for more information click here

hot