4.18.2005

awesome book

I'm reading an amazing book called The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, a PH.D economist, now at Columbia, and head of the UN Millenium Development Project. It is blowing my mind. Everyone on the planet, but especially everyone in the United States, should read this book. He very briefly and cogently explains how the world went from fairly uniform poverty across the globe 200 years ago to its current state of vast inequity, a change that coincided with an explosion in global population. He shows how the rich countries got rich and why the poor countries stayed poor, and he shows how some countries have dragged, or are dragging, themselves out of poverty. He disects poverty, showing its different degrees and their distribution throughout the globe. Most importantly, he argues that extreme poverty, the 1 billion people (1/6 of the world) that lives on less than a dollar a day, can be eliminated by the year 2025 if the world's rich countries decide to take the necessary measures, which aren't even that strenuous.
This guy has a great deal of real world experience advising the governments of developing countries, and he has had a great deal of success. He is very much pro-free trade, but he is also very critical of the United States and other rich countries for their failure to prioritize international aid and debt relief. He is neither a starbucks brick-thrower nor an unqualified free-market Milton Friedman economist. In other words, he's awesome. If you have a chance, you owe it to yourself to take a look.

3 comments:

Joe said...

Well, I haven't finished the book yet, but the good Dr. Sachs addresses both of the issues you raise. First, regarding the role of bad governments in poverty, he acknowledges that, yes, they're problematic, but that they're only one symptom of the problem. He also points out that democracy is not a prerequisite for good development, which is obvious from the example of China. Some elements that tend to acompany democracy and political freedom are helpful in development, namely a stable society run by the rule of law that protects property rights. I think he'll address the political issue more thoroughly later in the book, but in general, I think he'll say that the traditional critique that development aid only serves to line the pockets of warlords and dictators, is vastly exageratted and outdated.
Regarding the issue of western wealth causing the poverty of poor countries, he is nuanced, but basically denies the truth of that claim. He's pretty critical of colonialism generally, particularly the British East India Company, but basically he argues that global income inequality is an accident of history that resulted from a complex web of causes, including geography, technological advances, climate, social systems, geo-politics, and other issues. That's not to say that colonial governments weren't awful and exploitive; they certainly were, but they weren't the chief cause of todays situation.

Joe said...
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Joe said...

Africa is a really hard problem. First of all, it's wrong to paint the entire continent with the "corruption" brush. Many relatively well-governed countries there have still sunk under poverty. Moreover, lots of bad governments the world over have succeeded in rising out of poverty.
Africa's problem are mainly biological and geographical. Sudan, Rawanda,....these are horrible situations, but they're still nothing compared to the scale of devestation caused by malaria and aids. These two diseases kill around 8 million people each year, mostly in Africa. That's a holocaust every year. Africa just happens to be the perfect storm of a climate that breeds mosquitoes, creates short growing seasons, and where many countries are landlocked. Overlay that with high birth rates, lack of infrastructure, periodic drought, and yes, in places, bad governance, and you have the hell that is africa today.
These places need roads, bridges, insecticides, schools, simple medications for aids and malaria...in other words, simple and obvious solutions that only cost money. Will some money be spent unwisely? Sure. Will some be stolen? Sure. But that's no excuse for keeping our wallets shut. Once we get these countries on the "first rung" of the "development ladder," we can let the market take care of them.
I'm all for politcal development to accompany the economic development, but not if that means that rich countries spend all of their resources on military action rather than direct aid. Stability and good governance are a lot more likely if people are not dying in mass quantities.