The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So...

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 | Want to understand the World?

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The White Man's Bu...

	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 52 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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.

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How Global Aid became a Cash Laden Cow instead of a Thoroughbred Racehorse (or Bureaucracies eat oats too, don't they?)

Here, William Easterly lifts the veil of fog and proceeds to make a big dent in our collective ignorance about the "ways of global poverty" and in the process tells us what "not to do" in trying to surmount it. His trenchant critique gives a whole new meaning to the biblical philosophy: Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day, but teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime," as well as to the well-worn adage that "the road to hell many times has been paved with good intentions."

Always sharp, relevant, wise and delivered with the authority of a man who has "been there, done that, and bought the tee shirt," This is the testimony of a man who has wrestled in the trenches with the problem of global poverty and lost so many times that he has now figured out what he and everyone else have been doing wrong. He is like the "Archie Moore of Global Aid programs." And at least in principle Easterly now knows the score and what needs to be done to get global poverty right. His experience, his logic, his tenacity, the crispness but lightness of his writing, and his bravery in taking on the conventional wisdom (and all of its embedded sacred cows), convinces me that Easterly is the real deal; and that if he does not know what he is talking about then no one does.

His story has the full ring of truth. It is one born both out of compassion and frustration. He is tactful, and gingerly tips around the currently reigning gurus and heroes of the global poverty fight, and here I mean such heroes as Jeffery Sachs, Gordon Brown and even Madonna and Bono. His story can be summarized somewhat as follows:

While beautiful heartfelt and compassionate ideas coupled with a plan and money (so far the West has spent more than $2.3 trillion with minimal results), does indeed constitute a "valid" global poverty eradication program, it does not in fact constitute a "viable" one. And here is the twist: The difference between "valid" and "viable" is not just semantic or symbolic fluff, but the difference between success and failure. The presently used "so-called" valid formulas have been tried and have failed so often that they have long since passed the point of violating Einstein's maxim of how insanity is defined: "repeatedly trying the same old techniques and expecting a different result."

The reason this formula may be "valid" but not "viable" is that unlike the distribution system that got nine million copies of JK Rowley's book "Harry Potter" into the hand of kids in less than a week, once the boxcars of food are dropped off in some godforsaken Third world desert, there is no well-oiled, well-motivated distribution system available to see that they then get to the needy. Most of those in need have no way of knowing that aid is available, and because of poor infrastructure, could not get to it even if they did.

The incentive under such circumstances is for the lucky handful to use the "the White Man's" largesse either for the benefit of the immediately available and powerful few, or as a basis to begin the process of bureaucratization, which in the end amounts to the same thing. But Easterly knows as well as the rest of us, that even under the best of conditions, and even in the First World, bureaucracies exist only to siphon-off the resources to better perpetuate their own existence, and not to service their client, the poor, or to end poverty.

It is the author's repeated and vivid analogies that drive home all of his key points. For instance, one of the reasons his "motivated middleman strategy" seems to work when bureaucracies do not, is that middlemen "gets paid" only after the end product is delivered to the recipient - whether that product is drugs, prostitution, Harry Potter Books, or poverty eradication. On the other hand, "poverty bureaucrats" (in the U.S. we call them poverty pimps) get paid "up front" for merely showing up on the job. There is no accountability or follow-up or even penalties for undelivered products, and thus they remain unmotivated to get the products out to the recipient. When this disincentive is coupled with local obstacles, such as lack of distribution infrastructure, ignorance or local politics, then it is easy to see why poverty aid has become a magnet for bureaucratic corruption and political machinations rather than for the eradication of poverty.

According to the author, we allow our poverty fighting institutions (from the UN Relief agencies to ad hoc AIDs groups) to get caught-up in this bureaucratic trap by asking the wrong question: "What can foreign aid do for poverty?" -- rather than the proper one: "What can foreign aid do for poor people?" In his most colorful analogy, Easterly compares setting goals and sending money and food before this question is answered to sending a cow to the Kentucky Derby and expecting that by properly training and grooming it, it will compete successfully against thoroughbred racehorses. No matter how well the cow is groomed, trained or how many oats you feed it, the cow has no chance of winning. So too is true for poverty eradication programs that rely only on top-heavy bureaucracies. (Bureaucracies eat oats too, don't they?)

What is the solution to Global Poverty?

Easterly thinks that grandiose goals must first be tapered or given up altogether: Ending global poverty is not going to happen any time soon, if ever. And "having ending it" as an immediate goal is impractical and ultimately self-defeating.

However, if we keep our ears and our aid close to the ground where micro-management is implicit and becomes "built in" rather than explicit, we can make a big dent in poverty by creating opportunities locally where none existed before. When we educate poor kids, especially girls, and otherwise use what people on the ground need and know, we are actually leveraging that knowledge into a force multiplier, that ripples horizontally across the landscapes of the poor, and trickles across rather than telescoping downward as is the case with bureaucratically driven models. In doing so, grassroots approaches have just the opposite effect of getting trapped in cycles of bureaucratic red tape: They tend to maximize the distribution and immediate utilization of scarce resources rather than minimizing and even working against them.

But also implicit philosophy is being "tapped" in Easterly's reasoning. It is the same philosophy that has shown proven results and has been successfully exploited by notables such as the Noble Laureate Muhammad Yunus in his micro-lending programs in Bangladesh. It is a philosophy that is so often ignored that it has become a leitmotif of bureaucratized Aid Relief Programs: People on the ground often know better how they are best to be helped than bureaucrats in capital cities, or those with good intentions writing impersonal checks in far away lands.

What people need is not the equivalent of America's Thanksgiving day handouts of old canned goods, but the dignity and connections that go with being able to create ones own opportunities. It seems that the biblical adage of give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or teach him how to fish and he will feed himself for a life time, works better in the world of global poverty than does Aid bureaucracies.

A valuable addition to the discussions and literature of poverty eradication, and to a potential mid-course correction to those many failing efforts. Five Stars

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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.

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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.

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