I think all of us except Bill Gates and the World Bank can agree that the post WWII global development shtick has been a mixed blessing. At the very least it has signally failed to raise its beloved beneficiaries out of poverty.
So William Easterly's The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor is a good way to stroll through the efforts throughout the last century to bring less-developed countries into the modern era with the help of experts and development banks and government programs.
Today, anyone can tell that the combination of liberal experts, charitable foundations, international organizations, free money, and local dictators is bound to end it tears every time it is tried.
But Easterly introduces us to a few wrinkles in the story that I did now know. For instance, back in the 1920s a group of Yalies, YMCAers, and the Rockefeller Foundation got together to have a conference about race relations between the US and the Orient in the wake of the US Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924. But the US government didn't want a lot of negative publicity about race so when the Institute for Pacific Relations opened its first conference in Honolulu on June 30, 1925, the US side was committed to lowering the rhetoric on race, not to mention the extraterritorial rights of the white man in Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. that the Chinese wanted to talk about.
So in the end they settled on development. Rather than talk about racism the western elitists would form a condominium with the local power structure and plan technological improvements directed from above and, after World War II, financed by international organizations like the World Bank.
After World War II there was a new reason not to talk about race. The US agreed not to talk about colonialism if the Europeans agreed not to talk about segregation. Everyone could agree on more jobs for experts and more development loans for the Third World. Very civilized.
But since the development plans were executed through the local post-colonial power structure they got hopelessly tangled up in the tribal politics of the former colonies. For instance in Ghana the cocoa planters were mostly from the inland Ashanti tribe while President Nkrumah was from the coastal Akan tribe. Hey kids! How about we fund the development plan with a tax on cocoa growers! Oh by the way, back in the old days:
But what about the people? Easterly returns again and again to the "rights of the poor" that the experts and the local dictators blithely ignored as they divvied up the world between them.
Sorry chum. The rights of the poor have nothing to do with the case. That's because in tribal and/or agricultural societies there is no such thing as "the rights of the poor." In a tribe you sit somewhere in the local tribal hierarchy and you are completely defined by that and by traditional ideas of what anyone is owed by the tribe. In agriculture you are the creature of your feudal lord, and enjoy "rights" only in an informal way: you accept the suzerainty of your feudal lord, and he observes when convenient the customary rights such as grazing rights on the so-called "commons" that you have gradually obtained through his inattention.
The problem of "development," of helping the folks that have not yet made the transition from an income of $3 per day to the present US $140 per day, all in today's dollars, it not a problem of expert technique or of rights. It is a question of culture.
Simply put, if you want to wive and thrive in the modern economy you must transform your culture utterly from the normal subordinate culture of the agricultural age and the simple hierarchy of the tribal culture into the responsibility culture of the city. Instead of working to grow food on a patch of land you will work for wages in the market economy. Instead of marrying if you get to inherit someone's land or get some land from the feudal lord, you will need to establish yourself in some job in order to attract the babes. Instead of just following traditional folkways you will need to be able to buy and sell, rent and borrow in the market economy of the city. And you will have to transition from the old rights of membership to the new rights under law.
This is a huge transition, the biggest transition that humans have ever encountered. The marvel is not that billions are still living at $3 per day. The miracle is that, in 200 years, the people of Europe managed to go from $3 to $140 without blowing up and failing utterly. Really, a couple of world wars was a small price to pay.
Now, I have some interest in this. I wrote a book The Road to the Middle Class which argues that if you want to make the transition from country to city in double-quick-time you need to acquire the culture of modern religion, education, mutual aid, and law. If you get propped up by the neo-feudal welfare state you get stuck in limbo and don't really become a "citizen," one who has acquired the culture of the city. Hello African Americans.
My book is brilliant, of course, and you should read it. But the truth is that what most people do when they migrate to the city is to congregate in ethnic ghettos in the city where they can live in the comfort of their own while they learn how to make it in the city. And they gravitate to the neo-tribal politics of the big city political machine with its tasty garnish of criminal gang. Only after a generation or two in the tribal ghetto do people emerge into the great global upper-middle class of the university degree and the life-long career. At which point they are now ready to become tyrannical experts and tell the newbies how to do it.
The welfare state is a prettied-up version of the big-city machine. You may think of it as a friendly takeover of the machine by administrative experts with elite educations and credentials.
Notice that the welfare state is really the global development expert model executed in one country.
But the welfare state is hopeless, because government cannot reform. Government is an armed minority, occupying territory and taxing the inhabitants to reward its supporters. And the funny thing about supporters is that the one thing not to be endured is any reduction in their rewards. I have written a book, An American Manifesto, that proposes a political arrangement to replace the welfare state, based on the notion of Michael Novak, proposed in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, of what I call the Greater Separation of Powers between the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector. But is doesn't have a hope until we the people are lying dazed and helpless on the ground, finally willing to give up our sacred right to Social Security, Medicare, and free education.
Yep. There is no doubt that experts are easily persuaded into tyranny. But that is only half the problem. The other half of the problem is that we humans, all of us, want free stuff rather than do the hard work of adapting to the new facts on the ground. And we are perfectly happy to elect politicians who will empower the IRS to take the money for the free stuff out of the other guy's pocket so we don't have to change. We call it bending the arc of history towards justice.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
So William Easterly's The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor is a good way to stroll through the efforts throughout the last century to bring less-developed countries into the modern era with the help of experts and development banks and government programs.
Today, anyone can tell that the combination of liberal experts, charitable foundations, international organizations, free money, and local dictators is bound to end it tears every time it is tried.
But Easterly introduces us to a few wrinkles in the story that I did now know. For instance, back in the 1920s a group of Yalies, YMCAers, and the Rockefeller Foundation got together to have a conference about race relations between the US and the Orient in the wake of the US Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924. But the US government didn't want a lot of negative publicity about race so when the Institute for Pacific Relations opened its first conference in Honolulu on June 30, 1925, the US side was committed to lowering the rhetoric on race, not to mention the extraterritorial rights of the white man in Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. that the Chinese wanted to talk about.
So in the end they settled on development. Rather than talk about racism the western elitists would form a condominium with the local power structure and plan technological improvements directed from above and, after World War II, financed by international organizations like the World Bank.
After World War II there was a new reason not to talk about race. The US agreed not to talk about colonialism if the Europeans agreed not to talk about segregation. Everyone could agree on more jobs for experts and more development loans for the Third World. Very civilized.
But since the development plans were executed through the local post-colonial power structure they got hopelessly tangled up in the tribal politics of the former colonies. For instance in Ghana the cocoa planters were mostly from the inland Ashanti tribe while President Nkrumah was from the coastal Akan tribe. Hey kids! How about we fund the development plan with a tax on cocoa growers! Oh by the way, back in the old days:
The Ashanti were among the African kingdoms that sold slaves to the Europeans; the coastal Akan people were among their victims.So the Ashanti deserved to be taxed into oblivion.
But what about the people? Easterly returns again and again to the "rights of the poor" that the experts and the local dictators blithely ignored as they divvied up the world between them.
Sorry chum. The rights of the poor have nothing to do with the case. That's because in tribal and/or agricultural societies there is no such thing as "the rights of the poor." In a tribe you sit somewhere in the local tribal hierarchy and you are completely defined by that and by traditional ideas of what anyone is owed by the tribe. In agriculture you are the creature of your feudal lord, and enjoy "rights" only in an informal way: you accept the suzerainty of your feudal lord, and he observes when convenient the customary rights such as grazing rights on the so-called "commons" that you have gradually obtained through his inattention.
The problem of "development," of helping the folks that have not yet made the transition from an income of $3 per day to the present US $140 per day, all in today's dollars, it not a problem of expert technique or of rights. It is a question of culture.
Simply put, if you want to wive and thrive in the modern economy you must transform your culture utterly from the normal subordinate culture of the agricultural age and the simple hierarchy of the tribal culture into the responsibility culture of the city. Instead of working to grow food on a patch of land you will work for wages in the market economy. Instead of marrying if you get to inherit someone's land or get some land from the feudal lord, you will need to establish yourself in some job in order to attract the babes. Instead of just following traditional folkways you will need to be able to buy and sell, rent and borrow in the market economy of the city. And you will have to transition from the old rights of membership to the new rights under law.
This is a huge transition, the biggest transition that humans have ever encountered. The marvel is not that billions are still living at $3 per day. The miracle is that, in 200 years, the people of Europe managed to go from $3 to $140 without blowing up and failing utterly. Really, a couple of world wars was a small price to pay.
Now, I have some interest in this. I wrote a book The Road to the Middle Class which argues that if you want to make the transition from country to city in double-quick-time you need to acquire the culture of modern religion, education, mutual aid, and law. If you get propped up by the neo-feudal welfare state you get stuck in limbo and don't really become a "citizen," one who has acquired the culture of the city. Hello African Americans.
My book is brilliant, of course, and you should read it. But the truth is that what most people do when they migrate to the city is to congregate in ethnic ghettos in the city where they can live in the comfort of their own while they learn how to make it in the city. And they gravitate to the neo-tribal politics of the big city political machine with its tasty garnish of criminal gang. Only after a generation or two in the tribal ghetto do people emerge into the great global upper-middle class of the university degree and the life-long career. At which point they are now ready to become tyrannical experts and tell the newbies how to do it.
The welfare state is a prettied-up version of the big-city machine. You may think of it as a friendly takeover of the machine by administrative experts with elite educations and credentials.
Notice that the welfare state is really the global development expert model executed in one country.
But the welfare state is hopeless, because government cannot reform. Government is an armed minority, occupying territory and taxing the inhabitants to reward its supporters. And the funny thing about supporters is that the one thing not to be endured is any reduction in their rewards. I have written a book, An American Manifesto, that proposes a political arrangement to replace the welfare state, based on the notion of Michael Novak, proposed in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, of what I call the Greater Separation of Powers between the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector. But is doesn't have a hope until we the people are lying dazed and helpless on the ground, finally willing to give up our sacred right to Social Security, Medicare, and free education.
Yep. There is no doubt that experts are easily persuaded into tyranny. But that is only half the problem. The other half of the problem is that we humans, all of us, want free stuff rather than do the hard work of adapting to the new facts on the ground. And we are perfectly happy to elect politicians who will empower the IRS to take the money for the free stuff out of the other guy's pocket so we don't have to change. We call it bending the arc of history towards justice.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
No comments:
Post a Comment