The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
Where to buy The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Small Excellent books online?
- ISBN13: 9780143038825
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
From one of the world’s best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s 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 Man’s Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch—a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West’s economic policies for the world’s poor. Sometimes mad, sometimes irreverent, but permanently 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.
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“White Man’s Burden”
This book by William Easterly is obviously right in so far as it details that huge bureaucratic programs for poor people, organized by the UN, IMF, and World Bank, have not worked. The leader’s best example pertains to various malaria programs. He claims that 12 cents per person worth of malaria medicine is all that it takes to save a life, but, despite $trillions spent, most of the money has not gotten through, and millions continue to die, slowly, painfully and needlessly.
The weakness of the book lies in its tiny mindedness. It dares not point out that the world’s like for and implementation of goofy, inefficient, and regularly deadly bureaucratic programs everywhere has essentially the same effect everywhere. Welfare programs for American Blacks amounted to near genocide, Communist programs in the Soviet Union and China on the breadline and killed millions, kids riot in France in the silly belief that gov’t programs can guarantee lifetime employment even as unemployment rises and income continues to fall dangerously.
The main source of the thought that gov’t bureaucracies can be like Santa Claus was Julius Caesar, George III, and Karl Marx, and is now the Democratic Party in the United States. The intellectual antipode to this antediluvian thinking comes from the Republican Party, also in the United States, which believes, not in gov’t bureaucracies, but in law and order, capitalism, limited bureaucracy, and religious/family tree values. Easterly’s book is wonderful in detailing the precise failings of the UN, IMF/World Bank but is ultimately politically right, having no effect, lacking context, and non-actionable, having failed to trace backwards to the Marxist/Democratic origins of the particular bureaucratic cancer about which he writes so scholarly.
Also posted to TheDumbDemocrat
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
The leader makes a well intentioned effort to take in the material but it’s regularly superficial. He tries to simply take in too much material. He has a terrible habit of building jokes regarding the poor judgment of the players involved. Its not that the jokes aren’t clever, but they come off as superficial and take away from the seriousness of the theme matter. If you know nothing about the topic it’s a excellent first read, but that’s where its usefulness ends.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Whilte the leader has some vital and sometimes hard-arresting 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 huge projects with no point accountability vs. smaller, user-oriented ones. But, 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 small pathetic that he has to make clear from small family tree 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.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
All of the reviews agreed are by stakeholders who are reviewing for the sake of agreement. I am writing as a practitioner as well, but as a book and resource it reads like an expanded Economist article, and less dry. Easterly can be considered as an iconoclast, and sufficiently gives some solutions at the end to take up the inadequacies of the system. Sen of “Developmental as Freedom” has derided his book as simplistic, and I would agree with him. It is a “fun” read, in a tongue-in-cheek way. Any economist that can talk about “Company A building and selling crap to Company B” or talk about flatulence in an economic sense based on what his children’s anecdotes or jokes sardonically that the only excellent to come out of the Vietnam war was excellent Vietnamese restaurants (“Cambodian food is pretty excellent too!”) should get my vote. It may be “simplistic” and dumbs down a lot of complexities, but like his last book, he stands by the maxim of “People react to incentives”; you can’t tell people what they want, you have to help them “search” for their best solutions.
As I write this, I am watching the Frontline special on AIDS funding, and Easterly talks briefly on the treatment vs. preventation debate and how/why AIDS is getting/not getting the attention it has. Overall it is a worthwhile read. He has a lot of knowledge but personally I would prefer more data rather than just anecdotes. He has them but chose not to overwhelm the reader
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
While in my late twenties I traveled throughout the third world for nearly four years like a forerunner to the present day backpackers. Of the zillions of situations I encountered while staying in flea bag hotels, riding chicken buses, going deck passage on over crowded freighters, hitch hiking through central Africa, one memory stands out. I was crossing through Tanzanian immigration near Arusha. The Black Tanzanian immigration officer questioned an older Austrian gentleman in front of me what his occupation was. The Austrian in broken English answered, “I’m an practiced.” To which the Tanzanian remarked, “Just what we need, another practiced!”
I can wait for the paperback to come out. I’m still a penny pincher.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5