Sachs Debate, Day Eight. Surprised that Sachs did not understand the point about Occam's Razor -- that a theory should be as simple as possible but no simpler. African poverty is complex, but our theories about it should not have so many complex Buts, Ors, and Excepts that they are impossible to disprove. Ignoring Occam's Razor is how astrologists stay in business. An astrologer might say: "Watch out for strangers, especially those that are short, or dark, or fat." You are likely to have a number of bad encounters with strangers (especially in New York!), and being short or dark or fat covers such a large share of the population that you will likely encounter one such bad stranger sooner or later.
Explaining poverty with a flexible theory of geography when you already know the outcome is similarly easy. First, you notice that Africa had the worst poverty in the world. Second, you notice that Africa also was the only region that had a particular mosquito species, had a lot of landlocked countries, had a particular soil type, had a large share of continent in the tropics, and did not have snowmelt-irrigated agriculture. Third, you define the worst geography as consisting of exactly these mosquitoes, landlocked locations, soil types, tropical locations, and non-snowmelt-irrigated fields. Fourth, presto, you have proven that the worst geography causes the worst poverty!
(Some of the above are bad, but there are many bad things in the world, and only such a four-step exercise guarantees that you will predict rightly in hindsight. Try this at home to impress your friends! If they object that you are just using hindsight, tell them they don't understand "complex systems.")
The more general argument why geography is not destiny is what economists call comparative advantage -- you can export what your geography gives you an advantage at, and import what you geography makes you bad at. Rainy countries (Thailand) could export rice (a thirsty crop) and import minerals, and desert countries could export their minerals (Chad) or maybe tourism (Dubai), and import rice. Landlocked countries can always export high value to weight items by air (Swiss watches, Botswana's diamonds). Other geographic problems have their own human adaptations. Sachs contradicts his own geographic determinism by arguing how easy it would be to solve these problems (like bed nets and medicines for malaria). When such adaptation to a geographic problem fails, there is usually some kind of social barrier to problem-solving.
One such social barrier is a bad government -- like a government that fails to deliver the bed nets and malaria medicines -- a factor that Sachs still refuses to do justice. Sachs' admission that Zimbabwe has a bad government is not exactly revolutionary. This continues his longtime reluctance to admit there is bad government in any except a handful of extreme despots. In his UN Millennium Project in 2005, he only named four bad governments: Belarus, Myanmar, North Korea, and Zimbabwe. At the time, he listed 63 poor countries that are "potentially well governed" (a phrase equivalent to calling Paris Hilton "potentially a virgin.") Sachs' list included 5 out of the 7 countries singled out by Transparency International at the time as the most corrupt in the world, and fifteen governments that Freedom House classifies as "not free." Even a despot like the late Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, who so terrorized his country that he renamed the months of the year after himself and his mother, couldn't get into Sachs' bad government club at the time. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia is inexplicably a Sachs darling despite rigging elections, jailing opposition politicians, shooting demonstrators, fielding an army accused of atrocities in the Ogaden, and fomenting corrupt practices that give Ethiopia a ranking on Transparency International of 138th out of 179 countries.
So Sachs' re-admission that Zimbabwe has a bad government does not get us very far. Unlike Sachs' flexible theory of bad geography, the bad government theory is inflexible enough that it is not rigged to pass in advance -- but it does pass this test according to studies by three different and independent groups of economists published in prominent economics journals. All science is essentially about testing one thing -- like bad government -- at a time, but nobody thinks that such testing implies only one thing matters.
The bottom line remains the same -- bad government is a serious obstacle to development, and ignoring bad government is a formula for the same kind of bad aid policy that gave us decades of failure. Isn't it time for a change? Even cash transfers directly to poor people are demonstrably better than cash transfers to poor governments.
Follow William Easterly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bill_easterly
In his UN Millennium Project in 2005, he only named four bad governments: Belarus, Myanmar, North Korea, and Zimbabwe. At the time, he listed 63 poor countries that are "potentially well governed" (a phrase equivalent to calling Paris Hilton "potentially a virgin.") Sachs' list included 5 out of the 7 countries singled out by Transparency International at the time as the most corrupt in the world, and fifteen governments that Freedom House classifies as "not free."
One of the lessons of the Internet is that crowd power and bottom up movements can achieve a lot. It is time to expand the debate beyond the usual suspects (World Bank/IMF, UN, African Union, a few academics...).
I am the author of Fixing Africa, once and for all. The website www.fixingafrica.com provides a forum where bold ideas about Africa can emerge. One of the goals is to get 1,000 contributors in each African country as well as countries where the diaspora has an important presence, and ask their opinion. Usually experts (and Joe Sixpack) tell Africans what they should do, they don't ask our opinion.
Sincerely,
Jeff
Nothing has changed. The bad gov't syndrome has returned home to roost. Seems to me that the time to pull of the covers is now. The problem is, having lived for so long off of stolen goods, when one's own goods are stolen, it is already too late. Who, for example, really owns GM now?
Title plagarised?? are you trying to be obtuse? Of COURSE it is rudyard kipling - it is (and means to be) using the poem by Rudyard (and the poem is printed in full in the book's opening pages) - as an ironic nod to how racist/colonial the original thought (that Africa could ever be a "white man's burden") was at the time. Indeed - in very simplistic terms - the point of Easterly (and Moyo - an african woman) is that it is not Up to the west to determine Africa's future, nor to 'save them' - and that as humans on this planet we are all equal , regardless of gender, colour, religion, ethnicity - and that where some people lead less fortunate lives, it is up to all of us (including those in the less developed nations) to get involved and offer help where it can do some good, but that ALSO there are complex issues about aid flows and bad government that can prevent any real substantial change....and that looking at why some areas are not developing or are stagnant is what needs looking at.
To Natturnnex - please see point above.
Re: Ahn Amuru...???? 1) the point about keeping things simple (Occam's Razor) is precisly to pinpoint the actual reasons stunting development (I suggest you familiarise yourslef with the substantial body of work by Easterly, as well as Sachs - to fully understand the debate.)
2) The point that bad govenrmnt does not fully 'write off' developmnt is true in some cases (where a government, with no transparancy or democratic freedoms etc, could ensure other human needs - food, shelter) - but this is an exception, and again, easterly does not discount this fact in his books.
3) Your expectation that a complex body work can fully mention all countries in a short Huffington Post op-ed type response is ludicrous. Again, read the books, look at actual studies undertaken (by both Sachs and Easterly) - but don't expect to get a thorough and complex discussion of the issues surrounding aid from a short essay.
4) I'm sorry - why is the first paragraph inappropriate????
Aggregating a range of problems in a simplistic explanation strikes me as something to be left to pundits, not scholars.
What was Mr. Ockham thinking! How did he survive the tower!
ahh... so we have finally found the missing link in the evolution from 19th century western colonialist ideology to 21st century western neocolonialist humanitarian interventionist ideology. cecil rhodes would be so proud that his tradition of condescension continues.
What a muddled puzzle!
Without any helpful basis for measuring development, the writer relies on obfuscation - lumping together incompatible countries to emphasize a shallow point - a simplicity theory.
Point in issue - bad government. Simply because a country ends up on an indicator, like transparency, "not free" does not write off their developmental achievements.
Let's test your theory; the "bad government" indicators mentioned also cast China, Russia and Turkey in unfavourable light, yet in the muddled puzzle these aren't even mentioned!
So much for simplicity, dude.
P.S. Your first paragraph is totally inappropriate.