What I did not like about his approach was that he embraced the above thinking but had little to say that I thought was ground breaking beyond that. He tried to make this grand distinction between "Planners and Scanners" I think he did a good job of defining and pointing out the philosophical missteps of the planners. But I was a little fuzzy on how scanners where fundamentaly different. To me they just sounded like smart conscious planners that didnt screw things up as much. They did things peace meal instead of trying to come up with a general theory, they employed sound incentives and economic principles. I'm having a tough time not seeing those type of people don't already exist. I like Virginia Postrel's New York Times review of Easterly's book when she said "Easterly is doing something harder here: not merely cataloging past failures but trying to suggest a more promising approach. Unfortunately, his alternative is still underdeveloped, devolving at times into slogans. After all, Searchers plan, too."
While he does a good job of pointing out the short comings of an aid philosophy I don't agree with, I think that his arguement doesnt go much beyond "Hey guys you are doing it all wrong, you've got to think about it harder"
Nice hat tip to Postrel; I think it's a worthwhile critique. I disagree with your assertion that he failed to describe how searchers differ from planners. Perhaps the difficulty is that each searcher finds something different. There's a good chance that most searchers fail. Searchers perform work at the grass-roots level, are usually local people, and have local knowledge which puts them in a unique position that someone at 30,000 feet cannot replicate.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do think that there is some space for the game at 30,000 feet - what about systemic problems? The obvious example is De Soto's work on property rights and inclusive capitalism: in order to solve the dilemma, it will take legal reform from the top-down.
Perhpas he's not trying to come up with anything that's "groundbreaking." Societies have been evolving and growing for hundreds of years with out any sort of "groundbreaking" revealation. I think instead of saying "think about it harder" his message is "stop thinking about it. Let the searchers do the work."
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