I'm not without bias, but I'd like to think I came at this book with an open mind. I have a deep respect for hard-won expertise. But, like most academics, I also have a deep respect for modesty and the careful application of knowledge. This book doesn't argue against that kind of expertise, it argues against the use of technocracy to overlook issues of rights and politics in development. 

And in this respect, the book is actually a little late to the party, since these issues have been discussed and examined for more than two decades outside of the economics discipline in the field of human geography, sociology, and more particularly the subfield of political ecology. (You can also read a fantastic book in the area of humanitarian assistance called "Condemned to Repeat" by Fiona Terry.)

Largely, Easterly makes a great argument for "rights-based" development and bottom-up forms of development based on the economic theory of Friedrich Hayek. Some reviewers have argued against the structure of the book. But I actually found its approach refreshing. I found the early use of the "debate that never happened" to be excellent. I like when authors interrogate the historical genesis of ideas. It highlights that ideas are never innocent -- they are always for something (and usually for someone). 

As for the case study and long history approach -- fantastic! (Even though it summarizes the scholarship of mostly other authors). 

It's bizarre that in a book about the "tyranny of experts" there would be little mention of James Ferguson's "The Anti-Politics Machine" or Arturo Escobar's "Encountering Development". Michel Foucault's concept of power/knowledge would have also been a helpful addition (though it would have turned off some potential mainstream readers). Ferguson gets one paragraph. Escobar is nowhere to be found. 

The book is well-written, largely divorced from partisan ideology, and well-researched. It is grounded in the academic ethos of the honest search for truth. One of my concerns is the way this book might be used. Just as the book demonstrates how the knowledge products of experts are utilized for very narrow political interests, I have a feeling this book will (and probably already has) been utilized for various political interests it was never intended to serve. 

I could, for example, see the author's ideas being used to argue for drastically cutting development aid. (I haven't looked into this, but such is the problem with mainstream economists). 


Additional Notes:

Page 96 has the best quote of the book: "The findings on autocracy having a lasting effect suggest one simple lesson: get out of the vicious circle of autocracy and bad values as soon as you can! The sooner you begin the virtuous circle of democracy and good values, and the sooner you get through the rocky transition, the better".

Mirroring an idea from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Easterly writes that technocratic actors are worse than market or government actors because unlike these two actors, they aren't held responsible for their actions by either market or the democratic public. (In other words, no skin in the game.)

An idea I found useful "the new growth model" - the number of new ideas increases with the number of people on earth (as well as the number of existing inventions plus the proliferation of rights). Thus innovations can be seen as the simple formula: population + rights + already existing innovation = new innovation. 

This then explains the extraordinary factor growth in innovation. This was an idea that was new to me. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Easterly, for a fantastic read. 

A friend at lawschool recommended this book to me after I had decided to read the works of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes in the hope that I could glean some ideas on how to become wealthy. My belief was that wealth lay in understanding the basics of economics, and when it came to economics, I believed that the basics could be found in a number of authors that my American History lecturer had mentioned who had been quintessential in determining the economic policy of the time. My friend then recommended this book to me, and in a way I am glad he did because by reading this book I came to understand that there are more than just four people who developed the social science known as economics.

Now, I noticed one review on Goodreads making a comment about whether economics actually is a science. In my opinion it is a science, but it falls into the category of 'soft' or 'social' science, as opposed to the 'hard' or 'physical' sciences. The differences between the two sciences is that the hard sciences tend to be easier to measure and determine than the soft sciences. However, just because a field of study cannot be measured quantitatively, it does not mean that it is any less of a science than say physics or chemistry. To be blunt, hard sciences are based just as much on conjecture and supposition as is history, economics, and political science. If one wants to get into something that rests purely on hard facts, then the best you can get is mathematics, and even then one can prove anything with mathematics simply by starting off with a specific proposition.

As for becoming wealthy by reading the works of the great economists; once again that is pure supposition. It is possible, but in the end the only way to wealth is either through hard work, connections, luck, or a mixture of all three. However, by understanding the theories put forward by the economists, one can understand the way commerce works, and by understanding it, can use one's knowledge to take advantage of such things. However, remember this, many of these economists were hardly wealthy in an of themselves: Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen for instance. Also, just because a Nobel prize winning economist says something does not necessarily mean that it is right. The founders of Long Term Capital Management won Nobel prizes for their mathematical equation used to determine the price of options, and then proceeded to send the United States to the brink of economic collapse. The same goes with Milton Friedman, who continually praised the free markets and the invisible hand, only to die a few months prior to the entire edifice collapsing. We are still living in the aftermath of the banking crisis which has effectively crippled the developed world, as well as bringing the developing world down with it.

As for the book, I found it quite enlightening as he explores who he believes were the major contributors to the economic theories that fly about the world today. Economics was not invented with Adam Smith, people have been buying and selling, and participating in complex financial transactions long before he came around. Insurance had existed as far back as the ancient times, and the bond market grew out of the sophisticated banking systems of Renaissance Italy. What Adam Smith did was step back, look at what was going on, and wrote it down. Even then he wasn't the first as people have been developing economic theory long before he appeared on the scene. In fact, it is interesting to note that Verblen flagged the Christian Church as being the first example of a franchise.

Studying economics, and postulating economic theory, is not going to make you rich, but what it is going to do is to help you understand how trade and commerce work. However, like all of the soft sciences (and even the hard sciences) opinions are going to differ. Some are going to point at a single passage in Adam Smith and claim that the market works best when left alone, whereas I will point at Adam Smith and show that he believes that one of the ways to completely ruin an economic system is to allow businessmen to influence and run the government. Some will say that greed is good, whereas I will say that greed is destructive, and the thing is that I believe that I am right, but others will violently disagree. In the end, I guess that is why they ended up executing Socrates and Jesus Christ, among others, simply because their world views rubbed the wrong people up the wrong way. In the end, who cares, if I go the way of Socrates and Jesus Christ, at least my theories will survive the test of time.