War and Peace

It's a Sachs-Easterly-Moyo Walk Off

by Michael Bear

category: Humanitarian Relief

Published May 27, 2009 @ 10:26AM PT

Debates about aid effectiveness are often somewhat dry, or at least couched in terms only an economist could love.  And then there's renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, who recently decided to enliven the debate with an unprovoked, ad hominem attack on William Easterly and Dambisa Moyo in the pages of the Huffington Post.

Every once in a while, the blogging-gods are kind.

Since we've already had one rumble, we'll just call this one a walk-off.

First, Prof. Sachs:

"The debate about foreign aid has become farcical. The big opponents of aid today are Dambisa Moyo, an African-born economist who reportedly received scholarships so that she could go to Harvard and Oxford but sees nothing wrong with denying $10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malaria bed net. Her colleague in opposing aid, Bill Easterly, received large-scale government support from the National Science Foundation for his own graduate training...

Before peddling their simplistic concoction of free markets and self-help, they and we should think about the realities of life, in which all of us need help at some time or other and in countless ways, and even more importantly we should think about the life-and-death consequences for impoverished people who are denied that help."

Because clearly the best way to express disagreement - especially on any complicated issue - is to accuse your opponents of being simplistic hypocrites.

To which Easterly responded:

"Official foreign aid agencies delivering aid to Africa are used to operating with nobody holding them accountable for aid dollars actually reaching poor people...

Sachs suffers from the same acute shortage of truthiness as did the Bush/Cheney administration, all of whom have contributed to the current climate of fear and intimidation in foreign aid. Any aid critic is immediately denounced as a heartless baby-killer, which protects the establishment from the accountability so badly needed to see aid reach the poor."

And then Moyo, in the most measured tones:

"Development is not that hard. We now have over 300 years of evidence of what works (and what doesn't) in increasing growth, alleviating poverty and suffering. For example, we know that countries that finance development and create jobs through trade and encouraging foreign (and domestic) investment thrive.

We also know that there is no country -- anywhere in the world -- that has meaningfully reduced poverty and spurred significant and sustainable levels of economic growth by relying on aid. If anything, history has shown us that by encouraging corruption, creating dependency, fueling inflation, creating debt burdens and disenfranchising Africans (to name a few), an aid-based strategy hurts more that it helps."

Moyo's argument has received a fair amount of criticism.  That said, a note to Professor Sachs - hysterical ranting is usually not a particularly effective way to make one's point.  Angry, snide ranting, however, is a different story.

[Photo of Jeffrey Sachs from www.kejda.net]