Can the west save the rest?

Apr 2006


(65 min)

In the meeting of World Affairs Council of Northern California, William Easterly presents:

Can the West Save the Rest? A Meet the Author Program William Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty.

The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it.

We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second. He contrasts two approaches: the ineffective top-down planners' approach and a more-constructive, focused, and pragmatic searchers' approach. Easterly argues that if we in "the West" can shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do to improve the lot of "the rest", the world’s poor, in the realms of public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives.