The Tyranny of Experts

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor is a 2014 book by the development economist William Easterly arguing that there are no silver bullets for promoting economic development and that the best hope is to support economic, political, and personal freedom worldwide.[1][2] The book is similar to Easterly's earlier books on economic development, The Elusive Quest for Growth and The White Man's Burden.

The Tyranny of Experts
AuthorWilliam Easterly
LanguageEnglish
SubjectDevelopment Economics
PublisherBasic Books
Publication date
March 4, 2014, February on Kindle
Pages416
ISBN978-0465031252

Reception

Self-promotion

Shortly after the release of the book, Easterly wrote an article for Foreign Policy summarizing the key arguments of the book.[3]

Easterly also wrote an op-ed for Seattle Times describing the themes of his book, and taking issue with the approach used by Bill Gates to fight poverty.[4]

Book reviews

Dalibor Rohac reviewed the book favorably for The Umlaut, writing, "There are no silver-bullet solutions to poverty and underdevelopment. Instead of trying to find them, policymakers ought to simply respect individual rights—including the rights of poor people."[2] Clive Crook also reviewed the book favorably for Bloomberg View.[5]

The New York Times called the book "bracingly iconoclastic."

Publishers Weekly published a critical review of the book, concluding, "This loose, sometimes incoherent collection of high-minded notes does not add up to a convincing thesis or argument. Easterly tries to craft global solutions, but fails to come up with practical proposals that will work in the messy world beyond his neighborhood."[6]

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Chayes was also critical: "Mr. Easterly calls for a profound overhaul of the way powerful nations conceive of and implement aid—and, more important, of the broader foreign-policy decision-making of which aid is a component. That change is needed. It's just not clear this book is crisp or cogent enough to help advance it."[7]

Kirkus Reviews described the book more neutrally, with the concluding sentence: "A sharply written polemic intended to stir up debate about the aims of global anti-poverty campaigns."[8]

The book was also reviewed on many blogs.[9][10]

Other mentions

Economist Tyler Cowen, writing on the Marginal Revolution blog, called the book "Easterly’s most libertarian book" and "self-recommending."[11]

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gollark: This quote is related, yes.
gollark: You know what they say; “There are two rules for success: 1. Never reveal everything you know”
gollark: VHDL might be better? There are high level tools for Scala/Haskell/Python which produce the others as output.
gollark: As such, you can do plenty of reasonable things which seem like they should work, but which will just compile to garbage.

References
  1. Easterly, William (March 4, 2014). The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-03125-2.
  2. Rohac, Dalibor (February 26, 2014). "Why Development Economics is Failing the Poor". The Umlaut. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
  3. Easterly, William (March 10, 2014). "The New Tyranny: How development experts have empowered dictators and helped to trap millions and millions of people in poverty". Foreign Policy. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
  4. Easterly, William (March 25, 2014). "Guest: The flaw in Bill Gates' approach to ending global poverty. The first step is not identifying technical solutions, but ensuring poor people's rights, writes guest columnist William Easterly". Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  5. Crook, Clive (March 26, 2014). "The World's Poor Have Rights Too". Bloomberg View. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  6. "The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly (book review)". Publishers Weekly. January 6, 2014. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
  7. Chayes, Sarah (March 7, 2014). "Book Review: 'The Tyranny of Experts' by William Easterly". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  8. "THE TYRANNY OF EXPERTS: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor". Kirkus Reviews. January 9, 2014. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
  9. "The Tyranny of Experts -- William Easterly". Subtle Illumination. February 12, 2014. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
  10. Roodman, David (March 19, 2014). "Of Technocrats and Autocrats". davidroodman.com. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  11. Cowen, Tyler (February 25, 2014). "*The Tyranny of Experts*". Marginal Revolution. Retrieved February 26, 2014.
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