Published: Audio 2008
Publisher: Penguin Audio; Unabridged edition
ISBN: 0-143-14303-4
This Alarming book details the Massively intense work needed to free the world's Countless Poorest of the Poor from their wretched cycle of Horrendous Poverty!!!! Well.. OK... maybe that's a little over the top, but that's about what Jeffrey Sach's writing sounds like in this book. Hyperbole in Ayn Rand's fiction can be written off as so much literary license (I still think it detracts from whatever message it is she is trying to convey.) In a book that pretends to be academic and non-partisan, the emotionally charged language that Sachs uses is out of place and out of touch. Jeffrey Sachs is a smart guy but sometimes I think those who reside in Academic Towers lose touch with the world they think they are studying. This book reads like Sachs couldn't decide if he wanted to offer a solution for world poverty, criticize President Bush's policies, harangue the right wing machine, or offer policy suggestions to the next President. (President-Elect Obama reportedly was reading this book during the transition period.)
The Enlightened Ones
Let me start with the stuff I didn't like about this book. I respect Sachs as a smart guy but I am tired of the liberal elite mentality that anyone who doesn't agree with them simply isn't enlightened. Liberals are vocal about inclusionism and open mindedness... until someone disagrees with them. In cases like that they resort to "well the consensus is..." implying of course that if you don't agree with the consensus there is something wrong with you. The other tactic (Sachs uses both in his book) is to say that people who don't agree with them simply aren't enlightened. In second grade we say "you are stupid". When you get your PhD you switch to "you aren't enlightened." It sounds better I guess.
Another annoying thing in this book is Sachs' continual reference to "free market idealogues". I suppose he may have been referring to a subset of free market thinkers, however nothing in this book led me to believe that Sachs had ever met a free marketer that he liked (or at least agreed with!)
The final thing that I felt detracted from the substance of this book was Sachs' blatant partisan commentary. I get that not everyone agreed with the Iraq War and not everyone (OK... precious few!) likes President Bush, but if you want me to take you seriously as an academic, separate your political rhetoric from your academic views.
At one point Sachs states that there is "no doubt the Iraq War" was "about oil." He seems to imply that President Bush and his buddies wanted to go "get all that oil" so we could keep driving our big SUVs. (Disclaimer: I drive an SUV.)
I am not an expert by any means, but it seems plausible to me that the underlying reason that the extremists who want to reinstate the Caliphate have a sense of urgency driven by the depletion of the Arab world's supply of oil. Oil is the one power card that this region of the world has to play right now and when it's gone, it's gone. Extremists may well feel that the clock is ticking and they don't have time to use conventional means to surge into world prominence as they were just a few centuries ago.
This is a bit more of a nuanced perspective of the "Iraq War is all about oil" idea... but it wouldn't be as much fun to make fun of this interpretation on Air America now would it? It's easier to adopt a fake Texas accent and say "They just want to get all that there oil and put it in their big trucks!"
But I shouldn't be too hard on Sachs and his professor friends. Being able to throw the term "hydrological interdependence" into your conversations at parties must really make you sound smart! (It means two regions that share the same water in case you are wondering.)
Climate Control
OK, enough ranting. Maybe. Quite a bit of Sachs' book is devoted to the Global Warming problem. He trots out the usual suspects and refers over and over to this consensus or that in order to support his points. I had a thought as I listened to this book though, "Climate control is what you do in your house... not for the planet." How absurd is it to think we can control the climate? Maybe I am one of those "unenlightened pessimists" or maybe I am just not willing to stoop to that level of hubris.
Along with the sections on Global Warming, he spends quite a bit of time talking about species extinction and other ecological issues. He never addressed the one issue I have always had with the "Save the ____" movements. All of these groups believe in evolution so where is natural selection in all of this? I would think the Creationists would be far more "on board" with the extinction movements than the Evolutionists. After all, if you believe that God Created the Earth and then left Adam in charge, aren't we abdicating our responsibility as stewards of the earth if we allow animals to go extinct?
In any case, Sachs talks for a long time about the error of not trying to fix these ecological issues. He misses an important point though when he forgets to address "what if we try to fix it... and we get it wrong?" Again, I think humans have gotten pretty smart but Aristotle thought humanity had gotten pretty smart too. We have come a long way since then.
Free Markets: Do They Work or Not?
Not surprisingly, Sachs seems to think that Free Markets only work for people who are trying to get selfishly rich. Free markets, he states over and over and over again, cannot fix some problems. He is right of course, but I wonder about some of his statements. Free markets, as I have studied them, are about choices. Sachs states that "sustainability is a choice" and then goes on to say that free markets can't solve the sustainability problem.
But if free markets are about choice and sustainability is about choice, they seem like perfect bed-fellows to me! I suspect that when Sachs talks about free markets he is backlashing against those who think that "free market" means "no government intervention." I gather this because several times Sachs proposes what amount to market driven solutions. Oddly, in many cases he offers government mandates and decrees as solutions to these problems. If sustainability is a choice, government mandates take away choice! They dont' seem to fit together very well.
One example that Sachs gave that made me raise my eyebrows was the clearing of rain forests in the Amazon for farming. He suggests we offer subsidies to the indigenous people in order to persuade them not to clear the forests. He argues that "clearing the forests doesn't work anyway" since the cleared areas are not conducive to farming and they end up just abandoning the fields.
The question I had was "well... why would they go to all that work over and over again if it isn't ever going to work? What is their incentive to take the time to cut the trees, clear the brush, pull the stumps and then till the ground if it never works? Clearly it either A) works sometimes and Sachs has his facts wrong or B) the people lack the knowledge that someone has already tried this and it didn't work.
If the first is the case, then I am not sure of the answer because I don't have all the facts yet. If the second is the case, wouldn't it be cheaper to just educate the people and say "yeah... Joe over in the next tribe over spent a year clearing an acre and it didn't do him any good... you want to go take a look and see?" Seems like that would be a pretty good market force to put into place... and would involve education which is always a good thing!
Stuff I Agreed With
I obviously wasn't impressed with Sachs in this book, but there were some things I agreed with. For instance he points out that one of the roles that government should play in free markets is that of providing an infrastructure. Monetary systems, property laws and contract law all provide the necessary infrastructure for markets to operate freely and efficiently.
I also tend to agree with him that extreme poverty can cause market failures. Areas stricken by extreme poverty can be subjected to irrational behavior at worst and uninformed behavior at best. When the areas in question are so poverty stricken that even the most basic knowledge doesn't get transferred, the market is bound to fail and outside help can be very beneficial.
Another point he made late in the book was regarding the activities of NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) that chide large corporations for inhumane exploitation of third world workers. He rightly points out that if they are going to criticize those that do wrong, they need to praise those that correct their ways as well as those who do the right thing from the outset.
In general, I agree that it is in America's best interest to help alleviate extreme poverty in third world countries as these are often hotbeds of extremist activities. Sachs' intense criticism of military outlays however reveals a bit of academic naivette I believe. He argues that the U.S. spends as much as all the rest of the world combined on our defense budget even though we only have some 5% of the world's population. That sounds outrageous until you consider that entire swaths of the globe don't need to spend money on their own military since they count on the U.S. to stabilize their region. Do you really think that the EU would be as stable as it is today if it weren't for the American dominance of the military world?
Conclusion
I have two more pages of notes but most of them are negative and this review has been negative enough so I will leave them out! If you are a liberal, you will love this book so buy it. If you are a conservative, you will hate this book but you should read it, so get it from the library or borrow it from your liberal friend. If you are an American you should read this book because your soon-to-be-President is reading the book. Given that we don't know much about him, maybe we should read the same books as him and see where he comes out on his policies! (No... I didn't vote for him even though I like his style. Seemed a bit irresponsible to vote for someone with almost no track record.)