|Peter Boettke|
Last night (Dec 2nd), the Institute for Economic Affairs of London held their annual Hayek Memorial Lecture. The 2015 lecture was by William Easterly and addressed the general topic of the impact of Western policies on the freedom of the world's poor. This is a topic that Easterly has masterfully discussed in The Tyranny of Experts and one that is being played out across the globe at the very moment. In the current issue of the Review of Austrian Economics, we have a symposium on Easterly's work that I highly recommend.
In fact, today at GMU we will be hosting a book discussion on Loren Lomasky and Fernando Teson's Justice at a Distance: Extending Freedom Globally. They argue that the true humanitarian policy toward the world's poor is to "leave them alone". While the dominant view in development assistance policy could be described as a regulatory approach to global justice, Lomasky and Teson argue "that what the poor need is less regulation, less coercion, and less state presence in their lives."
Though not as absolute, the 2015 Nobel Laureate in Economics Angus Deaton makes a similar argument in his book The Great Escape:
“What surely ought to happen is what happened in the now-rich world, where countries developed in their own way, in their own time, under their own political and economic structures. No one gave them aid or tried to bribe them to adopt policies for their own good. What we need to do is to make sure that we are not standing on the way of the now-poor countries doing what we have already done. We need to let poor people help themselves and get out of the way — or, more positively, stop doing things that are obstructing them.”
One of the discussants on Justice at a Distance will be Michael Clemens has argued that one of the most effective and morally appealing policies would be substantially freer migration --- the trillion dollar bills currently lying on the sidewalk!
Back to my theme of IEA and ideas of lasting influence, and research of consequence, it is valuable to watch an earlier Hayek Memorial Lecture by Gary Becker.
Given the state of the world today, these ideas and the research they inspire need to be given a central place in the public discourse.
I will post Easterly's talk if, and when, it becomes available.
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