Easterly versus Sachs on Hayek
17 November 2006 at 12:09 am Peter G. Klein 1 comment
| Peter Klein |
William Easterly takes Jeff Sachs to task in Wednesday’s W$J for failing to understand Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (regular version; version for muzzy management types).
Hayek’s great book is all about the dangers of large-scale state economic planning, courageously written in 1944 when Soviet central planning, technocratic socialism and administrative control of the wartime economy appealed as a peacetime model to many New Dealers, celebrity economists and policy wonks of all stripes.
The countries that are now rich subsequently listened enough to Hayek and to common sense to avoid the road to serfdom. Yet today, Mr. Sachs (in his book “The End of Poverty”) is peddling his own administrative central plan — 449 steps in all — to end world poverty. In his plan, the U.N. secretary-general (to whom he is an adviser) would supervise and coordinate thousands of international civil servants and technocratic experts to solve the problems of every poor village and city slum everywhere. Mr. Sachs is not in favor of central planning as an economic system, but he offers it as a solution, anyway, to the multifold problems of the world’s poorest people.
NB: The editor’s decision to accompany the essay with a picture of Salma Hayek, while aesthetically pleasing, is a bit silly. After all we know Fritz beats Salma hands down.
Entry filed under: - Foss -.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
Eric H | 18 November 2006 at 5:02 pm
4:3 is not hands down. Of course, we could perhaps add more categories, like “Who will likely be remembered by more people 50 years from now?”