The conventional approach to economic development, to making poor countries rich, is based on a technocratic illusion: the belief tht poverty is a purely technical problem amenable to such technical solutions as fertilizers, antibiotics, or nutritional supplements (…) By this illusion, the technical experts unintentionally confer new powers and legitimacy on the state as the entity that will implement the technical solutions. The economist who advocate the technocratic approach have a terrible naïveté about power -that as restraints on powers are loosened or even removed, the same power will remain benvolent of its own accord. *

The technocratic illusion is that poverty results from a shortage of expertise, whereas poverty is really about a shortage of rights. The emphasis on the problem of expertise makes the problem of rights worse. The technical problems of the poor (and the absence of technical solutions for those problems) are a symptom of poverty, not a cause o poverty. This book argues that the cause of poverty is the absence of political and economic rights, the absence of a free political and economic system that would find the technical solutions to the poor’s problems. The dictator whom the experts expectt will accomplish the technical fixes to technical problems is not the solution; he is the problem. **

Autocracies perpetuate collectivist values; free cities and states perpetuate individualist values. ***

However benevolent aand autocrat may appear for the moment, unrestrained power will always turn out to be the enemy of development. .It is time at last for the debate that never happened to happen. It is time at last for the silence on unequal rights for rich and poors to end. It is tim at last for all men and women to be qually free ****

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William Easterly: The Tyranny of Experts. Basic Books, NY, 2013
* Página 6
** Página 7
*** Página 139
**** Página 351

Un libro más que recomendable del siempre polémico y polemista Bill Easterly, al que el Banco Mundial se cargó hace años por decir lo que pensaba de la institución y el dinero gastado en ayuda al desarroll.