I haven’t even begun really to listen to this interview, but as you all [all, ed.?] know I am a huge fan of Russ Roberts and when the author he is interviewing, Nina Munk, started to explain why she wanted to write this book, I decided to wing it and let you listen to the end with me. She was a financial journalist, and covered rich people therefore, and said that in 2006, like so many people, she just felt something was wrong and she needed to change focus. So she started to follow a fellow, Jeffrey Sachs, who was going to end poverty by building Millennium Villages in Africa. She followed him for six years, and apparently the project doesn’t turn out as promised. But even Professor Roberts said the book didn’t end the way he expected, so we can all be surprised together:
Nina Munk, journalist and author of The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book. Munk spent six years following Jeffrey Sachs and the evolution of the Millennium Villages Project–an attempt to jumpstart a set of African villages in hopes of discovering a new template for development. Munk details the great optimism at the beginning of the project and the discouraging results after six years of high levels of aid. Sach’s story is one of the great lessons in unintended consequences and the complexity of the development process.
So beware good intentions, and may your Montag be mostly full of intended consequence!
Hey, I read that book but it was called The Poisonwood Bible. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poisonwood/summary.html
To me, it’s unforeseen consequences instead of unintended, as with enough foresight, much of this could have been predicted.
Sorry Xty to hear of your thwarted appointment plans.
DN- have you ever seen that critter in the daylight? My money is on Canis latrans rather than Vulpes vulpes.
I was thinking the same thing. First thought was “Coyote”, but it’s not in color so I dunno…
Oops, there goes gold, and silver has been stinko anyway through this mini rally. Miners, S&P, bonds, blah, blah, blah. None of the above have crossed my 200 Day Maginot Lines, so it’s as if nothing has happened. No Buying, No Selling. For months and months now.
Which is fine. I have other things to think about. Like…I’ve been dusting off my chess skills. Mrs. O is trying to keep her brain sharp by doing the crossword and the sudoku in the paper every night. In my old age I’ll play chess against the computer. Lately I’ve fallen in love with the King’s Indian Defense.
Use It Or Lose It, Folks.
I thought this was pretty good.
Confessions of a former Libertarian: My personal, psychological and intellectual epiphany
I am even learning to knit. Chess always drove me nuts – I had a brother who was excellent at it, which made it pointless to try to my child brain. Once he did help me a lot by playing out just end games – so fewer pieces and one could see how getting there would allow one to win – but I was always on the defence – so kudos to you for taking it up.
Chess has been shown to really help inner city kids with their consequence thinking, speaking of unforeseen consequences, which I agree with. Should have seen it coming is so true of so much.
Btw, I wrote and dropped off quite the letter to my doctor today when I went to the athletic therapist, and strangely enough got a call this afternoon offering an appointment tomorrow at 2:45. It is such an insane game – I really feel for those unable to push their way through. So unfair and so inefficient. But at least tomorrow I can beg for better meds and find out when the stinking pain clinic can see me, and I am also going to see if he can refer me to an orthopaedic surgeon. But I have to tell him what to do, which is silly, He should be telling me what to do. That’s what the fancy med school degree is for.
I know,… he’s the biggest Red Fox i’ve ever seen.. but have seen him many times in the afternoon when he’s out patrolling, and he’s very bright orange red.
Also, i think it was mating time about 3 weeks ago. That blood curdling ‘vixen scream'(?) they do, wow.
Listened to a good bit of the Nina Munk podcast. It’s been my observation that people often times, and out of the goodness of their heart, will try and put together a ‘system’ to replace a natural process, or one that will hopefully prevent a certain distasteful natural reality.
These always fail, naturally, with usually the last step being a reworking of the data to try and save face on the way out. Along with ‘unforeseen’ consequences etc..
in this case, Jeffrey’s project was a failure, but there is going to be some data out in 2016 that might be maybe somehow used to indicate success?
Man-made systems designed to subvert natural processes always fail. We will have the poor with us always, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey probably could have saved a few bucks by just propping up a couple of gangs in some deluxe digs and then checking back later to see how that was going.
It’s often seen as heartless to point out the seemingly obvious to those who take off on these projects, which admittedly are often done out of goodness of heart, but they just don’t get it.
So much so that in this case they liken taking a group of people who functionally operate in what Jeffrey et al consider squalor, and propping them up in up into an environment which they do not functionally operate, to the jump starting a car. That is “don’t get it” galore.
If Jeffrey were to take a bunch of money, and go in to what was a naturally developed city that had been flattened by a tornado, and set those folks back up with livable quarters from where to rebuild… Now, THAT would be like jump starting a car. And it would probably be recognized later as a great help from the perspective of reality, or any relevant data points.
Did Nina not “get it” that Jeffrey didn’t “get it”? It seems like she was trying to find structural design flaws in Jeffrey’s chicken wire canoe, “maybe if it were wider?” “or had more seating?” or “maybe later aerodynamics testing data will tell the tale?”… all while missing the obvious.
But then, as she says, “she’s not from the world of Academia”, so thinks that she just doesn’t “get it”. And off they both went, into the well-funded, master planned, ditch.
To a Mouse
On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,
November, 1785
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty not,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle!
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion
An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ requet;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuing,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be in vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I cannot see,
I guess an’ fear!
Robert Burns
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
…
The best-laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
I quoted the first stanza because of the way he used thole – who knew that the word of the day might prove relevant to understanding 19th century Scottish poetry. The second stanza, at least the first two lines, have been spoken so often in my life, by me or my dad, it is ridiculous. But so is life, so there we have it.
The Jeffrey Sach’s will never get it – they will always think that someone screwed up their plans and it would have worked of only x hadn’t done y.
That was a good article about that fellow’s fall from libertarianism, and he was really articulate about the libertarian logical points, which made it so believable. I wish he had gone on a bit further with examples of the things that didn’t match. One of mine is the whole public/private medical crap. It is distorted beyond belief by insurance and big pharma, which muddies the debate. But I certainly like not stepping over homeless people dying in the streets, and recognize that our health care system, warts and all, does a very good job of helping people when they are traumatically ill. It doesn’t do nearly a good enough job at catching things before they are traumatic, because it has become so severely rationed, which is where the balance comes in. By preventing any (well, no, cataracts, knees, simple inguinal hernias and abortions you can pay for) private care because of ideology on the other side, we put too much pressure on the public system.
But he is especially right in recognizing the messiness of life and how we exist in a dynamic situation that does not lend itself to simple logical notation. As if even the idea of self-interest made it possible to decide what to do in a given situation. I often have no idea what is my best option to achieve even a recognized goal, and frequently do things that are clearly not in what other people would consider my best interest.
good morning all. xty, believe it or not i just had lost sailor/st of circumstance cued up on utoob a few minutes ago. hope all are well.
can’t explain it;gotta go.
You know, I almost used that for the song of the day yesterday, and I find him pretty unbearable, especially as a Canadian icon.
boring … zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Yes, I thought it ended rather abruptly. In fact I intially was thinking there must be a link to page 2, just couldn’t find it, but sadly no.
For Pete who had to go, for apparently mysterious reasons.
Me, I’m just going to feed Nana breakfast, and then hang on the couch, putting ice on my sorry side for twenty minutes every hour. I am sure you want every sordid detail, and I have to say if someone had put a frozen pound of bacon wrapped in a wet tea towel down my pants in my previous life, it would have been most unexpected and unpleasant. Now I honestly can barely feel it, but would nevertheless fight to keep it there.
Rest In Peace, Pete Seeger. My favorite commie folksinger, and I mean that with the utmost affection. My style of banjo playing is a unique hodge podge of sketchy technique, but it owes more to Pete than anyone else.
I think commie folk music ties into the inexpressible thing that drives Libertarians like me crazy. But I get it, which also drives me crazy. A foot in many intellectual camps. But here’s a huge favourite of mine, and how I secretly indoctrinated my kids to question authority, when they were hapless victims of my music selections.
I also liked the point the lapsed Libertarian made about how once you have adopted a narrow ideology, there is no room for humour. I guess all the strange incompatibilities that make humour happen are just not to be contemplated and certainly not laughed at, once you are a slave to a closed view.
We all have our internal conundrums. Look at me, a lifelong leftist who owns a shitpile of physical gold. Go figure that one out. I’m not even sure I understand it myself anymore. About all one can do is laugh, and go on about your day…and life…and do the best you can.
You might have an overall plan or theory, but any particular instance might require something else entirely. Life is like Chess, in that way. Strategy is long term, tactics are immediate.
Another famous quote along these lines is the one about how “All battle plans go out the window as soon as the shooting starts.”
Have a great day all. Off to the salt mines for me.
i consider myself libertarian. i have never been partisan, referring to the simpleton democrat vs. republican argument in the USA. in fact i voted for 3rd party candidates way back in the 80’s, even for president, when in my early twenties. this was long before the right wing laid claim to libertarianism. i think it is a shame what has happened. a lot of the objections to the philosophy are at their core a rejection of fringe politics.
here is a good article. i think it is too late for this kind of thinking in the USA, but who knows? a good start if nothing else would be to get the public to realize that their fellow man is not to blame for the world’s problems.
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2014/01/we-the-people/
nice to see you 44. send me some salty warm air.
libertarian means that you respect others. when you have no respect for others, you create the need for government! this article nails it.
http://pieceofmind.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/was-ayn-rand-a-sociopath/
Laughin’ with ya, bro.