Part II: In Which We Read "The Tyranny of Experts": North America FTW!

So I finished the second third of The Tyranny of Experts. This part was about the “Blank Slate” – this notion that non-Western countries are masses of chaos just waiting for a technocrat to come along and impose the order which automatically yields improvements in education, health, and economics. Easterly illustrated this with Bill Gates' myopic reliance on the temporary decrease in child mortality rates over five years in Ethiopia as conclusive proof of effective autocratic governance.

What the book says

Basically, prioritization of individual or autocratic rights hundreds of years ago carries implications for current matters such as trade, democracy, and rates of organ donation. For example, medieval free cities with histories of individual rights, commerce, and government by a council of rotating members were better prepared to fight against military intervention than autocratically-governed societies with a “collectivist” (read: conformist and non-challenging) citizen experience. So one result of a collective versus individual focus is incentives – people with an individual investment will be more driven to defend their rights and society and resources than people who are spending half their time working for others' benefit.

The Rule of Law. A Lake.

I'm visiting my parents this week in Michigan. Here's what I'm looking at whilst typing this:  

There is really no way to express the contrast between the water in Brighton Beach (cloudy, salty, thick, full of jellyfish and other biological chunks, but still nice in its awkward way) and the water here (clear, blue, fresh, crisp, clear, 20 feet of visibility, chunk-free, and clear). Hell, you probably wouldn't even need to tow water on your swim since you could just sip the lake when you got thirsty and be fine.

A thing I can never get over is the ability to be in a physical place that has nothing to do with what's going on in one's head. When I was 10 years old and romping around with my little friends on the deck where I'm sitting in back of my parents' house, it would be inconceivable that I'd be back on a visit from New York and sitting here thinking about the rule of law and governance as applied to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals – yet that's exactly what I'm doing.