1938 vs. 2005

I feel like I've seen this before - perhaps in Easterly's original, or did it make a cameo in The White Man's Burden? - but it's worth posting again, via MR:

I like the first comment:

Easterly's point is worth repeating:

All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it—people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.

The plight of Africa isn't because we haven't known what to do technologically. It's implementation and incentives.

Perhaps this is a consultant's vanity, but I harbor the idealistic hope that better management can in some ways make progress where other attempts have failed.

(Management of what? I'm not sure, exactly. Maybe governments, maybe NGOs, maybe the private sector - I think it is safe to say there is probably a lot of room for improvement in all three in much of the developing world.)