I actually admire Gates for his generosity and advocacy for the fight against global poverty. We just disagree about how to end poverty throughout the world. Gates believes poverty will end by identifying technical solutions. My research shows that the first step is not identifying technical solutions, but ensuring poor people"s rights.
Gates concentrates his foundation"s efforts on finding the right fixes to the problems of the world"s poor. Along with official aid donors, the foundation works together with local, generally autocratic(独裁的), governments on these technical solutions. Last year, Gates cited Ethiopia(埃塞俄比亚) in a Wall Street Journal guest column as an example, a country where he described the donors and government as setting "clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach." Gates then gives credit for progress to the rulers. When the tragically high death rates of Ethiopian children fell from 2005 to 2010, Gates said this was "in large part thanks to" such a measurement-driven program by Ethiopia"s autocrat Meles Zenawi, who had ruled since 1991.
Do autocratic rulers like Meles really deserve the credit Gates" technocratic approach to poverty, combining expert advice and cooperative local rulers, is a view that has appealed for decades to foundations and aid agencies. But if technical solutions to poverty are so straight forward, why had these rulers not already used them The technical solutions have been missing for so long in Ethiopia and other poor countries because autocrats are more motivated to stay in power than to fix the problems of poverty. Autocracy itself perpetuates poverty.
Our own history in the U.S. shows how we can protest bad government actions and reward good actions with our rights to protest and to vote. We won"t even let New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie get away with a traffic jam on a bridge. Such democratic rights make technical fixes happen, and produce a far better long-run record on reducing poverty, disease and hunger than autocracies.
If the democratic view of development is correct, the lessons for Gates are clear: Don"t give undeserved credit and praise to autocrats. Don"t campaign for more official aid to autocrats. Redirect aid to democrats. If the democratic view is wrong, I do deserve to be on Gates" list of the world"s most misguided economists. What do welearn about the author from this passage