Development as Freedom

By William Easterly

The individual economic and political rights crucial to development include all those we take for granted at home, such as the right to your own property, the right to trade with whomever you wish, the right to protest bad government actions and the right to vote for politicians who do beneficial actions.

Technical experts in development sometimes concede some rights and deny others, which disrespects rights for what they are: unalienable…. New research suggests that free individuals with political and economic rights make up remarkably successful problem-solving systems.

Such systems based on rights reward a decentralised array of people: economic entrepreneurs with property rights get to keep the rewards of solving the problems of their consumers.

Political entrepreneurs get rewarded with a longer tenure in office if they solve the citizens' problems, and they are driven out of office if they don't. Focusing on rights yields two perspectives on how development success happens. First, societies that have attained individual freedom are likely to have escaped poverty.

Economists have gone back into our history to confirm this story for how we in the west escaped poverty, but we seem unwilling to consider that the same story could play out in the rest of the world. Second, societies in which there is a positive change in freedom will likely see a positive change in prosperity.

(From “The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor”)