Ray Evans Harrell wrote:
QUESTIONS FOR JEFFREY SACHS
Poor Man's Economist
Interview by AMY BARRETT
Are you citing what Sachs says as an example of shallowness?
A lot of what he says in the article seems sensible to me (of
maybe it might be better to say: there is a way to interpret it
as sensible, although there seems to be a different way
to interpret it that is not sensible.... I mean, Is Sachs
really saying "Let them eat cake?"
I don't see how one can sell the well off on an idea of
making themselves poor.
And then there is the issue that many of the "well off" see
themselves as victims, too, which is an argument that
does not go far with the poor, but which is relevant to
the behavior of these persons.
I keep going over the ideas that (1) the well off can
become even better off while consuming less "stuff", and,
in the process, (2) help others less well off than themselves,
while even this also makes them even better off.
Anent #1, creating is generaly less resource-consumptive than
consuming, but the pleasure in it is generally greater.
Anent #2, once one's own needs are well met, teaching
and otherwise providing hospital[-?]ity to others -- again
presuming it does not come at the price of denying oneself --
is far more rewarding than overstuffing oneself.\
I don't see how #1 and #2 will necessarily solve all our
problems, since there still exist situations where
persons need to sacrifice, e.g., the Soviet nuclear submarine
crewpersons who have to choose to go into the
leaking reactor vessel and apply the patch to keep the
submarine from melting down -- knowing in advance
that they will die of horrible radiation poisoning
by doing this.
But I believe:
(1) Many even though not all situations in which persons
are called upon to sacrifice (Selma's "Being tested"@#$%^&*()
are due to persons making bad decisions the consequences of
which fall on persons other than themselves. In the
case of the Soviet nuclear submarine, the submarine
could have been designed better by its Soviet designers,
the United States could have helped the Soviet designers
do better by not feeding dysinformation to the
Soviet nuclear researchers, and the politicians could
have avoided anybody needing to make
nuclear submarines in the first instance, etc.
(2) It seems to be a psychological fact (something with
which I have no personal experience) that persons whose
needs have been well met all their life often tend to
be willing to "give back" at genuine sacrifice to themselves
when this is necessary, and also that when they do this,
they often do not feel they are sacrificing because
their "good introjects" protect them from suffering [remember
what Socrates said: "No harm can befall a good person in this
life or the next", and Heinz Kohut, in his essay "On Courage"
explains the psychoidynamics of this).
So, is Sachs shallow? Or is he part of the solution?
As for myself, I find those who lead others to sacrifice
while they themselves lead from the rear, shallow -- or at
least very fortunate, since it seems to me preferable
to sacrifice by sitting at one's
fine desk as The First Lord of
the Admiralty with one's fine Breguet watch and cigars and
so forth, than to sacrifice in the trenches or, a
fortiori, in the leaking reactor vessel....
--
Which -- free association -- leads me to something
I seem to recall my mother telling me: In WWII, her
brother was a machinist, and therefore had a deferment.
But the nasty looks and remarks the brother got in the
street for "What are you doing here a healthy
young man while my sons/husband/brothers are fighting
and dying?" caused the brother to enlist. We may
speculate how much more Alan Turing might have
contributed to the war effort in the trenches than
at Bletchley(sp?), too. Life is not fair.
Not only shallowness (Bush encouraging us
to help fight global terrorism by buying
a new SUV) but also depth that
is good for both oneself and others (Alan Turing,
the scientists at Los Alamos, etc.) can be
embarrassing.
Student: Happy the land that breeds a hero.
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
\brad mccormick
This year you moved from the Center for International Development at
Harvard to Columbia and started the Earth Institute, which is dedicated to
the idea of sustainable development. What is that?
Sustainable development means rising living standards for everybody in a way
that's not going to destroy our ecosystems, cause mass extinctions and add
to enormous problems in climate or water scarcity. The links between the
physical environment and the economic environment are much more profound
than economists have recognized. If they really want to get to the core of
what's happening in Africa, they had better start understanding AIDS,
tuberculosis, malaria and nitrogen-depleted soil. These are important
phenomena that help to explain why the poorest countries are not achieving
economic progress.
That seems like common sense. Why do you even need the idea of sustainable
development?
In academia, the scientists and the policy types rarely deal with one
another directly, especially on problems of the poor. The idea of the Earth
Institute is to focus not on the disciplines but on the problems and to
bring together five main areas in an intensive dialogue: the earth sciences,
ecological science, engineering, public health and the social sciences with
a heavy dose of economics.
The term sustainable development showed up in the 80's, and it wasn't very
popular. Why not find another, more marketable, catch phrase?
I resisted the term also because a lot of people said what sustainable
development means is that the rich have to cut their living standards
sharply to make room for the poor. But my own analysis doesn't suggest that
the reason that poor people are poor is that rich people are rich. I think
rich people are rich because they have developed technology successfully to
address a lot of challenges and because they were lucky enough not to have
some of the ecological barriers that the poor have.
But under the idea of sustainable development, won't Americans have to cut
back on their consumption in some way in order to not deplete the planet?
We have to cut back on the amount of carbon that we are putting in the
atmosphere, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to cut back on
our living standards. If you develop technology that can capture the carbon,
you can have your consumption and your climate too.
At some point, though, won't we simply have to stop consuming so much?
Actually, one of the surprises of the last couple of centuries is that we
are not running out of stuff. Almost every commodity has gone down
significantly in price in the last hundred years. Stuff is not driving our
economy. More and more of what we do is in bits and information services.
You have said that a lot of your ideas came from experience on the ground in
poor countries, rather than in the classroom. Are there a lot of theories in
economics that just don't work when you go out into the world?
Or are completely irrelevant in a particular context, because what might be
important in one place may be irrelevant in another place. Differential
diagnosis is critical. You have to be open to the wide range of things that
can go wrong in the world.
Many economists are still very skeptical of the idea of sustainable
development. How are you going to sell it?
I'm on my way to China this month to meet the Chinese leadership. In
January, I'll be traveling to India. Yesterday, I was on video conference
with a number of ministers of health from Latin America.
So you are a global economic consultant.
Well, I call it an adviser, but yes, I've been doing that for a number of
years.
Columbia has given you an $8 million town house for the use of the Earth
Institute. Is there a part of your new job that will be fun, giving dinner
parties for dignitaries, maybe having Bono stop by?
Of course. I adore the work I do with Bono. He's one of the great people on
the planet. To have advised the pope, to be engaged with Kofi Annan -- I
think our world's greatest political leader -- it's a joy beyond anything I
could have hoped for. To have pulled out of the papal residence in a van
with Bono and have the mobs chasing behind us, like in a Beatles movie --
it's fun, I have to say.
Did you feel like a rock star?
I leaned over to him, and I said, ''Look, they always do that with
macroeconomists.'' And he looked at me, like, ''Yeah, right.''
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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