The Billion $ Question for Bill
I had a chance to meet Bill Easterly at the Carnegie Council in New York, just a few weeks back. After an interesting discussion about International Development some friends and I went closer to Bill aned I asked: ”If you had one billion dollar to spend in international development, what would you do? Education, roads, invest in local companies? Will you keep it in your bank because there is nothing really we can do? What?” There were some jokes to begin with. “I am very bad at managing my personal finances,” we both said laughing, but in the end, nothing – no real answers.
I do understand that somebody (else) might have tried to make a prescription out of that answer. Had Bill said something like, “I would pay teachers” the world at large would have thought “Education! Bill sees the solution in education!” While clearly that is not the case. A billion dollar is way too little money for most large scale programs; it is a number that requires balancing serious trade-offs, hard choices, and it obliges prioritization. Yet, it is an amount large enough to allow for mistakes and bold actions.
Bill said, “we do not know enough about development”, so I suggested “a thinktank! Or a research center, this is what we should spend the billion on!”, “No no”, he said. For a moment I thought we were on the right track. After reading the book “Poor Economics“, by Esther Duflo, I thought that research and Randomized Control Trials (RCT) can help finding areas of intervention or programmes that are worth the billion.
The conversation ended up in silence. But the reality is that thousands of similar conversations do not and cannot. Every day at macro and micro level, policy makers, investors and donors have to make an actual choice of how to use or not to use much more than a billion US dollar. While a lot of us might think they have an answer about how best to spend these money, the reality is that we do not know what would be the optimal way.
Nonetheless, the billion $ question is about action and opportunity. The reality is that we do have this billion to spend and we can decide to hold on while the world keeps rolling towards the future or try to lead the change. Every day we are faced with The Doubt:
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”
Hamlet got lost in his doubt, confusion and inaction. That story did not end very well; we can now write a different story for development. What should it be? How would you use the billion? Bill, if you have thought of your answer by now, this is your second chance.
Imagine you have a billion dollar, and now imagine how you would use it!
P.s. Bill, should we maybe give the billion to Jeffrey?
”If you had one billion dollar to spend in international development, what would you do? is the wrong question for several reasons. It is not clear what international development means. The word is so giant and gooey, it doesn’t mean much. Is it personal wealth, better health (and is that curative or preventative?) is it better education (and what is that?). Democracy, and is that about elections or rights? And what is international? There are countries on which it is easier to do development than other, and likely to be more fruitful. In general this is the wrong way to look at things. What is more important is to think about the usual manor by which funds are given out and who designs those efforts. Currently they are designed by people in rich powerful countries. Competed to organizations based in those rich powerful countries, who then run the programs. The pretense of local or national ownership is based around trying to persuade stakeholders (whoever they are) that our programs are good for them. It all takes a very long time and modest amounts of the money actually do anything that is of direct long or short term use to the people they are being done to. So the way some hypothetical person would go about doing a billion dollars of development on the world would not do very much.
We need to think more about out own weaknesses in terms of analysis, our own administrative and managerial disfunction, and the way we separate the geo-political from the developmental before we take questions like this seriously.
Dear Mark, I understand your point. Really the question is much simpler and straightforward: YOU Mark Mullen, choose YOUR definition of international development and how YOU would spend the Billion $.
As an avid learner of Bill’s doctrine of piecemeal development rather than bold planning, I found it interesting that you asked this question. And the heretic suggestion of “Giving it to Jeffrey” made me chuckle.
I am the creator of http://www.kindmankind.net, a platform for the least visible and voiceless initiatives to get connected and – maybe – meet the right entrepreneurial mind to help them. That website doesn’t run on money, by the way.
So, how would I use the billion? Ester Duflo’s alternative approach and positive thinking are part of the solution: free school lunch, insecticide-treated bednets, etc. I would use part of the money to lobby Western governments to change their policy of agriculture subvention. And I would invest in exemplary students (unfair as it may seem) supporting the best brains provided they make a commitment for their country.
And I would promote (Western) citizen engagement (ie combat cynicism) and create more positive examples of “development” (ultimately, we want to develop sustainable happiness, don’t we?)
Dear Kamiel, thank you for your suggestions and best of luck in your initiative!
M
We have had 400 years of development if we cannot figure out what we want from it it’s because we don’t want to.
Development is finding any and all forms of capital and throwing them into a furnace for a minute’s pleasure — and to enrich a handful of furnace providers.
Our problem is diminished capital: there is a scarcity premium to it. Capital is now too valuable to burn up in a furnace. Time to abandon the furnaces and find Plan B.
Take your billions and pay people not to have babies. This buys some breathing space. In a couple of generations the hungry mouths will diminish and capital will multiply where the demands upon it are reduced.
Get rid of the cars and the livestock animals. Buy more breathing space for fewer people and for nature to recover from the assault taking place on it, the all-out assault against capital.
Do nothing and there is the example of reindeer on St. Matthew’s Island.
Thank you Steve for your comment.
Clearly there is no “Them”, in fact there is no “We”, or “Them” in the question…there is just You!
M