>> let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> coming up next, william easterly, co-director of the new york university development research institute, sat down with booktv to discuss his latest book, "the tyranny of experts." this interview is part of booktv's college series. it's about 20 minutes. >> host: nyu professor william easterly, in your book "the tyranny of experts: economists, dictators and the forgotten rights of the poor," what's your message? >> guest: my message is the tragedy of the fight against global poverty is that we have forgotten about the rights of the poor. and that often can make the poor worse off rather than better off, unfortunately. >> host: how are we conducting

this fight against poverty? >> guest: well, a lot of it is through official aid agencies like usaid, the american aid agency or the world bank, and some of it is through private philanthropy like the most famous is the gates foundation from bill gates, bill and melinda gates. they're giving money to technical solutions to help the world's poor, and they think they're being politically neutral or indifferent to the presence of autocrats that are oppressing poor people at the same time they're doing this. but unintentionally they're, unfortunately, kind of colluding with the autocrats that are in power. >> host: give an example. >> guest: so one example is ethiopia. ethiopia is a place that was ruled for a very long time from '92-2012 when he died of natural causes, he was a guy who's been praised by gates. gates said he was proud to work with him, he gave a moving eulogy for him, praised his

equally autocratic successor as continuing his policies, this is all great. what's not so great is he was a serial human rights abuser, putting a peaceful dissident in jail for 28 years, sentenced for 20 years in the year 2012, he implemented a program called villagization where he moved farmers at gunpoint from their own land to government-model villages that were anything than model villages that lacked basic services like clean water. and when you are violating the rights of the poor, you're not making the poor better off, you're making them worse off. the farmers did not want to move from their lands. the fact that they had to be moved at gunpoint shows they actually felt worse off by being moved, rather than better off. and so gates, i guess he feels like he needs to praise the leader to operate in ethiopia, but he unintentionally winds up praising, justifying, helping justify the financing of a guy who is making his own poor people worse off, not better

off. >> host: so, professor easterly, how does that tie into aid given through usaud or through the gates foundation? >> guest: well, to continue with ethiopia for a moment, ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of world bank aid, gates foundation aid. aid keeps him in power while he was alive, keeps his autocratic successors in power. he actually used the aid to keep himself in power because at one point aid that was designated for famine victims was given only to people who could prove they were ruling party supporters and was kept away from anyone who was not in the ruling party. that was a way to punish the opposition and stay in power. that was exposed by human rights watch, but the neglect of human development so widespread that it generated barely a ripple. they are financing autocrats and keeping them in power, and they're getting away with it. no one is protesting.

that's why i saw such an edger to protest in -- urge to protest in this book, to give a voice the these poor people that are being oppressed by autocrats financed with western aid. >> host: don't u.s. aid programs, don't we keep an eye on where the money goes and how it's being spent. >> guest: we try to keep an eye but this also, frankly, intersects with the u.s. foreign policy agenda. a country like ethiopia is an ally in the war on terror. that's probably part of the reason why that aid is going there. but, you know, it's really distorting the debate on democracy and development, because we're pretending he's a good guy when he's anything but a good buy. aid is really silencing the whole debate on democracy and development. we're not even allowed to really talk about human rights or political rights of poor people and development can. >> host: why is government-to-government aid the prevalent way of doing things still? >> guest: well, it's so much easier. the world is a messy place, and

people like easy solutions. so if you can get a government agency that just funnels the money out to another government, you know, many autocratic examples besides ethiopia, uganda's at one that has been an aid darling of both the world bank and usaid, also an equally autocratic guy who has his own forced resettlement stories and moving farmers at gunpoint and taking away their lands. that's -- and thinking that we are being politically neutral is kind of the easy way out. we think, we hope we're doing good for the material suffering of the poor in these countries, we hope we're lessening tragic disease and hunger. the reality is we're really supporting autocrats. who are the experts you refer to in the title? >> guest: well, the experts include really all the public intellectuals that kind of carry forward the debate on development, anybody from bill gates to angelina jolie to bono to jeffrey sachs.

frankly, i have to include myself. i count myself as kind of a recovering expert. i myself used to be blind to some of these issues that i'm talking about now, that i'm writing about in this book. this book was really a sort of penance for my own expert past being so insensitive to these issues of the rights and dignity of poor people. >> host: what is some of your sins, in your view? >> guest: well, i was in the world bank for a long time. we, frankly, were really indifferent to the autocracy of the places that we were helping. we were really indifferent to rights and freedoms that i think now are really not only a moral good in themselves, but are also a big way that development happens. free people who can hold their government accountable can force their governments to do good things for them, can stop them from doing bad things to them like taking their farms at gunpoint. and that's part of the recipe of how we developed, how the u.s. become a prosperous place. it's not that controversial to say it was really a lot about

the economic and political freedom that we enjoy as citizens that fueled u.s. development, that made possible this extreme outburst of entrepreneurship and creativity and public infrastructure that fueled the american development. but there's some kind of double standard we have that we recognize the role of our own freedoms and our own story, but we don't recognize those same freedoms for poor people that are developing now. we don't extend to them that same kind of recognition of their right to freedom. >> host: so, professor easterly, if you could restructure how imf or the world bank work, where would the restructuring go? how would you do it? >> guest: well, i'd say two things. one is, and most obviously don't give aid to dictate. don't finance repression by dictators of their own people's aspirations for democratic rights, their own people's campaign for democratic rights.

don't finance the jailers of the peaceful blogger imprisoned in ethiopia for writing a blog calling for democracy in ethiopia. that's the most obvious thing. the second thing is, frankly, this issue is larger than just the world bank or usaid. this is a big issue that we are debating worldwide whether we want, you know, to go the path of russia's putin, the chinese communist party or of the free countries of, you know, japan and south korea and western europe and the u.s. there's a big debate between autocracy and freedom going on in the world right now. the front lines are in places like ukraine, for example. but the voice of the people who work on global poverty has had this unintentional sensorship that we don't allow ourselves to talk about freedom for poor people. and so we're unintentionally on the wrong side of this global debate on freedom. >> host: and are the ngos

working in tandem as well, in your view? >> guest: well, out varies from one ngo to another. i mean, gates' foundation is one very big ngo that is really getting it wrong. there are other ngos like human rights watch. human rights watch is openly campaigning for rights for poor people and obviously get it right, and the foundation financed by george soros, they're getting it right. but there are not enough that are getting it right, and this shows this sort of tunnel vision that we have about poor people, that we worry about their material deprivation which is, of course, is a very good thing to show compassion about, but we ignore their rights as human beings, their human rights, their political rights to choose their own government and not be, to not have their human rights egregiously violated by aid-financed dictatorships. >> host: so what do we co?

>> guest: well, the what do we do question, you have to consider what comes first, action or caring? you know, the problem now is not so much a lack of the obvious action plans, it's that most people don't really care about this issue, about human rights and political rights of poor people. so the first thing that has to happen is to try to get people to care. it's almost like we're at sort of like pre-1960s in the civil rights movement in the u.s., you know? first you had to convince white people to care, to actually be convinced that black people deserve the same rights as white people. that's where we are right now in the fight against global poverty. people in the west really, unfortunately, too often really don't care about the rights of poor people. once we get them to care, then we can start talking about actions to implement those rights. >> host: when did you come about your change of heart? >> guest: well, it was a slow process. i left the world bank in 2001

kind of under the cloud of writing a previous book protesting world bank philosophies, and i've been on a long intellectual voyage since then that most recently has made me much more aware of this issue, that one of the most fundamental sins we're committing in the aid business is this disrespect for the dignity and rights of poor people. >> host: why do you include nearly a chapter on robert moses here in new york city and the tyranny of experts? >> guest: well, there's also always the threat of a domestic tyranny of experts, and one example of that was robert moses and irvin planner in new york who wanted to tear down large parts of what is now the soho neighborhood of new york, one of the richest neighborhoods of new york where, you know, small apartments go for $3 million now. he had this sort of top-down planning autocratic mentality that, you know, he sees this

district here, he can't see any potential in it. he wants to tear it down. but fortunately, there were democratic resistors asserting the rights of local people in the neighborhood, especially jane jacobs, who fought him very hard and eventually won the argument. and she was protecting what at that time were just struggling artists living in soho, living in soho creating some of the great works of modern art. she saved them by advocating for their democratic rights from this sort of tyrannical, tear down the whole neighborhood mentality of robert moses. and that made possible this explosion of wealth in what is now soho that today soho is filled with an apple store, luxury retail brands, lots of tourists and these glamorous residential neighborhoods. >> host: but at the same time, struggling artists can't afford to live in soho today. >> guest: well, you know, when you allow a city to be not planned by a authoritarian expert, but just sort of emerge natch lilleally -- naturally,

what happens is -- i also feel sad that the artists eventually got priced out of these neighborhoods. there was a sort of democratic program that protected them somewhat. there was an artist in residence program that gave them controlled represents and allows some of them to still be will today in the neighborhood. but, of course, some of them were driven out or they sold out for very good profits to go somewhere else that wasless expensive -- was less expensive where they could do art. and that's the kind of rough and tumble that freedom creates. at any moment, some gain, some lose. but overall, you know, when you allow freedom, the economy as a whole prospers and makes everyone richer. when you're allowed democratic rights, yo i stop your -- you stop your government's ability to do harm to you, and that's the same rights poor people should have. >> host: what's your take on microloaning? is that an approach that you support? >> guest: yeah, i do. it's, you know, an attempt the

give poor people the right to found their own businesses with small credits. you know, that's, there's a perpetual search in aid for the panacea that will unleash prosperity and end poverty. that's been one of those panaceas people have hoped for, but the reality is there is no panacea. what happens when you give poor people rights is they have the ability to choose among many what we think of as panaceas, but are really many, many different options for finding their own way out of poverty. it might be growing coffee and exporting it to the luxury new york coffee market as farmers in rwanda are now doing. it might be, you know, it might be microcredit, it might be getting microcredit, starting your own business. but the western experts usually get it wrong on what they think is the magical panacea, and microcredit has panned out as one of many options. >> host: this is chapter ten, how much do nations matter? if there is one number to which

the rights of millions will be are happily sacrificed, it is the national gross domestic product growth rate, the national state justifies itself partly as a custodian of economic management charges with promoting growth. the broader lesson is that the excessive emphasis on development of nations over development of individuals was yet another tragic, misguided choice on the road to forgetting the rights of the poor. >> guest: yep. >> host: isn't gdp important? >> guest: of course, is important. you know, what we fail to realize is that rapid growth is often the result of a lot of noise going on in the economy, you know? you might be lucky to have a good harvest, you might be lucky to have high commodity prices. you might be lucky to just get a measurement. the measurement, problems with measuring gdp are enormous, and the difference between

alternative estimates of the same growth rate can vary by as much as four percentage points. what often unintentionally happens with high growth rates is we give e enormous credit to- if there's an autocrat on the scene, we give enormous credit to that autocrat and give him all the -- usually him -- give him all the credit for the autocrat, for the autocratic miracle that we think he has produced. and the evidence simply doesn't support that. growth is something that mostly bubbles up from below from the efforts of many people to demand the right infrastructure, to the entrepreneurs starting new goods like the rwanda coffee farmers that found that exporting coffee to new york was very profitable and paid off hugely in their living standards, you know? these are the things that generate growth, not these sort of wise, great, benevolent autocrats. there are no such thing. autocrats by definition tend to be the worst people who get power who stay in power by doing

really bad things to stay in power. that's not what we should be supporting just because we see a high growth rate. >> host: what's another success story? south korea? china? >> guest: you know, south korea's a really interesting success story. it's a long process of transition of giving. it so happened that at first they gave a lot more economic freedom, the about for entrepreneurs to flourish and export to markets. and there was an example of a really successful south korean entrepreneur who founded what is now hyundai from, basically, started as a garage repair shop in 1945. today is, like, one of the most successful car companies, of course. and that's what drove a lot of the early success of south korea. and then at some point south koreans also made a lot of effort to get their democratic rights and demanded their political rights as well as their economic rights. that happened in the late '80s, and they were successful in getting a full democracy in

place also. so south korea's now a flourishing, prosperous place where south koreans enjoy both political and economic freedom. >> host: china? >> guest: china's more complicated case and is very misunderstood. i think what we're getting wrong about china is we don't, we don't understand enough that economic growth, rapid economic growth -- which is, of course, why china gets attention -- is really about changes. so what we should be looking for is was there a positive change in the rights of chinese citizens in the freedom that ordinary citizens enjoy? you say, well, compare that with how they were under mao. i just bought -- i was in hong kong, and i just bought a poster for somewhat satirical purposes of, you know, mao benebraska lently in the hens -- benevolently in the heavens looking down on his people. that was the mindset in his day, but, of course, it led to the enormous famine that killed

possibly as many as 30 million people and the great leap forward. and compared to those dark days, chinese citizens enjoy both more political rights and more economic rights. still a long way from democracy, still a long way from freedom, but that positive change in their rights unleashed a tremendous burst of energy among the chinese people, and especially considering how long they had been kept down not only by mao, but by the japanese invasion during world war ii, the long history of civil war under war lordism. compared to all that bad stuff that lies in the past, there's been a positive change towards a more stable level of ordinary freedoms for chinese citizens, and that's fueled chinese economic growth. it will not continue if the chinese do not eventually give in to the demands for democratic rights. it will not continue. that's, the evidence of history is very clear on that. so far it has continued because they have allowed a positive evolution of freedom.

>> host: william easterly is professor of economics at new york university and co-director of the new york university development research institute which is what? >> guest: sorry? >> host: which is what? the development can research institute. >> guest: the development research institute is funding lots of research on how development really does happen. most recently we have something called the success project in which we're finding a lot of success really does bubble up from below and not from benevolent, great autocrats on the top delivering it to his people. >> host: his most recent book, "the tyranny of experts." this is booktv on c-span2. >> you're watching booktv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> there was a time i had five -- i learned and understood

this in the course of writing the book. i had five families on television, and i had one on moon crist drive. the one on moon crist drive, the kids got up and drove to school. i think i drove them to school sometimes, but they didn't need me to drive, they were able to get to school. the ones on television needed me to breathe. they needed me to be alive. and that's where i paid my attention. now, i don't think that's peculiar to, you know, the work i was doing. i think there were doctors and lawyers and, you know, people in all kinds of work whose work dominates their lives and defines who they are for the time they're doing it. and i was defined more by what i was doing than what i was -- on

the air than what i was doing on moon crist drive. >> and yet you begin, this is full of detail of your childhood. and having written a memoir myself, like many successful people there's a fascination with this is not a childhood without significant challenges. and you begin right away by talking about your father, herman k. lear, and he says the k. stands for king lear. i love that. [laughter] i know he becomes a prototype for a couple of people in your television shows we can talk about later, but let's just stay with him for a while. tell us about king lear, your king lear. >> he, he served time. when i was 9 years old, he

announced that he was going to oklahoma to finish some deal, do something there with a couple of men my mother had met who said i don't like those men, herman, don't go with those men. >> and you're living on the east coast, so oklahoma's really -- >> yes. we were living in connecticut, in connecticut. and -- [laughter] his reply was, finally when they were arguing about it, jeanette, stifle yourself! [laughter] and that, of course, is where archie got the word. and he left, and he was arrested the day he got back. he was going to bring me a ten-gallon hat from oklahoma, and the day he was arrested there was a picture in the paper with his holding the hat over -- hat over his face, manacled to a

detective. but he was away for three years at a crucial time for a kid. and he persisted following that in getting into trouble one way or the other. and the thing that defined him for me, i could not not love him. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's some of the latest news about the publishing industry. publishers weekly released their selections for the best books of 2014. the list, composed of five fiction and five nonfiction titles, includes lawrence wright's account of the camp david accords, 13 days in september, a look at childhood vaccination on immunity, and the recounting of the chilean miners

trapped underground for 69 days in 2010, "deep down dark." ..