The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly

PART ONE
The Debate That Never Happened

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The farmers in Wood County in rural northwest Ohio never saw it coming.
The soldiers had arrived on the morning of Sunday, February 28, 2010,
while the farmers were in church. Hearing gunshots, the farmers had rushed
to their houses, which by then were already immersed in flames. While
some soldiers kept the farmers at gunpoint from rescuing their homes,
others poured gasoline over the recent grain harvest in the barns and burned
that as well. One eight-year-old child was trapped and died in the fire. The
dairy cows were dispatched more quickly and humanely with a burst of
machine-gun fire. Then the soldiers marched the more than 20,000 farmers
away at riflepoint. Never come back, they were told; the land is no longer
yours.
The farmers, many of whose homesteads had been in their families for
generations, were unhappy to learn that a British company was taking their
land with the help of the soldiers. The company was going to grow forests
and then sell the timber. The farmers were even more distressed to learn
that the World Bank, an official international organization combating global
poverty, had financed and promoted the project by the British company. The
World Bank is not subject to Ohio or United States law or courts.
The farmers might have hoped that publicity would help them. And
indeed, a year later a British human-rights organization, Oxfam, published a
report on what had happened in Wood County in February 2010. The New
York Times ran a story on the report on September 21, 2011. The World
Bank the next day promised an investigation. That investigation has never
happened.
As of this writing, now past the fourth anniversary of the tragedy, the
whole event has been forgotten by almost everyone except the victims. The

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly