Development as Freedom

Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful review of the things that matter
Review: I really liked Amartya Sen's writing in this book. The book covers a wide range of topics. The arguments and conclusions are well supported by historical and empirical data. This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the questions such as what really constitutes development, how development is a prerequisite for attaining and enjoying freedom and the social, political and economic dimensions of development.

Rating:
Summary: Best book to start reading Amartya Sen
Review: If you are from an India or a developing country, I will strongly recommend this book as your first book into Amartya Sen/Developmental Economics.

I found this book fascinating in terms of its explanation of different types of freedoms and their importance in development. Though the first two chapters are fairly easy, it gets really hi-fi in terms of using economic concepts after that. If you do not have an MBA or a degree in economics, it kind of gets tricky.

But if you are from India, you will get answers for many questions that bothered me:

1) Why did China progress a lot faster than India ?
2) How come Kerala has a high life expectancy and yet poor development (the answer is not given directly)
3) What should be the key priorities for public policy in India (the answer is not direct)
4) Why are free markets important in India... And what is the role of institutional structures in this new capitalist environment of post-1991 ?

Have fun...

Rating:
Summary: Great Political Economy
Review: In Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen tells us that the process of development is best understood as expansion of the freedoms that people enjoy in five spheres: political, economic, social, transparency (in the sense that important information is available to the public), and personal security. Each of these types of freedoms reinforce one another and contribute to outcomes such as higher incomes, better health, and longevity. Sen quotes Peter Bauer, an iconoclast in the development field, as saying that "I regard the extension of the range of choice, that is, an increase in the range of effective alternatives open to the people, as the principle objective and criterion of economic development; and I judge a measure principally by its probable effects on the range of alternatives open to individuals."

Sen points out that markets are not simply a means to an end but rather a fundamental freedom. All people want to enter into exchanges with others, and this is how people everywhere behave unless they are prevented from doing so. Sen shows that markets are not an expression of rapacious self-interest but rather are dependent on virtues such as trust and rectitude. Seen in this light, market exchanges are an expression of deep human needs. Yet Sen realizes that markets have limitations and he argues for non-market decisions to optimally provide for education, health care, protection of the environment, and prevention of the grossest inequalities in income distribution.

As an illustration of the interrelationships between the different types of freedoms, and between these freedoms and economic outcomes, Sen explains the Asian economic crises of the late 1990s as partly a result of a lack of transparency: that is, a lack of public participation in reviewing financial and business arrangements. Had they been able to, members of the public likely would have demanded greater transparency and the crises might have been averted; however, authoritarian political arrangements prevented effective demands for transparency. And, once the crises struck, the response of governments in the region was inadequate. Had these governments been democratically accountable, they would have responded more quickly and forcefully to boost employment and otherwise cushion the impact of the crises on the poorest members of their societies.

Sen, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in economic science, has aimed this work at a general audience. For specialists, though, the book offers an extended discussion of methodological issues introduced by Sen's view of development as freedom, more than 50 pages of end notes, and an index of names and subjects. This book will be an adventure for readers interested in the greatest problem us at the outset of the 21st century: how can the poorest people in the world live better lives?

Rating:
Summary: Five stars- A superb lie
Review: James Versluys, editor, Houston Review

This is a very hard book to rate on some kind of star system. Being a longtime fan of Armatya Sen, this remains one of my favorite books, and it contains a good deal of worthwhile information and is an excellent general discussion of development.

The problem with the whole book arises out of a very open and rather immediate consequence of Sen's reasoning. Simply put, development is not freedom, it is development. "Freedom to", or the "positive freedoms" are nothing of the kind- freedom to something is simply a trick phrase used by academics in general as a rather conscious attempt to subvert the meaning of the word.

I call this approach the 'trigger word problem'. Politics likes to use certain emotional and somewhat vague words to its advantage. The political left has not for a long time been able to use the word freedom in a political context to its advantage for the simple reason that they're not for it, but consequently do not want to be seen as the enemies of freedom.

Consequently the diversion of the idea of "positive freedoms" has come about, and is one of the central lies of this exccellent book.

Development is not freedom, it is development. Being "free" to have something may indeed be a good thing, but it remains an entitlement, not a freedom. The term is only honestly used when it is used in the negative sense.

Arguments may be made for any number of Sen's points. Certainly freedom in a political sense enhances the possibility of advancement in wealth and health. And there is a vaguely defined but nevertheless certain truth that people who have advanced economies will have a tendancy toward general freedom- these points are as obvious as they are important to understanding development. The problem is freedom is not a number of dollars on one's pocket. One does not describe a man with enough money to buy a limousine with a driver as a man with an important freedom. People can be poor and free or rich and not free.

Development as freedom rests on a linguistic trick of the word "freedom" arising from the need of a political left not to be on the recieving end of the political rights attacks. Whatever one thinks of the actual issues involved, Sen and his cohorts in political thinking (Isiah Berlin) have created a false sense of a basic political word, an Orwellian attempt to deform language for simple political ends. No one is "fifty dollars freer" than they were before payday.

Freedom is freedom. Development is development. They are interrelated subjects the same way economics and politics are related, but they are also different in the same way politics and economics are words with seperate meanings. This book is a clear attempt to benefit from the good will that comes from a valued word and deposit the good feelings on to certain political ends.

This is an excellent book. I highly suggest it to everyone. It is, however, a consciously produced intellectual lie by a superb sophist. This book would have been much better had it not decided to explain development as freedom. The book could have stood well on its own by discussing the relationship developed economies have with freedom. It IS interesting and relevant that political freedom aids development and that development aids in freedom. Had Sen merely noted the relationship as coinciding together, he could have made one of the best arguments the left has in rational choice philosophical modelling. As it is, Sen has besmirched one of the few good works of the left by wrapping his politics in the glory of a word. Lies do not deserve credit.

This book has in it the workings of a dozen good conversations. That makes the dissapointment worse. Word tricks do not add to debate.

Rating:
Summary: No famines in democracies.
Review: Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen argues most convincingly that people need first and most freedom. Freedom is the necessary basis from which poverty, famine, violation of elementary political, social and economical liberties, the protection of the environment and the subordination of women can be dealt with. Freedom means also a change in mentality: human beings should not be considered as patients but as actors.
Real development is removal of intolerance and lack of freedom (opportunities for everyone, a free market, free elections).

His critic of the theorem of Lee (Singapore's ruler Lee Kuan Yew) is essential. For Lee, people don't need first democracy, but economic growth instead. For Sen, the strengthening of the democratic system is a conditio sine qua non for the development process. Free elections will generate economic growth and more freedom, because otherwise the men in power will not be re-elected.

But Amartya Sen argues also rightly that, besides the free market, there must be some basic public goods: education, medical aid, social security and a solid legal system (against corruption). He also fustigates against investment in military goods instead of in those basic public services.

He stigmatizes communism as a new form of feudalism.

This book contains also excellent comments and/or criticism on Pareto, Rawls, Hayek, Arrow, Bentham and Nozick.

The only point I don't agree with is his rosy picture of the Japanese economic and social system (see K. van Wolferen, A. Nothomb's 'Fear and Trembling' or A. Sergeant's 'The old Sow in the Back Room').

This book is the work of a true humanist with a very broad intellectual horizon. An essential read.

Rating:
Summary: A Solid Effort!
Review: Nobel Prize-winning economic scientist Amartya Sen attempts to popularize a series of lectures he presented to executives at the World Bank in 1996. He challenges traditional economic theories to justify a more aggressive, humane and generous funding formula to benefit the world's poorest nations. This goal is based on his theory about individual capabilities and functionings, and how they affect opportunity, both person by person and in a society. Even though this is aimed for general discussion rather than Ph.D. course work, it is an extremely daunting book to read, a mental maze land mined with quirky thoughts and a thick lexicon only an academic could love. More thesis than not, the text is 298 pages plus 60 pages of small type footnotes. The short version: the rich get richer and the poor remain deprived of abilities and awaiting enlightened development. We recommend this dense, challenging but, as they say, important book to insomniacs, liberal world bankers, economic policy makers, the Kofi Annan fan club and students of economic science.

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Summary: How to argue with the right on economics
Review: People who object to laissez-faire economics are forced into "irrationality": either ungrounded identity politics or equally ungrounded to notions of equality and fair play.

Amaryta Sen rebuilds the ability to argue with laissez-faire for he demonstrates how to introduce notions of human equality and fair play. But Sen doesn't get trapped into arguing for fair play and equality as such.

The turn of the century philosopher G. E. Moore tried to establish that "the good" in ethics is a given and came close to arguing for a laundry list of good and beautiful notions. As such, Moore was the spiritual father of the "Cambridge Apostles", a group of Englishmen whose left-liberal world-view grandfathered the American liberal consensus of the post-war period.

The 1960s *reductio* of this consensus, inspired by the media, destroyed it and created an opening for laissez-faire. It took the permissiveness of liberalism to imply that a selfish world was one of the views sanctioned by liberalism and this was a real contradiction that destroyed liberalism.

This means that appeals to selfishness have great rhetorical force in American domestic politics, and their force is amplified in international economics: for example, many Americans believe that the United States gives billions of dollars away in foreign aid, and should not, whereas the reality is that about 1% of the budget is earmarked for such aid, and the United States is a deadbeat dad with regards to an institution it helped to parent, the United Nations, and behind in its dues.

We therefore need conceptual tools to counter lazy laissez-faire. The technique should neither be, in the matter of G. E. Moore, to merely claim the primacy of the good, nor to try to construct elaborate "proofs" in the manner of mathematics that it is better to be nice and good (for note that "it is better to be good" is equivalent to "it is good to be good", and this is a tautology, and Moore noticed it, and one sometimes wonder if philosophers are up to anything worth while, at all.)

Instead, Sen demonstrates the worth of international economic solidarity by means of the facts and by building a structure that is logically coherent, and which coherence tracks its sustainability. Pure laissez-faire self-destructs because there is no way of curbing the appetites of the bigger players, and preventing them from using force and fraud. Their force and fraud is met with desparate resistance which amplifies the process leading to a non-sustainable situation.

Sen shows mechanisms, both economic and conceptual, which lead both to logical coherence and sustainability. He suggests replacing econometrics which more complicated measures of the quality of life, but Sen does not fall into a sort of Stalinist trap. This is to REPLACE the measures agreed on in the current consensus (notably income per capita) with another simple-minded measure, perhaps compounded in a fashion more or less arbitrary out of sub measures.

The economists fetishize and reify measures and do not see, for example, the results of inequality which are concealed by average income per capita. If there are two men on an island (Robinson Crusoe and Friday) and one of them enjoys an income of ALL the breadfruit on the island and the other (guess who) enjoys the status of slave, with right to zero breadfruit trees, then the average income is one-half the breadfruit trees. This presents that old harlot, and mother of harlots, Rosy Scenario, to the economist, blinded as he is by spreadsheets.

But Sen does not fall into the trap of replacing spreadsheets by sob stories, although he presents some sob stories about real misery in countries that present Rosy Scenarios to development economists. His narratives INCLUDE and do not include the numbers.

But they use the numbers in a less simple-minded way. Even a laissez-faire American businessman would be ill-advised to run his company by looking at one number and one number alone. The businessman who looked ONLY at quarterly net profit would not see how his employees were running down equipment in order to meet his singular target, resulting in later failure to meet the chosen target.

For note that if we feed the numbers (such as the higher rate of loan repayment by poor women) into narratives informed by an unquestioned committment to equality and justice, this automatically prevents both our being blinded by injustices hidden by single, utilitarian, numbers, and it also has the side-benefit of preventing some forms of fraud, as the fraudulent numbers fail to cohere with the honest numbers, and the honest narratives.

The cynicism of laissez-faire economics hides a naivety which has been regularly exposed, in the international debt arena, by the fraudulent misappropropriation of loans for consumption instead of development. For example, American economists went naively into the former Soviet Union believing in capitalism as a sort of god that would magically bring prosperity to that country. Like farm boys, like hicks, like yokels, they were taken for a ride by the former Communist *nomenklatura*, which simply appears to have grabbed the money and used it to empty the Black Sea of caviar. They were supposed to invest it in a new infrastructure to replace the presumably out-of-date Communist rust belt. They said they were gonna and did not.

This is causing an unprecedented phenomenon: the reversion of a developed country to Third World status. This was caused by the imposition of a development model.

Economists are often wrong: for example, Sen points out just how wrong Malthus was. Condorcet's prediction, that better living conditions would bring the benefits of Enlightenment to the poor, causing them to refrain from irrationally having large families, has, as Sen points out, been proven right by recent developments. But Malthus is accounted as one of the "worldly philosophers" and his spirit, if not his exact ideas, pervades much Yuppie thinking in America. It is a nasty and narrow spirit; read Sen for a set of tools to argue for the better way.

Rating:
Summary: Progressive Economics to Address Poverty
Review: Sen reviews some to the best research on reducing poverty (broadly defined). He is particularly concerned about the poorest of the poor and marginalized groups. An expert himself on the economics of famines, he brings an interdisciplinary approach to economics (very uncommon for respected economists). Demoncratic institutions and constitutional protections for minority rights are critical ingredients in avoiding famines.

While he points out no economies have eliminated economic cycles, the most severe collapses occur mostly in dictatorships.

There is a wealth of information in this book, with great references for further reading on specific issues.

My only regret about the book is the poor editing. The book reads like a lose collection of lectures. It needs editing to organize the contents more logically, and to reduce repetition. These drawbacks will discourage many readers. Yet, the writing is non-technical, and the contents are so important that I encourage people to plow through to learn what Sen has to say.

The conclusions Sen draws in this book are based on the best economic research. It is very inspiring stuff for anyone concerned about world poverty.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: Sen's argues in a quite elegant and eloquent style, his arguments are very convincing. The problem is how do we transulate his theory into practice that can assist the development of the very peoples he writes about

Rating:
Summary: Not just another economics book
Review: The central theme of this book is that national development has to be seen in the context of the freedoms of the individual. These freedoms include, but are not limited to: freedom from hunger and disease, political freedom, and economic solvency. The measure of a nation's development stems from the extent to which its citizens enjoy these freedoms. One of Professor Sen's areas of expertise is the study of famines throughout the world. He demonstrates that famines do not occur because of a lack of food, but because of a lack of economic resources to purchase that food. In addition, he makes a strong case that famines do not occur in democratic countries, no matter how poor they might be. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in pondering a fresh perspective on the meaning of development. The only criticism I have of this book is that the prose is at times convoluted and does not make for particularly smooth reading.