Quico Toro at Persuasion:
There used to be an academic discipline centered on a straightforward question: what helps poor countries get richer? It was called development economics, and it was the intellectual engine behind sprawling government bureaucracies: USAID, Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID), the World Bank, and many others.
Across the rich world, left and right understood these entities to be in the national interest. Then, starting in the early 2000s, that discipline began to morph into something different—something so narrowly rooted in progressive pieties that, when the political winds shifted, the government programs built on its insights could be gutted without anyone much caring.
What happened?
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.