Didn’t we try that in 1938? Why technical poverty fixes fall short

… (A longer version of this table and the citations for the quotes appear in my recent article “Can the West Save Africa?” in the Journal of Economic Literature.) [See page 31 in the report.]

Enthusiasts for technology fixes for poverty concentrate almost exclusively on the science and the technical design — this is a characteristic fault of poverty solvers from Silicon Valley, the Gates Foundation, doctors, and natural scientists.

All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it – people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.