Here's a credentialed/trusted book review for a book I probably won't read: William Easterly's new Violent Saviors #1446171

If I had to take an educated ex-ante guess of the book's content, the story isn't going to be much different than what Easterly has pushed all his career: the DevelopmentTM industry doesn't work (incentives, corruption, bad ideas), and exploiting peoples via (property) rights breaches won't make them richer and better off.

Gordon comes to it with that same background:

His book The Tyranny of Experts (Basic Books, 2014) attracted much favorable attention in libertarian and free market circles for its criticism of economic growth programs for third world countries. Easterly argued that these programs are based only on mechanical models of how growth must occur and fail adequately to consider the knowledge and wishes of the local inhabitants or, indeed, whether they want to “develop” at all.

thus, Gordon finds the new book a disappointment.

Unlike Easterly’s earlier books, Violent Saviors is not based on his firsthand experience but is rather a vast historical survey that ranges from the seventeenth century to the present. Easterly has read widely but flits he from one topic to another with hardly a pause for breath, and he does not argue very carefully.

The book contrasts Adam Smith’s view of the proper relation between the West and the less developed regions of the world with that of the Marquis de Condorcet. Smith thought that the West should respect the way of life of the native inhabitants, while Condorcet, who had ties to the French Physiocrats, knew what was “best” for them because economic science had established this:

so like in Tyranny of Experts we're back to the original conundrum of whether or not foreign powers (or ideas) should paternalistically override the prefs and actions of poor locals.

This part of the book also contains a useful discussion of Kant as a defender of human dignity. According to Easterly, Kant saw violations of a person’s property rights as an insult to dignity and as such forbidden, and he extended this view to the property rights of natives. Easterly manages to explain Kant’s views in easy-to-understand language that contains no philosophical howlers, and I commend this chapter to readers.

Gordon quibbles with Easterly's interpretation of Locke and whether British settlers of North America transgress in taking/not-taking Indian lands, since the latter did (did not) lay property claims to it. And then Southern slavery, where Easterly ostensibly misquotes an influential legal opinion. And then we're making commentary on the War:

He takes the War Between the States to be a battle between freedom and slavery, despite the fact that Lincoln did not invade the South for that purpose and in fact supported the 1861 Corwin Amendment to entrench slavery in the Constitution if the South did not secede. Easterly acknowledges that Lincoln hoped to colonize blacks, but he still counts him as a hero

Confused book review of an even more confused book. I'm not impressed.

"Easterly’s book is worth reading, but he has taken on more than he can handle.""Easterly’s book is worth reading, but he has taken on more than he can handle."