27 février 2008
Black Swan
Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't - and, most importantly, can't - know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."
In business and government, major money is spent on prediction. Uselessly, according to Taleb, who administers a severe thrashing to MBA- and Nobel Prize-credentialed experts who make their living from economic forecasting. A financial trader and current rebel with a cause, Taleb is mathematically oriented and alludes to statistical concepts that underlie models of prediction, while his expressive energy is expended on roller-coaster passages, bordering on gleeful diatribes, on why experts are wrong. They neglect Taleb's metaphor of "the black swan," whose discovery invalidated the theory that all swans are white. Taleb rides this manifestation of the unpredicted event into a range of phenomena, such as why a book becomes a best-seller or how an entrepreneur becomes a billionaire, taking pit stops with philosophers who have addressed the meaning of the unexpected and confounding. Taleb projects a strong presence here that will tempt outside-the-box thinkers into giving him a look.
This is an entertaining and enlightening book, and fairly easy to read. It has an important message regarding how the world works; that the world is governed not by the predictable and the average, but by the random, the unknownable, the unpredictable - big events or discoveries or unusual people that have big consequences. Change comes not uniformly but in unpredictable spurts. These are the Black Swans of the title: completely unexpected and rare events or novel ideas or technologies that have a huge impact on the world. Indeed, Taleb argues that history itself is primarily driven by these Black Swans.
It is convincing argument, entertainingly presented with plenty of sarcasm, and indeed, anger, by Taleb. For example he rails against the academic community, economists (including specific names), and Nobel Prize committee. Considerable numbers of his arguments "ring true" to me, that is my experience in life confirms that they are more accurate than the traditional approach. Like any important work, 90% of what is in the book is not original; that does not make it less important. Taleb's contribution is in integrating the material together, and showing how these different ideas are tied to the Black Swan.
The themes include: winner-take-all phenonomen, numerous effects of randomness on the world, the invalidity of the Gaussian Bell Curve to most things in world, concepts of scalablity, numerous instabilities in the world, especially the modern world where information travels so quickly, the fallacies about people's inability to predict the future. The importance of these ideas, Taleb's ability to weave them together into a single theory, and the ability of this theory to change the way you look at the world, means the book easily deserves my highest recommendation.
However, the book does have many flaws, unfortunately - unfortunate because I believe they will take away from the credibility of the message, which is in important one. The are numerous minor flaws such as, for example, the inexplicable invention of a fictional author (disclosed a few pages later), when certainly there must have been some real example that would have worked better. Another example is repeated jabs about the French; these may be amusing but I just don't think they have a place in work like this. There are also diatribes against specific people, including famous economists, which, though amusing, and possibly justified, demonstrate a high level of anger by author and take away from his credibility.
Another flaw is that Taleb seems to go a little toward the extreme of saying that we can predict almost nothing about the future, and though he does not say so explicitly, this seems to imply we have no moral responsibility to the future. This, combined with Taleb's advice to the reader about their behavior based on the "Black Swan" view of world just rubbed me the wrong way, for several reasons. One is that Taleb personally has very little in common with most people; never having as far as I know had a regular career (essentially what he calls non-scalable, e.g. dentist, engineer, baker) he nevertheless recommends that people choose these kinds of careers rather than a scalable career (e.g. financial trader, author, actor which are subject to a few lucky successful people and a lot of failures). This advise is odd first because Taleb is in a non-scalable profession (derivatives trader, then hedge fund manager) -- indeed it appears he is quite wealthy. Even more odd because he says all these types of non-scalable types of work are boring and evens makes sarcastic comments (the book is extremely sarcasm heavy) for example about dentists being able to do well by diligently drilling teeth for 30 years. The second things is that Taleb seems be somewhat amoral to me; in this type of book where plenty of his own emotions come through, plenty of his personality, he has plenty of criticism of others for their wrong models and wrong view of the world, and how this has hurt the world, but there remains a lack of moral responsibility to his advice.
29 août 2007
Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison
Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison, by David CHandler
During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, S-21 was used as the prison, interrogation centre, and finally, the place of execution for several thousand Cambodians who were suspected of counter revolutionary activity.
Between the years of 1975 and 1979, it is estimated that 14,000 prisoners entered S-21, but only four survived. The horrors of S-21 were uncovered during the liberation by the Vietnamese who found the prison's ghastly remains.
Chandler used the S-21 record which were microfilmed by Cornell University in the early 1990s and synthesized the archive to produce this book.
Chandler's poignant use of confessions forced from unfortunate and often innocent victims paints a grizzly portrait of power without constraints. It mattered not that neither interrogators nor prisoners knew what crimes had been committed, it was merely enough they had been arrested and sent to S-21, therefore they were guilty. With their de facto "guilt" established, it was the interrogators job to obtain a proper confession of these unknown, but treasonous, crimes. With or without a confession, there was only one verdict: death.
Chandler manages to draw interesting parallels between the Nazi concentration camps and Stalin's terror in the 1930's, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 60's. He shows that some ingredients of terror are always there, no matter if it happens in Treblinka, Moscow, the countryside of China, or in the killing fields of Cambodia.
Chandler's book is more than just a story of an awful prison in Cambodia. It is about the mechanisms that make some humans commit unspeakable acts (apparently by their own free will) against their fellow human beings, simply because of a belief in a political ideology.
With "Duch", the former S-21 commander, now in detention awaiting judgement for crimes against humanity during the Pol Pot regime, "Voices from S-21" is most timely for anyone interested in the thoughts and methods behind the slaughter of millions of people in communist and fascist countries in the 20th century.
18 août 2007
First Century After Beatrice
First Century After Beatrice, by Amin Maalouf
This is a story about gender and population politics set in the first decades of the 21st century. In this elegant novel, a popular drug ensures women will give birth only to boys which has sharply reduced the world's female population and cut fertility rates. The industrialized nations, seeking to curb Third World population growth, have encouraged the drug's use in poorer countries, which collapse economically. Men everywhere, frustrated sexually and deprived of normal family life, turn to violence and delinquency. An American televangelist launches a massive airlift of impoverished newborn girls from Brazil, Egypt and the Philippines, transporting them to Europe and the U.S., where ethnic protest riots subsequently erupt. Because of his love for crusading journalist Clarence Nesmiglou, his live-in female companion, the nameless narrator campaigns against the drug. But when their daughter, Beatrice, becomes pregnant at age 25, she wants a boy.
Amin Maalouf here constructs a dire allegory that is as much about the amorality of science as it is about sexism. The writing style is, as usual, first rate and the difference lies in it being more creative and philosophical.
Not only the political estimations but also the characters are deeply thought. The way he criticised the enthusiasm of today’s world on gene cloning is really impressive. If you want to think about the North-South relationships on the globe next century, this book will give you a certain perspective. You should also read the gender relationships throughout the world from such a creative point of view... Definitely worth reading.
17 août 2007
Balthasar Odyssey
Balthasar's Odyssey, by Amin Maalouf
This book is the story of Balthasar, a merchant from a Genoan family long resident in the Levant. His trade is books and curios; in 1665 he heads off on a journey that leads him across Europe in pursuit of a rare book, one he had always supposed was a myth.
This is the book of the Hundredth Name, purported to reveal the secret name of God. There are 99 names for God in the Koran, and knowing the hundredth name is supposed to grant mystical powers. The discussions on the various interpretations of the relevant Koranic passages here are fascinating to one not versed in Islamic scripture. Balthasar’s own scepticism regarding the book - whether it is a forgery, and whether he could believe in its powers even if genuine - shows a character with true depth and nuance.
What makes it significant to him is the growing hysteria among believers that 1666 is the year of the beast, destined to bring the end of the world, and access to the secret name of God could bring salvation.
Balthasar’s story also includes ruminations on the nature of exile, as relevant today as in 1666. Born and raised in the Levant, he still identifies himself as a Genoan, a son of a city he has never visited. As a Christian he is in a minority, and would be made to feel foreign regardless his own feelings of loyalty to his place of birth. In describing Balthasar’s visits to Constantinople, Smyrna, Genoa, Lisbon, London and Amsterdam, Maalouf paints detailed vignettes of different cultures. He is in London at the outbreak of the Great Fire, and feels the effects of anti-Catholicism and a society still reeling from the Civil War.
It's fourth book of Amin Maalouf which I have read, first three were great but this one does not sound like written by a great writer of Maalouf's stature. It is an easy enough read, but it lacks driving force. The prophecies and mysteries are of interest for their effects on people rather than for their own sake and provide neither tension nor plot progression: Balthasar's skepticism wavers, but the reader's never does. The subplots — the romantic connection with Marta, curiosity about Sabbatai's fate, a liaison with a London barmaid — are involving, but are also disjoint, with the secondary characters coming and going and never really emerging as independent figures.
After a while, the novel starts to lose focus. The worst part, though, was that the book he was seeking loses importance in the end. It was the centre of the plot, and then it is just left unexplained.
At several points through the story, the novel has a "peak" in terms of suspense, of intensity, but then just falls flat and starts all over again, and you feel that you have lost something along the way. Characters which had been important disappear and we never learn their fate. Martha's final decision is also not explained.
08 juillet 2007
Une vie Française
Une Vie Française, de Jean-Paul Dubois, Poche.
Voici l’histoire de la vie de Paul Blick. Qui se confond avec celle de la cinquième République Française. Une France qui crut à de Gaulle après 1958 et à Pompidou après 68, s'offrit à Giscard avant de porter Mitterrand au pouvoir, pour se jeter finalement dans les bras de Chirac. Et Paul, dans tout ça ? Après avoir découvert, comme il se doit, les joies de la différence dans le lit d'une petite Anglaise, il fait de vagues études, devient journaliste sportif et épouse Anna, la fille de son patron. Brillante chef d'entreprise, adepte d'Adam Smith et de la croissance à deux chiffres, celle-ci lui abandonne le terrain domestique. Devenu papa poule, Paul n'en mène pas moins une vie érotique aussi intense que secrète et se passionne pour les arbres, qu'il sait photographier comme personne. Une vraie série noire - krach boursier, faillite, accident mortel, folie - se chargera d'apporter à cette comédie française un dénouement digne d'une tragédie antique. Jardinier mélancolique, Paul Blick prend discrètement congé, entre son petit-fils bien-aimé et sa fille schizophrène.
Jean-Paul Dubois montre le monde dans son absurdité, sa bêtise et sa lâcheté, mais sans jamais sombrer dans le désespoir. Il restitue l'époque, ses couleurs, ses contradictions, ses débats et ses désillusions. Il tourne autour du désir, de l'amour, des crises identitaires, de l'angoisse de vieillir, des illusions perdues. Avec un esprit pétillant autant que cinglant, il arrive à nous faire rire. Il arrive aussi à faire tque l'émotion vous submerge. Le tragique côtoie l'épique, les morceaux de bravoure alternent avec les moments légers. Et puis il y a l'humour, l'ironie, la dérision et l'écriture vive, cursive, hachée. Ceux qui ont traversé cette époque vont sûrement se reconnaître et passer un bon moment de lecture.
Une petite déception cependant : au deux tiers de l'ouvrage, l'auteur perd l'idée originale et ne fait plus qu'épisodiquement mention au contexte social et politique, sans relation avec l'action. La rencontre avec Mitterand marque la coupure en faisant du héros un acteur et non plus un spectateur de notre monde, ce qui casse l’ambiance du roman.
Une bonne prose, mais roman inégal.
06 mars 2007
Pity the Nation
Pity the Nation, by Robert Fisk
Written by one of Britain 's foremost journalists, this remarkable book combines political analysis and war reporting in an unprecedented way: it is an epic account of the Lebanon conflict by an author who has personally witnessed the carnage of Beirut for over a decade.
Pity the Nation is Robert Fisk's personal history of Lebanon from 1976 until 1990, during its series of civil wars and invasions by Syria, Israel and various western powers. Fisk was a personal witness to many of the events he describes in this book; throughout the period he lived and worked in Beirut. This makes Pity the Nation something different from a conventional history. Rather, it is more of an eyewitness account, of history being recorded as it is happening. At times this means that the story Fisk is trying to tell is overwhelmed by his own memories of events. However, this also gives Pity the Nation an immediacy that conventional history books lack. What Fisk does is using his own experiences in Lebanon as a narrative thread to help guide you through the complex and confusing twists and turns of the civil war, without neglecting the context in which those experiences took place.
That context is set up by Fisk in the first chapters, by setting up the two groups that would determine Lebanon's fate: the Israelis and the Palestinians. Fisk actually starts the book far away from Lebanon, in Auschwitz, as the background of the Holocaust determines most of Israel's actions. However the Holocaust has given the state Israel, as the one true representative of the Jewish people, a moral immunity for its crimes against the Palestinians and against Lebanon.
Fisk then goes into what brought the Palestinians to Lebanon: the war of 1948, "al Nakba", the Catastrophe, when the Palestinians were driven from their lands by Israeli terror and into banishment in the surrounding countries, still hoping to return one day. As disgusted Fisk is with the Israeli leadership he is also with the PLO, who at every step seem to lead its people away from Palestine, into conflict with those whom should've been its ally.
It is the Israel-Palestine conflict that drives much of the disaster that visited Lebanon from 1976. The PLO was kicked out of Jordan after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the country and was soon drawn into the complex conflicts between the various Lebanese powergroups: the Druze, Maronites, Sh'ite and Sunni Muslims, the Phalangists, few of which wanted the Palestinians there. For Israel, the presence of the PLO in Lebanon was a reason to undertake ever increasing military action against Lebanon, culminating in the 1982 invasion. Lebanon at that point had already had one foreign power in its borders, Syria, invited in 1976 as an Arab peacekeeping force at the end of the civil war. At first Syria was welcomed by most of the population, but relationships quickly soured, with the Syrians getting involved in Lebanese politics, acting for their own gain rather than the Lebanese. With the Israeli invasion, Lebanon now became the battleground of not just the Lebanese factions, but also the Israeli army, the PLO and Syrian army. Fisk has little time for any of the factions; his sympathies lie with the Lebanese people.
The heart of the book is formed by the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Fisk was one of the first journalists at the scene of the massacre, only hours after the murderers had gone and his descriptions do not spare the reader. It is impossible to read his account without becoming angry at those who set up the massacre. Fisk is especially scathing when it comes to Ariel Sharon, under whose responsibility the massacre took place and who was never punished for it. The Sabra and Shatila massacres were the ultimate results of Sharon's and Israel's policies.
His final chapter about the Israeli attack on the UN base at Qana with its Fiji soldiers and many civilians is shocking and a fitting finale to the book.
While none - including the PLO - come out as heroes the Israelis certainly do not look good, not just in the brutality inflicted on the Lebanese but in their racist arrogance and lies they often told to cover up their actions. For exposing these Fisk was subject to attack by the ubiquitous Israeli lobby in the US including the dreary and false charges of "anti-Semitsm". He is one of the few foreign reporters who has called attention to the Israeli practice of falling back on "the Holocaust" or accusations of anti-Semitism when caught out in one of their military outrages.
The march of folly doesn't end with Israel though; Fisk is also sceptical, with reason, about the various western attempts to bring peace to Lebanon, especially of the multinational force led by the US which went to Beirut after the Israeli invasion had lost steam. Fisk makes it clear none of the states involved had much idea of what was going on in Lebanon or any idea what to achieve and how to achieve it...
There are some very interesting comments on the role of journalism and the importance of words. With a fastidious eye for detail, he rails against day-tripping reporters who betray truth with their clichés and loose language, constantly defending language against false appropriation: "terrorism", for example, wielded by one side to describe acts committed against them, deprives the term of any objective purpose and thus legitimises reprisal. He makes reparation with this unique and passionate analysis, which remains the most relentless and convincing account yet of the bloodiest quarter-century in Lebanon's history.
Pity the Nation is a revelation, an excellent, readable overview of a very complicated situation. It will rank among the classic accounts of war in our time, both as historical document and as an eyewitness testament to human savagery.
17 février 2007
Blink
Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell
Have you ever wondered why love at first sight, so seemingly ill-advised, sometimes works out for the long-term? Malcolm Gladwell may have the answer. In Blink, Gladwell asserts that snap judgments can quite often be as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking - the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military manoeuvres, he persuades us to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behaviour. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious" - a 24/7 mental valet - that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.
The concept of "thin-slicing" is the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience. You might not conceive that a 15-minute videotape of a mundane conversation with your spouse has anything particularly relevant to say about your love life. According to Gladwell and his narration about psychologist John Gottman, however, you'd be wrong. Gottman videotaped hundreds of volunteer couples discussing a point of contention in their marriage: money, sex, pets, etc. Then he broke down behavioural responses to these discussions into groups and represented them in a mathematical form, leading to...boom!...a prediction as to whether that marriage would last.
Sounds like a stretch? Gottman followed up to see whether his calculations had made the right prediction. They sure had - with an astonishing 90 percent success rate. As a result of his experiments, Gottman reputedly could predict the future of a couple only by overhearing snippets of their conversation at a restaurant. The take-away lesson from this story may sound pedestrian, but practice makes perfect. The author is to be credited for at least drumming up some off-the-beaten-track examples to buttress his message.
Additionally, Gottman's story highlights another idea in "Blink": that less is more and overloading decision-makers with information may often hamper their reasoning. If the scientist had asked his subjects about the state of their marriage, they might lie or feel awkward or - more importantly - they may be unaware of the truth. Instead, the author claims that by thin-slicing, Gottman found a much quicker path to the truth.
Similarly, the example of Chicago's Cook County ER reinforces this idea in another context: the importance of a snap diagnosis of heart attacks to save lives. There, a doctor identified three major risk factors based on which a recommended treatment was to be followed. His algorithm, although more simplified than experts in the medical community felt comfortable with, guessed right more than 95 percent of the time compared to 75-89 percent when more laborious testing was conducted. This time out, Gladwell concludes that truly successful decision making lies in the balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking: while deliberate thinking and extensive experiments work well when we have the luxury of time, rapid cognition and the ability to thin-slice are called for when frugality matters.
Then there is the tale of Amado Diallo, an immigrant, who was shot 41 times by policemen wrongfully suspecting him of criminal behaviour on the doorsteps of his own house in the Bronx. Given that the police failed to read Diallo's facial expressions and body language, the case study appears to confirm the theory that people are guided by stereotypes and prejudices when making split-second decisions. Moreover, Gladwell goes further to suggest that stressful situations lead to a temporary condition of autism that hinders our ability to interpret others' actions and intentions.
As in his previous book, the anecdotes throughout Blink are lively and entertaining. But the sheer quantity of stories about everything from sip tasters for Coca-Cola and the Pepsi challenge to gut reactions to "fake" art overwhelms the main theme of the book; many critics feel Gladwell isn’t entirely sure what his theme is. David Brooks of The New York Times Book Review sums up the critical consensus nicely: "If you want to trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you’ll be delighted. If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you’ll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more."
17 janvier 2007
Voyage au bout de la nuit
Voyage au bout de la nuit, de Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Voyage au bout de la nuit est une biographie romancée de Céline. Ferdinand Bardamu, héros du roman et double de l’auteur, raconte sa vie, ses vagabondages. À la suite d'un défilé militaire, Bardamu s'engage dans un régiment. Plongé dans la Grande Guerre, il fait l'expérience de l'horreur et rencontre Robinson, qu'il retrouvera tout au long de ses aventures. Blessé, rapatrié, il vit le conflit depuis l'arrière, partagé entre les conquêtes féminines et les crises de folie. Réformé, il s'embarque pour l'Afrique, travaille dans une compagnie coloniale. Malade, il gagne les États-Unis, rencontre Molly, prostituée au grand cœur à Detroit tandis qu'il est ouvrier à la chaîne. De retour en France, médecin, installé dans un dispensaire de banlieue, il est confronté au tout-venant sordide de la misère, en même temps qu'il rencontre ici et là des êtres sublimes de générosité, de délicatesse infinie.
La première guerre mondiale a révélé à l’auteur l'absurdité du monde et sa folie, allant même jusqu'à la qualifier "d'abattoir international en folie". Il pose ainsi la seule façon raisonnable de résister à une telle folie : la lâcheté. Il est hostile à toute forme d'héroïsme, celui-ci même qui va de paire avec la guerre. Ce qui amène à la trame fondamentale du livre : la pourriture et sa mise à évidence.
Ce qui frappe avant tout dans ce roman de Céline c’est la noirceur du monde vu à travers les yeux de son héros. Bardamu est le témoin des injustices et des non-sens de la société : la guerre qu’il rejette en bloc, le colonialisme, le capitalisme. Le personnage central est dégoûté du genre humain et de lui-même aussi sans doute à cause de toutes les bassesses qu’il voit et qu’il pratique lui-même.
La révolte de l'individu ne mène pas ici à de grandes envolées lyriques mais plutôt à une étude opportuniste de la meilleure façon de profiter du système. Aucun personnage ne sort intact de cette féroce critique de la société et de ses contradictions.
Céline use du symbole de la guerre comme Horreur par excellence pour montrer combien l'homme dans son quotidien sait être plus monstrueux que sur le champ de bataille.
Ce roman a été une source de scandale pour les hommes de son époque, car entièrement écrit en langage parlé, voire en argot. L'idée de Céline étant que la langue classique, la langue académique, celle des dictionnaires, est une langue morte. C'est l'un des tout premiers auteurs à agir de la sorte, et ce, dans la totalité de l'œuvre.
Ce roman se distingue également par son refus total de l'idéalisme : l'idéal et les sentiments, "ça n'est que du mensonge". La question de Bardamu, et par la même, celle de Céline, est de découvrir ce qu'il appelle : La Vérité. Celle qui est biologique, physiologique: Celle qui dit que tous les hommes sont mortels, et que l'avenir les conduit vers la décomposition, l'Homme n'est considéré que comme de la "pourriture en suspens". C'est pourquoi cette œuvre est totalement désespérée.
Si Voyage au bout de la nuit est peuplé de pauvres hères brinquebalés dans un monde où l'horreur le dispute à l'absurde, le roman ne manque ni de drôlerie, ni de personnages fringants, de beautés féminines "en route pour l'infini".
Quelques citations:
« Ce monde n’est qu’une immense entreprise à se foutre du monde »
« Si les gens sont si méchants, c’est peut être seulement parce qu’ils souffrent »
« Avec les mots, on ne se méfie jamais suffisamment »
« Etre seul, c’est s’entraîner à la mort »
16 janvier 2007
The End of Poverty
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The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs
In the late 1990s, aid officials — keen to revive the global fight against poverty — came up with a novel strategy. They proposed to both developed and developing countries that, rather than vague commitments in health, food production and primary education, it would be more effective to have a clear set of quantified objectives that governments could aim to achieve within a set timeframe.
This strategy resulted in the adoption at a United Nations summit in 2000, of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Each of these embodies a set of targets that, if achieved, could in principle go far towards eliminating poverty and social deprivation on a global scale.
In order to figure out how to reach these goals, Kofi Annan organized a panel of over 250 development experts to lay out practical strategies for promoting rapid development. Headed by economist Jeffrey Sachs, the panel published their final report in January of 2005. The report calls for both an increase in aid from Western countries and a reallocation of funding priorities in the developing countries themselves. The report also calls for more aid to be given on a local level. By bypassing governments, the UN hopes to spark more immediate and effective development.
Shortly after the release of the UN report came the publication of Sachs' book, The End of Poverty, in which he laid out his own strategies for eradicating poverty by 2025. Sachs, who gained renown for advising Latin American and Asian governments on economic reform, has gained popularity as "can-do" economist amidst a cacophony of naysayers on development.
There are according to Sachs more than one billion human beings living at the lowest level of poverty. They are without basic health and educational services. Twenty- thousand of these people die each day.
His work here is an effort to transform the situation of these people, and provide them with the opportunity for a more decent life. In order to do this he believes that there must be an investment on the part of Western and prosperous nations amounting to less than half - of - one percent of their annual GNP. He believes this capitol if used wisely can be a vital element in moving the poorer societies from situations of stagnation to one of modest growth and trade.
In the early chapters, Sachs talks about why certain countries have made it rich while others are still mired in poverty. Why the "new" countries of the west (UK, USA) haveenjoyed economic prosperity while "old" civilisations (China, India) have been lagging.
This book has been written in a simple lucid narrative form and even some concepts of economics have been explained so unequivocally, that it is very easy to comprehend, even for non specialists.
Sachs places an emphasis on using appropriate techniques and technology to boost agriculture, upgrade educational institutions, improve healthcare and lay down the necessary infrastructure that would be instrumental in changing the state of poverty in the world today. The focus of his argument is the idea that with more money devoted to the problem, poverty can be eliminated.
As an advocate, Sachs's chief cause is persuading Western governments, and particularly the United States, to live up to their obligation of spending 0.7 percent of each nation's GDP on aid.
Along the way, he exposes the lamentable hypocrisy of the developed world and the institutions allegedly working for the development of the poor world.
Sachs is a good writer, which explains how this book can get so convincing. It is even more convincing because it touches upon the West's sense of guilt. The problem with this sense of guilt is that it is easy to convince people in rich country that money can solve poor country's problem.
It focuses solely on more money as the solution to the problems besetting poor countries. But simply throwing good money after bad does not solve the complex social and political problems deeply rooted in a country's history and demographics.
But it is way too optimistic, forgetting all about the reality of corruption, injustice, both of the rich and of (leaders of) the poor and forgetting almost all about participation, empowerment and advocacy, assuming that macro scale economics are the same at micro (village) scale. Just a small example: one of the main ideas in the book is: give villages a big push, so that they can start climbing the economic ladder. Increased economic activity leads to increased taxes which leads to increased public services, which helps increase economic activity. The first causal relation overlooks the fact that 80-90% (to sometimes 100%) of economic activities in African villages take place in the informal economy, where there are no official tax systems. The second causal relation overlooks the fact of corruption. The example of Nigeria (enough income through oil exports, and corruption not mainly at the lower ranks but even at the very highest rank) shows that corruption is not a matter of need because of lack of money.
Unfortunately, Sachs ops for a very top-down solution. He proposes the development of a goliath governmental project by suggesting the U.N. secretary general personally run the overall plan, coordinating the actions of thousands of officials in six U.N. agencies, U.N. country teams, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. That's a recipe for bureaucracy on steroids.
Sachs has neither one word of criticism for anything the UN has ever done nor a single suggestion of reform - other than to empower it further - before the developed world starts coughing up more than $100 billion per year in new ODA (Overseas Development Aid), in addition to their present UN dues. With regards to this issue, Sachs is very much one-sided.
Sachs calls for huge increases in aid to his favourite countries, like Malawi and Ethiopia, overlooking inconvenient factors such as the worsening of Malawi's famine because corrupt officials sold off its strategic grain reserves and because autocratic Ethiopian rulers have favoured their own minority ethnic group. Sachs is right that bad government is not disproportionately an African problem; democracy has been making progress in Africa. But Sachs's anti-poverty prescriptions rest heavily on the kindness of some pretty dysfunctional regimes, not to mention the famously inefficient international aid bureaucracy.
There are thorough rebuttal of Sachs's argument that poor countries are stuck in a "poverty trap" from which there is no escape, except by massively scaled-up foreign aid. Statistical evidence prove that many newly developed countries - indeed, most of them - attained their higher status without large amounts of foreign aid. This is especially damaging to Sachs's poverty trap thesis, which is the rationale for increasing foreign aid.
Others criticize Sachs by arguing that the United Nations has misled by setting specific, but immeasurable, targets for the Millennium Development Goals (for example, to reduce maternal mortality or malaria).
So what’s the alternative? The piecemeal reform approach would acknowledge that nobody can fully grasp the complexity of the political, social, technological, ecological and economic systems that underlie poverty. It would eschew the arrogance that "we" know exactly how to fix "them." Large-scale crash programs, especially by outsiders, often produce unintended consequences. The simple dreams at the top run afoul of insufficient knowledge of the complex realities at the bottom.
In fact, ending poverty is not easy at all. In those five decades, poverty researchers have learned a great deal about the complexity of toxic politics, bad history, ethnic and regional conflicts, elites' manipulation of politics and institutions, official corruption, dysfunctional public services, malevolent police forces and armies, the difficulty of honouring contracts and property rights, unaccountable and excessively bureaucratic donors and many other issues. Sachs, however, sees these factors as relatively unimportant. Indeed, he seems deaf to the babble and bungling of the U.N. agencies he calls upon to run the Big Plan, not to mention other unaccountable and ineffectual aid agencies.
The real solution to poverty is attracting quality long term capital flows that finance building efficient competitive industries, something government aid is simply not capable of. The problem with this is that it requires long term institutional reform and years of building investor confidence and human capital.
Foreign aid's prospects will brighten only if aid agencies become more accountable for results, and demonstrate to the public that some piecemeal interventions improve the lives of desperate people. So yes, do read Sachs's eloquent descriptions of poverty and his compelling ethical case for the rich to help the poor. Just say no to the Big Plan.
11 janvier 2007
Samarcande
Samarcande, de Amin Maalouf
Avec Samarcande, Amin Maalouf nous offre une biographie romancée d’un homme génialement talentueux : Omar Kayyam. Ceci à partir d’un manuscrit égaré lors des invasions mongoles et retrouvé des siècles plus tard. Omar Kayyam est l’un des plus célèbres poètes de la Perse qui a écrit bien ses célèbres quatrains, les «robayats ». Un poète du vin, libre penseur, philosophe, astronome de génie, mathématicien en avance sur son temps. C’est aussi l’époque de Hassan Sabbah, qui, à la tête de l’ordre des Assassins, la secte la plus redoutable de l’Histoire, souhaitait tout simplement détruire la puissance turque. Les gens redoutaient le changement de maître, avec son cortège de massacres, de souffrances.
Cette rencontre entre un sage vizir et un fanatique a suscité l’envie irrévérencieuse d’Omar de coucher sur un manuscrit tout ce qu’il était tenu de garder caché car les morales et les religions de cette époque ne l’autorisaient pas toujours à faire ou à dire tout ce qu’il voulait. Ce voyage conté traverse la mythique route de la soie et nous fait revivre une page de l’histoire des cités d’Asie centrale passionnante.
Dans ce roman, à double temporalité (le XIe et le XXe siècle), l'auteur nous dépeint des paysages prodigieux, des situations et des personnages étonnants qui apportent chacun à l'histoire une saveur toute singulière. Tous ces ingrédients savamment entremêlés font de ce roman un mets subtilement épicé dont on se délecte avec raffinement.
Au delà du fabuleux personnage d'Omar Khayyam, Amin Maalouf nous entraîne dans un voyage au coeur de la Perse du XIème siècle, où, sous sa plume magique, chaque phrase, chaque mot prend les couleurs de l'Orient. Au côté d'Omar, on sent la morsure du soleil sur sa peau, les effluves des villes et les fragrances des oasis, on perçoit les bourdonnements des quartiers marchands grouillants d'activité, on se laisse éblouir par la féerie des lumières que dispense le soleil levant sur le désert et les cités et on se laisse envelopper par la douceur des nuits étoilées aux parfums envoûtants et mystérieux.
Sous la plume de Maalouf la création de la secte des Assassin est retracée, effrayante et malheureusement authentique.
L'auteur a su tresser avec génie le romanesque avec l'Histoire, et le résultat est des plus édifiants.
Amin Maalouf est un conteur admirable, et son histoire ne manque ni de belles phrases ni de piquant. Ce livre reste une très agréable introduction à la plume de Maalouf, et un bel hommage au fantastique, libre penseur qu'a été Omar Khayyam.
