Interesante reflexión en el blog Aid Thoughts, “Development as Anarchism?”, sobre la Búsqueda vs. la Planificación (haciendo referencia a Easterly) como estrategia óptima de desarollo.

Su respuesta no es afirmativa, y argumenta que los planes deliberados son necesarios para el desarrollo, sin negar la gran importancia de los Searchers y de lo espontáneo.

concerted efforts require some level of planning. This is not to deny the importance of the ‘searchers’, those who act upon circumstance and build successes. They are central to success. It is simply to point out that their impact is maximized when set within a structure designed to do so.

In development, success is likely to be contingent on a wide array of conditions: is the government actively malignant, helpful or not such a strong influence one way or another? What are the natural resources available? Are there terms-of-trade trends that will influence macroeconomic conditions? What is the level of development in domestic capitalism? And so on and so on.

Skepticism of the grand plans is important. We need it to remind us that we must constantly prune our planning instincts and constantly assess conditions and plans that seek to exploit them. Yet planning itself should not be rejected – the problems we deal with are too many and too interlinked to address without the coherence it can bring.

Creo que introduce algún matiz importante, como que el hecho de que los planes fracasen no implica por sí mismo que haya que rechazarlos por completo. No sería una causa suficiente. Pero desde luego, sí existen otras causas y razones para rechazarlos.

Seguro que a algún lector le vienen las ideas suficientes como para hacer una crítica argumentada al post de Aid Thoughts. A ver si alguien se anima. La última línea que he puesto en negrita podría servir como starting point. La réplica está a huevo

Actualización: Random Spaniard ha tenido la amabilidad de comentar en el blog Aid Thoughts citando este post. Decía lo siguiente:

you will be pleased to know that the shock-waves from your post have been felt in the Spanish anarcho-capitalist blogosphere I seem to increasingly inhabit: http://amartinoro.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/%C2%BFel-desarrollo-como-una-especie-de-anarquismo/. The author of this blog is encouraging people to respond to your entry with reference to things like methodological individualism … So you might yet get a more enlightened response than mine.

Lo de “anarcho-capitalist blogosphere” citando este blog está bastante cogido por los pelos, pero bueno. El autor de Aid Thoughts responde aquí:

Ah, I look forward to it! It might help if the respondents know that I’m a huge critic of the methodological individualist approach to economics and in particular it’s deleterious impact on analysis at the social level. http://aidthoughts.org/?p=650

“Economics has increasingly adopted a theoretical approach called Methological Individualism (MI). MI is an approach that has been tried and discarded in most disciplines, one that builds models on the basis of ‘representative’ individuals and relations. For some reason, however, it has stuck in economics, retained some support in sociology and perhaps in political science. Unlike in sociology and political science, it is now the only acceptable approach for mainstream economics – to the extent that few economics students have even heard the term, for they have never questioned its status as the basis of economics…

In the period of MI’s dominance, economics has developed its two biggest contemporary flaws: universality and reductionism. They are closely related phenomena. Reductionism is the more direct effect of MI. Through MI, economists seek to model representative relationships; the problem with this is that models quickly become unmanageable when we try and capture the multiple levels on which a relationship works. Individuals react to specific phenomena on an individual level, as part of a group (or several groups) and as subject of a state which has coercive power over them. These reactions may pull in different directions. In some cases, individuals identify with multiple groups that contribute to contradictory responses to a single stimulus.”

Though they may use a different conception of MI.

Así que ánimo. Será interesante lleva una discusión con el autor, que parece interesante. Los interesados pueden escribir sus comentarios, réplicas y críticas en inglés, para hacerlo más directo.