Bauer rejected the developed-underdeveloped dichotomy and vicious-cycle-of-poverty analysis as fallacious
Evidence
In his Fortune article, Bauer claimed that the new development orthodoxy in the transatlantic world was based on a fallacy. The very division of the world into a developed and an underdeveloped area, he claimed, and the underlying analysis of a “vicious cycle of poverty” requiring special economic development measures were fallacious. He specifically attacked Gunnar Myrdal28 because of the political acceptability his arguments had gained through their sponsorship by the UN and national organizations. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1314
Categorization
- XREF: Bauer’s attack on Myrdal’s UN-sponsored orthodoxy parallels the reader’s thread on how institutional sponsorship shaped development theory. — connects to: Development economist Peter Bauer denied a shortage of entrepreneurs in the global South — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 278; Bauer denied the slave trade caused African underdevelopment by citing preexisting endemic slavery — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 401; Bauer rejected GDP per capita statistics as misleading measures of development — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1316 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Bauer rejected GDP per capita statistics as misleading measures of development
#expands(0.92) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1316 - Applied development economics theory produced disastrous results across Latin America
#expands(0.78) - Poverty is defined by powerlessness and cannot be simulated by renunciation
#complicates(0.75) - Italian economists blamed poverty on working-class moral defects rather than economic causes
#complicates(0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1141 - Development economics RCTs blame individuals while ignoring poverty’s structural causes
#qualifies(0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 289