Searching for a Free Market before Freedom

So what is the solution to the development problem? Like many people, I too, am searching for this answer while international aid organizations are planning their attack to the problem. Like Easterly, I am a strong proponent for the bottom-up mentality, putting the aid in the pockets of the poor and helping them to make social choices which will then create a free market which leads to bigger and better things that would be impossible to create using a top-down mechanism. That said, it is important for aid agencies and corporations to search for the market that can get the poor on their feet. Yes, they will need a financial boost. Yes they will need resources of the West. But, getting this financial boost and resources to the poor through corrupt governments and thick bureaucracies is only asking for failure.

I think it is interesting to compare Sen's Development as Freedom with Easterly's The White Man's Burden because Sen's arguments are very philosophical and political in nature, while Easterly brings up the third subject, economics, when addressing the issue of development. While Sen talks a lot about the importance of freedom in development, Easterly talks about the importance of free markets in development (which has freedom components of course). Does freedom have to exist for free markets to work though? I think Easterly addresses this with his discussions on corrupt governments and bureaucracy stating that non-free governments makes it more difficult for aid agencies to do their jobs and help the poor in a developing country. If international aid organizations or corporations could bypass the developing country's government completely then such free market economies could be stimulated by outside organizations. Corporations operating in these developing countries, do, to an extent, help bring money to the country, but also bring associated problems as well, so allowing the inflow of corporations, though having a free market mentality, may not be the best idea. Although Sen does point out some bottom-up mechanisms for promoting freedom which will then lead to poverty reduction (i.e. empowering women), he does not talk about the economic power that the poor need to lift themselves out of poverty.

Would a combination of Sen and Easterly's arguments work? Perhaps...if the developing countries had an open door policy to the West to come in and change their government, culture, market system, etc. If that happens, there will just be a lot of new democracies in the world. However, this just won't happen. What, then, should come first to address the poverty issue and what would be easier to attain? Freedom for all people or a free market for all people? Both will be difficult to attain, but a bottom-up approach would be establishing a free market to which cultural norms can adapt as the market gets stronger and people become better off. Once people start practicing freedom with their market abilities, other freedoms will hopefully follow suit and it will be seen that a free market works best in a free world (democracy!). Overall, both are important to poverty reduction and if a developing country allows for both freedoms and free markets to exist in their country, only good things will happen.