Jeff Sachs's Reality Distortion Field

I'm beginning to think that Steve Jobs's famous Reality Distortion Field has a rival: that of Jeffrey Sachs.

Nina Munk profiles Sachs in the latest Vanity Fair:

If you spend enough time with Sachs, as I have, you may come around to his point of view: if the history of international development is a history of failure, it is because too many people in the field are complacent, or incompetent, or not accountable.

Sachs certainly has little time for his critics:

Another standard argument against increasing foreign aid goes like this: we've spent billions already, and so far we've had almost no return on our investment.
Responding to this defeatist line of thinking, Sachs argues that foreign aid has failed to produce obvious results because we have spent too little. In his favorite analogy he compares the current situation in Africa to a forest fire: if you try to put out the fire with one hose, and the fire continues to rage, do you conclude that fighting fires is hopeless? From Sachs's point of view, the only logical conclusion is: you don't have enough firefighters.

Sachs's modus operandi is very much to keep his eyes on what he's trying to achieve, and not get bogged down in debates with his critics. (Britain's Hilary Benn is a good example of someone who seems much more willing to engage in the is-aid-effective debate.) Sachs is very good at taking his Reality Distortion Field and applying it to philanthropists, to presidents, to anybody who can help increase aid assistance in general and the money flowing to his Millenium Village Project in particular. It's surely a good use of Sachs's time.

But, as Tyler Cowen says, Sachs isn't scalable – and it's far from clear that the Millenium Village Project is scalable either – or even a particularly efficient use of funds. It can create unhealthy dependencies, as well as uncomfortable and even violent power struggles; Munk hints at this, but a much more detailed and forensic examination of one project is provided by Sam Rich, in the Wilson Quarterly. Rich spent much less time with Sachs than Munk did, and spent much more time with poor villagers than Munk did – and that seems to have made a lot of difference.

My view on Sachs is that he's indubitably a force for good in the world. Munk doesn't even get to the many other projects he has going at Columbia's Earth Institute, which is mentioned once in the opening paragraph and then never mentioned again. On global warming issues alone the Earth Institute is a magnificent place, and Sachs's interdisciplinary dreams are most inspiring things.

On the other hand, on the more narrow (but still very large) issue of development aid for Africa, I do think that Sachs's ego and seeming inability to defer to real experts in the development field is a problem. He's very good at raising money. But is he the best person to spend it?