10/08/2017
"You’ve probably heard the Gospel of Free Market: if a country wants to break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic growth and prosperity, it should deregulate, open up its market, welcome investors, and unleash the power of the private sector. Nationalisation is anathema; protection is heresy; subsidies are so passé. This pervasive neo-liberal orthodoxy is driven with unrelenting vigour by the “unholy trinity” of International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Ha-Joon Chang, the “heretic”, set out to challenge this orthodoxy in Bad Samaritans. The title, of course, is a play on the biblical story of the Good Samaritan – the man who went out of his way to help a man left for dead on the road by armed robbers. Here the parable is flipped: The Bad Samaritans are the rich nations, and they have gone out of their way not only to give, but to force free market orthodoxy down the throat of unsuspecting, and often helpless, poor countries. They use the “unholy Trinity” to great effect in this relentless crusade for free market."
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/artsbooks/239718-beware-of-the-bad-samaritans.html
Developing countries planning to adopt protectionist strategies could learn a few things in the book from past pitfalls.