The story of foreign aid is usually told as a story of insufficient resources. Bill Easterly thinks that misses the point.

In this episode, Ben sits down with Bill Easterly, NYU economist and author of four books on development, to dig into why aid so often fails, and why the problem runs deeper than most people are willing to admit.

Topics covered:

• From disappointment to concern: how Easterly's view of foreign aid evolved from "zero effect" to actively harmful, particularly through its support of autocrats
• The accountability problem: why aid agencies are accountable to US foreign policy goals rather than to the people they're meant to help, and how that shapes everything
• Why even well-intentioned private philanthropy ends up in the same traps
• The "benevolent autocrat" fallacy: why GDP growth under c ...