The Adam Smith Institute finds itself on the opposite side to many of the NGOs on the subject of development aid. We advocate debt relief and humanitarian aid, but we think the path out of poverty lies through trade, not assisted development. Our opponents fundamentally want the thing to be managed, planned and carefully controlled. We don't think it can be or should be.

We find ourselves opposed to similar thinking on globalization and world growth. We are up against people who want it to proceed under tight control, according to some preconceived plan. They think their view of what constitutes an appropriate growth level should be imposed, whereas we prefer human ingenuity and aspiration to set their own levels.

Many of the people who support managed development are the same ones who support limited growth. In some cases they are the same people who once supported centrally-planned economies; elsewhere they are their heirs and successors.

In one camp stand those who want to impose a preordained plan. They want people to do things which the planners think they ought to do, and to live as the planners think they should. They prefer a world whose activity can be carefully controlled and set to work according to a grand design of how they think things ought to be. What they want is power over people, the power to decide things

In the other camp are those who prefer spontaneous human action, and who think it better to let human inventiveness and energy reach toward whatever goals they can. This side backs the freedom of people to do these things, and sees compulsion at the heart of management and control. Humanity cannot and should not be bottled up inside someone else's limits. Procrustes fitted everyone into his bed by stretching those too short, and cutting the feet off those who were too big. He was just as wrong as those who want people to fit their preconceptions.