If you make this particular change to the example, then the thing you’re trading off against your new shoes and clothes isn’t “saving a child’s life” but “saving one day of a child’s life”. It’s reasonable to value that rather less (which is not to say that it’s reasonable to value it less than your shoes).
Make it another child (as you do in the next paragraph) and it’s more to the point.
But. Part of the reason why “keep saving these children, one by one, at great personal cost” might not be the right answer is that, as you point out, there are other things that are likely to be more effective and efficient, and other people better placed than you to address the problem, who will probably do so if you let them know.
None of that applies in the case of people dying of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, so far as I can see. There aren’t obviously better approaches than malaria nets, which is why AMF is allegedly one of the most effective charities in good done per unit cost. And, while there are certainly people better placed to address the problem than you are, just telling them “hey, there are people dying of malaria” probably won’t do much to make them do it.
But. Part of the reason why “keep saving these children, one by one, at great personal cost” might not be the right answer is that, as you point out, there are other things that are likely to be more effective and efficient, and other people better placed than you to address the problem, who will probably do so if you let them know.
None of that applies in the case of people dying of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, so far as I can see. There aren’t obviously better approaches than malaria nets, which is why AMF is allegedly one of the most effective charities in good done per unit cost. And, while there are certainly people better placed to address the problem than you are, just telling them “hey, there are people dying of malaria” probably won’t do much to make them do it.
It’s not that I think there are more effective solutions to “save these kids from malaria” than AMF, it’s that the problem of “there are kids to be saved from malaria” is continual and open-ended. There will (it seems) always be kids to be saved from malaria, or something or other. The idea that I am morally obligated to keep doing this, forever, is what seems incorrect.
To view it from another perspective: one of the reasons I would save the drowning kid from the pond is that I want to live in a world where if something bad happens to someone, like “oh no, I am drowning in a pond”, nearby people who are able to help, do so, even at some (not entirely unreasonable) one-time expense. However, I don’t want to live in a world where bad things happening to people is just a fact of life, and other people end up having to reduce themselves to pauper status to continually fix the bad things.
Saving the child is a causal step toward the former world. Donating to AMF seems to be a causal step toward the latter world. Show me a way to fix the problem forever, and I might be interested. “Eradicate all the mosquitoes” seems like a possibility (we did it here in the U.S.). “Stop having children” might be another (though I’m not sure what would be the best way to accomplish that).
“Stop having children” might be another (though I’m not sure what would be the best way to accomplish that)
Historically, societies with high child mortality have also had high birthrates. If the demographic transition model is right, letting the child die is likely to encourage a continued high birthrate, and saving the child may lower the birthrate.
As far as I can tell, decline in birth rates is caused by availability of contraception and some other factors related to industrialization and technological growth, not by a lowered death rate per se, which by itself simply leads to population growth. Wikipedia also suggests that the demographic transition model may not apply to less-developed countries with widespread disease (AIDS, bacterial infections) such as many in Africa.
What we should be looking for is ways to discourage people from having children, at all, in places and situations where we expect that the kids are likely to need such outside “saving” as discussed in the OP.
isn’t “saving a child’s life” but “saving one day of a child’s life”.
I try in general to replace the “lives saved” metric with the “QALYs gained” metric for precisely this reason; maximizing lives saved has some very strange properties. (My go-to example is that it leads me to prefer to avoid curing a condition that causes periodic life-threatening seizures, preferring to treat each seizure as it occurs.)
You can get around that particular example by disvaluing lives lost, rather than valuing lives saved. Of course I agree that actually QALYs or something similar are a far better metric.
“None of that applies in the case of people dying of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, so far as I can see. There aren’t obviously better approaches than malaria nets, which is why AMF is allegedly one of the most effective charities in good done per unit cost. And, while there are certainly people better placed to address the problem than you are, just telling them “hey, there are people dying of malaria” probably won’t do much to make them do it.”
Well, but then the more important question becomes “how can you convince these people to address the problem”.
Not necessarily more important. (If it turns out that actually there isn’t any realistic way to convince them to address the problem, then “ok, so what else can we do?” is a higher-value question.)
Well worth addressing, though, for sure. Getting governments and very rich people to spend more on helping the neediest parts of the world might be a very valuable activity.
Probably hard to know with much confidence. So I suppose the question might be (in so far as this makes sense) objectively unimportant but subjectively important,
If you make this particular change to the example, then the thing you’re trading off against your new shoes and clothes isn’t “saving a child’s life” but “saving one day of a child’s life”. It’s reasonable to value that rather less (which is not to say that it’s reasonable to value it less than your shoes).
Make it another child (as you do in the next paragraph) and it’s more to the point.
But. Part of the reason why “keep saving these children, one by one, at great personal cost” might not be the right answer is that, as you point out, there are other things that are likely to be more effective and efficient, and other people better placed than you to address the problem, who will probably do so if you let them know.
None of that applies in the case of people dying of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, so far as I can see. There aren’t obviously better approaches than malaria nets, which is why AMF is allegedly one of the most effective charities in good done per unit cost. And, while there are certainly people better placed to address the problem than you are, just telling them “hey, there are people dying of malaria” probably won’t do much to make them do it.
It’s not that I think there are more effective solutions to “save these kids from malaria” than AMF, it’s that the problem of “there are kids to be saved from malaria” is continual and open-ended. There will (it seems) always be kids to be saved from malaria, or something or other. The idea that I am morally obligated to keep doing this, forever, is what seems incorrect.
To view it from another perspective: one of the reasons I would save the drowning kid from the pond is that I want to live in a world where if something bad happens to someone, like “oh no, I am drowning in a pond”, nearby people who are able to help, do so, even at some (not entirely unreasonable) one-time expense. However, I don’t want to live in a world where bad things happening to people is just a fact of life, and other people end up having to reduce themselves to pauper status to continually fix the bad things.
Saving the child is a causal step toward the former world. Donating to AMF seems to be a causal step toward the latter world. Show me a way to fix the problem forever, and I might be interested. “Eradicate all the mosquitoes” seems like a possibility (we did it here in the U.S.). “Stop having children” might be another (though I’m not sure what would be the best way to accomplish that).
Historically, societies with high child mortality have also had high birthrates. If the demographic transition model is right, letting the child die is likely to encourage a continued high birthrate, and saving the child may lower the birthrate.
As far as I can tell, decline in birth rates is caused by availability of contraception and some other factors related to industrialization and technological growth, not by a lowered death rate per se, which by itself simply leads to population growth. Wikipedia also suggests that the demographic transition model may not apply to less-developed countries with widespread disease (AIDS, bacterial infections) such as many in Africa.
What we should be looking for is ways to discourage people from having children, at all, in places and situations where we expect that the kids are likely to need such outside “saving” as discussed in the OP.
I try in general to replace the “lives saved” metric with the “QALYs gained” metric for precisely this reason; maximizing lives saved has some very strange properties. (My go-to example is that it leads me to prefer to avoid curing a condition that causes periodic life-threatening seizures, preferring to treat each seizure as it occurs.)
You can get around that particular example by disvaluing lives lost, rather than valuing lives saved. Of course I agree that actually QALYs or something similar are a far better metric.
“None of that applies in the case of people dying of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, so far as I can see. There aren’t obviously better approaches than malaria nets, which is why AMF is allegedly one of the most effective charities in good done per unit cost. And, while there are certainly people better placed to address the problem than you are, just telling them “hey, there are people dying of malaria” probably won’t do much to make them do it.”
Well, but then the more important question becomes “how can you convince these people to address the problem”.
Not necessarily more important. (If it turns out that actually there isn’t any realistic way to convince them to address the problem, then “ok, so what else can we do?” is a higher-value question.)
Well worth addressing, though, for sure. Getting governments and very rich people to spend more on helping the neediest parts of the world might be a very valuable activity.
How would you know there isn’t any realistic way to impact them using your resources? Donation to a think-tank seems one possible option.
Probably hard to know with much confidence. So I suppose the question might be (in so far as this makes sense) objectively unimportant but subjectively important,