Would you not want someone doing altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons? That’s not very instrumentally rational, and is the antithesis of effective altruism, which is about doing the utmost we can to advance human flourishing. If our end goal is to improve human flourishing, then I very much want people to do things to contribute to that goal, regardless of their motivations.
The name Effective >Altruism suggests that followers are somehow being altruistic. Both the common usage and dictionary definitions of altruism are clear. Wikipedia lists the word altruism as synonymous with selflessness. So to answer your first question, doing altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons is simply not altruism. It is the opposite.
It may be tempting to dismiss my argument as semantics. It is so much more. This gets to the core of what (I believe ) Less Wrong is all about. Human beings want to be good. Our culture tells us that selflessness is the highest form of good. So we act in ways that provide the charade of selflessness that fools not only those around us, it fool ourselves.
Who cares, right? What’s important is people are doing good, right? Well, actually, no, that’s not the most important thing. The first word in the EA is the most important thing. Effective. The problem is that the charade makes the process ineffective to the point of harmful. The charade encourages people to do things that are downright despicable while simultaneously providing a feeling of selflessness. The despicable results are five chess moves ahead and consequently for most they are hidden.
Sometimes it is easier to see this charade in others than in ourselves so I encourage you to look to the American missionaries who have worked “tirelessly” for decades in Africa. Churches send first-aid certified volunteers to serve rural outposts. These volunteers are looking for an opportunity to emulate the life of Christ. That is their motivation. The locals come to these outposts for medical care rather than going to the locally trained physician. The locally trained physician can’t makes ends meet so they accept the offer from the west to emigrate, leaving the community at the mercy of the amateur outsiders who eventually leave.
There was a statistic circulating in the international-aid community a few years ago that there were more Malawian trained physicians in the city of Manchester in the UK than in all of Malawi. While this turned out to be an overstatement, it is not far from the truth.
This motivation on the part of the missionaries to be selfless (an impossible task) is THE cause of the problem. While some believe it is possible to align dissimilar motivations to create good ends, there are plenty of Africans who say that contrasting motivations have tied the continent into thorny knots. (see Dambisa Moyo)
The desire to be (seen as) an altruist infects the process and creates massive unintended consequences. The only way to be a true altruist is to be anonymous.
This motivation on the part of the missionaries to be selfless (an impossible task) is THE cause of the problem. While some believe it is possible to align dissimilar motivations to create good ends, there are plenty of Africans who say that contrasting motivations have tied the continent into thorny knots. (see Dambisa Moyo)
We succeed to elimate small pox through Western inspired aid.
Africa is much better than it was 40 years ago. As hand Rosling says, most people on the West know less than chimpanzee of the success of helping Africa.
Yes, I believe the government efforts with regard to ebola were more effective. I also believe that many government programs are terrible. We buy excess corn here and give it for free there, killing local markets.
We buy excess corn here and give it for free there, killing local markets.
That program is very effective of producing a robust way to feed Westerns that can still feed them when the production halves because of a crisis.
It works to provide jobs to Western farmers.
It succeeds at the goals it’s designed to fulfill.
If you look at the history of the New Deal it was’t a program for feeding Africans. It was a program for making life better for farmers.
When there was a common agricultural policy in the EU the goal wasn’t either feeding Africans. It was having a food system that still works in case of a war with the Soviets. The New Deal thought of supporting the lives of farmers and seeking political support of farming communities.
Once we had overproduction someone decided that shipping grain to Africa is better than burning it but the grain doesn’t get produced to feed Africans. It get’s produced for other reasons.
Once we had overproduction someone decided that shipping grain to Africa is better than burning it but the grain doesn’t get produced to feed Africans. It get’s produced for other reasons.
Absolutely. We agree.
I don’t know your industry, but let’s say you are a Water Engineer in an American city. Now imagine that suddenly the Swiss developed portable desalination processing ships that created clean water and supply it to the whole of the U.S. for free… for generations. You lose your job and we as Americans lose the skills to supply water ourselves.
We are at the mercy of the benevolent Swiss who have their own reasons for providing us water. Their benevolence makes us weaker.
Yes, but that’s substantially different than what happens in Effective Altruism.
There no naitve betnet production in Africa. There’s no native production of deworming tablets. Those interventions are driven by actual altruism as opposed to free grain that driven by other motivations.
GiveDirectly is even better in creating local markets by providing a community with money.
This motivation [...] to be selfless [...] is THE cause of the problem.
I don’t see how. I’ll assume, at least for the sake of argument, that your account of how these things work out is accurate; how would it go any better if the volunteers had different, less selfless, motivation? And why blame the situation on the volunteers’ selflessness rather than on any of the other elements in the situation—the locals’ preference for cheaper but worse medical care, the offers for the physicians to emigrate, the fact that the local physicians are dependent on money from the locals rather than being paid by the government as in some Western countries, the fact that the volunteers eventually go away?
Actually, I’m a bit confused by the description of the process. So, the problem is that the volunteers turn up, provide cheap medical care thus putting the local physician out of business, and then go away. If the volunteers stayed around, the locals would have cheap medical care all the time and presumably that’s a good outcome. Now, why does the local physician emigrate to the West rather than just moving down the road to another village that doesn’t have western volunteers? Is it because there’s more money to be made by emigrating? (In that case, surely the temptation is there even without the western volunteers.) Is it because the village down the road also has volunteers undercutting the physician? (If that’s commonly the case, then a large fraction of the country must be getting free medical care from these volunteers—so are you sure they aren’t doing more good than harm overall?) Is it because the village down the road has its own physician? (If that’s commonly the case, then the country isn’t so desperately short of physicians as you describe.) I dunno—I’m just having trouble seeing how your account fits together. Is it actually well founded on evidence?
The only way to be a true altruist is to be anonymous.
Would those African rural outposts have been better off if their first-aid volunteers had all been wearing masks and keeping their identities secret?
If the volunteers stayed around, the locals would have cheap medical care all the time and presumably that’s a good outcome.
No, that’s a terrible outcome. Long-term solutions to persistent, difficult problems come about when capable people with skin in the game take action. Malawian doctors have skin in the African game but are sidelined when Milwaukeean dairy farmers fill in for free.
Further, when we look closer to home we understand that there are many problems for which the best possible solution is to do nothing. That misfit brother who has to learn to stand on his own two feet would be much better off if mom and dad would let him fail a few times. We understand the nuance of the situation because we are part of the culture and part of the family. The further we are removed from the person needing help the harder it becomes to understand that nuance.
Eric Sevareid’s had a wonderful saying, “The chief cause of problems is solutions.”
How very convenient that the best thing for millions of desperately poor people is for comfortable Westerners like us to do nothing to help them.
(It may well be true in some cases, but I do find it striking how very little evidence seems to be needed to convince some people that the best charity is no charity.)
How very convenient that the best thing for millions of desperately poor people is for comfortable Westerners like us to do nothing to help them.
To the contrary, it is very inconvenient.
We naturally want to help. I want to help. More than you could ever know. After being on the ground in Africa for a while I just realized that:
Most of the things I could do are more harmful than allowing those desperately poor people to solve their problems themselves.
There is an upward spiral of confidence, strength and capability when someone solves their own problems and a downward spiral of dependence when problems are solved for them.
It is nearly impossible for my comfortable Westerner eyes to distinguish between those problems I can solve without doing harm and those where I would wreak havoc.
My comfortable Western mind is biased toward action. Action makes me feel good. Refraining from action makes me feel bad. This action-bias causes me to do great harm.
My presence enables and permits dysfunction in the one organization that could solve these problems: government.
For those trying to solve persistent problems closer to home, look at those points and see how many apply to your pet project.
OK; in that case it sounds as if I have misjudged your motivations (and perhaps also how broadly you are claiming that the best charity is no charity; that’s still not altogether clear to me). It is possible that your choice of username influenced me in the direction of thinking you more likely to be advocating something like egoism :-).
How do you feel about charitable activity that only supplies its beneficiaries with useful resources? For instance, two of GiveWell’s current recommendations are:
A charity that provides people in poor malaria-afflicted parts of the world with bednets impregnated with insecticide.
A charity that simply gives money to poor people. (In one-off donations, which are explicitly intended to enable them to do things they otherwise couldn’t—though there are no strings attached.)
These seem to me like they don’t get in the way of anything the beneficiaries could have done for themselves, and the available evidence seems to suggest that in fact they do substantially more good than harm.
Even what may appear as a benign intervention on the surface can have damning consequences. Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa. Say he employs 10 people who together manufacture 500 nets a week. Typically, these 10 employees support upward of 15 relatives each. A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They’ll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Privileging a hypothesis, lump of labor fallacy / ignoring comparative advantage, cherrypicking consequences, and not thinking on the margin, to boot.
Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa.
That’s the first stage at which I am most doubtful about Moyo’s argument. Sure, one can postulate situations in which sending a lot of mosquito nets to Africa does a lot of damage by putting a lot of local mosquito-net makers out of business. But is that actually happening? (Or, failing that, is there good reason to think it would be happening if it weren’t for charitable mosquito-net provision?)
The other point at which I am doubtful: let’s suppose that supplying mosquito nets puts N people out of work per year. That’s bad (unless N=0). But it also stops M people getting malaria per year. How do those effects balance out? Does Moyo make any attempt at such a calculation, or is she doing a cost-benefit analysis that completely ignores the benefits?
Sure, one can postulate situations in which sending a lot of mosquito nets to Africa does a lot of damage by putting a lot of local mosquito-net makers out of business. But is that actually happening?
Pick an industry that is thriving in, say, South Africa and compare it to the same industry in a high-aid country like Uganda. Inevitably you will find that the more sector-aid they receive, the worse their industries produce. It is hard to out-compete free. I gave the Malawi-medical example below but they are everywhere.
I was there this time last year and saw that the rhino horn crisis was actually being encouraged by officials who had positioned family and friends as the ready solution for the deep pockets aid organizations to buy.
Chances are, if you live in a U.S. city you will walk past a homeless person today. You can continue walking without dropping a coin in their cup because you have empathy (you understand the complexities of his/her plight) and realize that by giving the quarter you will do more harm than good. But we want to be good so we pick people far away with whom we cannot empathize (in the truest sense of the word.… able to walk in their shoes) and then send them money.
This idea is objectionable to your mind (and mine) because we desperately want to help people. So we become good at ignoring the fact that our help actually hurts.
compare it to the same industry in a high-aid country like Uganda
How do you distinguish between the following two hypotheses?
Country A receives more aid than Country B, and this makes its industry do worse.
Country A is more badly messed up than Country B, and this makes its industry do worse and also makes people send it more aid.
Who could be against helping [orphans]?
I think you are arguing with a straw man. Of course there will be cases where something looks like a good idea but is actually a terrible idea. The question that actually matters is about what’s best overall.
So we become good at ignoring the fact that our help actually hurts.
Well, that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that “the fact that our help actually hurts” is not readily apparent, and wouldn’t be even if we didn’t care about helping people. Another is that it isn’t actually a fact.
For what it’s worth, both of those seem more likely to me right now than your proposal that if someone doesn’t agree that aid’s harmful it’s because they “want to be good” and “cannot empathize” with the people on the receiving end.
Google Moyo and watch a few of her interviews.
“Beware the man of one study”. Yes, Moyo argues that aid is harmful. It’s not as if everyone familiar with the area agrees with her, though. Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says?
Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says
You should not uncritically accept anything. But you should recognize that there is a point of view (not limited to Moyo) which claims that many (or most) forms of aid have net negative consequences. Many people would be surprised to learn that this point of view exists.
It’s also worth pointing out that the usual bias mechanisms will push you towards believing that aid really helps.
you should recognize that there is a point of view [...]
So recognized. (And, as it happens, already known.)
the usual bias mechanisms will push you towards believing that aid really helps
Some will. Some will push the other way. (I don’t know about you, but I like having money, and anything that has the consequence that the best thing for the world happens to involve me having more money is going to get at least a bit of a boost from that. I don’t think I’m unusual in this respect.)
Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says?
In the end she is giving her opinion. I am giving mine. I am telling you what I saw and how I came to my conclusions. You can do with them as you choose.
The thing I find deeply troubling is that I know good people would not do what they are doing if they knew the consequences. They would not toss the quarter into the cup of the homeless guy.
It is very common for those outsiders who work on the front lines of aid/charity to talk (to rage!!!) about the fubar consequences while they are there together in the muck. But the moment they come home they sing a different tune. It is very frustrating to see that when they are back home and faced with their own deep investment in it, they forget the lessons. Very frustrating.
Would those African rural outposts have been better off if their first-aid volunteers had all been wearing masks and keeping their identities secret?
They would have to believe that they could obscure their actions from their all-seeing, all-knowing god since their motivations were driven by the belief that they were gaining status toward a day of ultimate reckoning.
Those outposts would have been better had the amateurs stayed home.
EA doesn’t do that kind of thing. The currently popular idea is buying malaria nets. I don’t think there’s a large indigenous malaria net industry that is being displaced by this.
You’re actually right—giving Africans free things can destroy the indigenous economy by making it hard for natives to make money—but not right about EA.
Being public does not provide accountability. Is Zuckerberg being held accountable for the Newark schools debacle? No. People are saying, “At least he tried.”
Here’s the thing.… We understand the idea of creative destruction in other realms but fail to see it when our attention is attracted, like a bull to the red cape, to the people who are suffering in the destruction phase. Propping up a dysfunctional system is worse than letting it fail and rebuilding entirely.
Would you not want someone doing altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons? That’s not very instrumentally rational, and is the antithesis of effective altruism, which is about doing the utmost we can to advance human flourishing. If our end goal is to improve human flourishing, then I very much want people to do things to contribute to that goal, regardless of their motivations.
That’s not what the word “altruistic” means.
Agreed. I was talking about what the Effective Altruism movement orients toward, not the semantic definition of altruism.
Words matter. It steals the positive cultural connotations of the word altruism without actually being altruistic.
It exploits the gray area between being vs. seeming to be. There is a word for that. It’s called lying.
You’re welcome to argue with the founders of the EA movement, but please avoid calling me a liar for using the appropriate terms correctly. Thanks!
Apologies. I did not intend to call you a liar. Sorry if it came across that way.
Apology accepted.
The name Effective >Altruism suggests that followers are somehow being altruistic. Both the common usage and dictionary definitions of altruism are clear. Wikipedia lists the word altruism as synonymous with selflessness. So to answer your first question, doing altruistic things for personally beneficial reasons is simply not altruism. It is the opposite.
It may be tempting to dismiss my argument as semantics. It is so much more. This gets to the core of what (I believe ) Less Wrong is all about. Human beings want to be good. Our culture tells us that selflessness is the highest form of good. So we act in ways that provide the charade of selflessness that fools not only those around us, it fool ourselves.
Who cares, right? What’s important is people are doing good, right? Well, actually, no, that’s not the most important thing. The first word in the EA is the most important thing. Effective. The problem is that the charade makes the process ineffective to the point of harmful. The charade encourages people to do things that are downright despicable while simultaneously providing a feeling of selflessness. The despicable results are five chess moves ahead and consequently for most they are hidden.
Sometimes it is easier to see this charade in others than in ourselves so I encourage you to look to the American missionaries who have worked “tirelessly” for decades in Africa. Churches send first-aid certified volunteers to serve rural outposts. These volunteers are looking for an opportunity to emulate the life of Christ. That is their motivation. The locals come to these outposts for medical care rather than going to the locally trained physician. The locally trained physician can’t makes ends meet so they accept the offer from the west to emigrate, leaving the community at the mercy of the amateur outsiders who eventually leave.
There was a statistic circulating in the international-aid community a few years ago that there were more Malawian trained physicians in the city of Manchester in the UK than in all of Malawi. While this turned out to be an overstatement, it is not far from the truth.
This motivation on the part of the missionaries to be selfless (an impossible task) is THE cause of the problem. While some believe it is possible to align dissimilar motivations to create good ends, there are plenty of Africans who say that contrasting motivations have tied the continent into thorny knots. (see Dambisa Moyo)
The desire to be (seen as) an altruist infects the process and creates massive unintended consequences. The only way to be a true altruist is to be anonymous.
We succeed to elimate small pox through Western inspired aid.
Africa is much better than it was 40 years ago. As hand Rosling says, most people on the West know less than chimpanzee of the success of helping Africa.
Western governments and governmental organizations did so. We had skin in the game. Same with Ebola.
Do you think that made the action significantly more effective than the GiveWell charities?
Yes, I believe the government efforts with regard to ebola were more effective. I also believe that many government programs are terrible. We buy excess corn here and give it for free there, killing local markets.
That program is very effective of producing a robust way to feed Westerns that can still feed them when the production halves because of a crisis. It works to provide jobs to Western farmers.
It succeeds at the goals it’s designed to fulfill.
Is that tongue in cheek?
The program takes our desire to be good and uses it as a tool for a particular special interest. Yes, it fulfills its goals.
If you look at the history of the New Deal it was’t a program for feeding Africans. It was a program for making life better for farmers.
When there was a common agricultural policy in the EU the goal wasn’t either feeding Africans. It was having a food system that still works in case of a war with the Soviets. The New Deal thought of supporting the lives of farmers and seeking political support of farming communities.
Once we had overproduction someone decided that shipping grain to Africa is better than burning it but the grain doesn’t get produced to feed Africans. It get’s produced for other reasons.
Absolutely. We agree.
I don’t know your industry, but let’s say you are a Water Engineer in an American city. Now imagine that suddenly the Swiss developed portable desalination processing ships that created clean water and supply it to the whole of the U.S. for free… for generations. You lose your job and we as Americans lose the skills to supply water ourselves.
We are at the mercy of the benevolent Swiss who have their own reasons for providing us water. Their benevolence makes us weaker.
Not necessarily, because it freed up resources we used to provide water and these resources can now be put to a different use.
Don’t overstate your position—or you’ll end up arguing against all international trade.
Yes, but that’s substantially different than what happens in Effective Altruism.
There no naitve betnet production in Africa. There’s no native production of deworming tablets. Those interventions are driven by actual altruism as opposed to free grain that driven by other motivations.
GiveDirectly is even better in creating local markets by providing a community with money.
And what might be the reason for that?
I don’t see how. I’ll assume, at least for the sake of argument, that your account of how these things work out is accurate; how would it go any better if the volunteers had different, less selfless, motivation? And why blame the situation on the volunteers’ selflessness rather than on any of the other elements in the situation—the locals’ preference for cheaper but worse medical care, the offers for the physicians to emigrate, the fact that the local physicians are dependent on money from the locals rather than being paid by the government as in some Western countries, the fact that the volunteers eventually go away?
Actually, I’m a bit confused by the description of the process. So, the problem is that the volunteers turn up, provide cheap medical care thus putting the local physician out of business, and then go away. If the volunteers stayed around, the locals would have cheap medical care all the time and presumably that’s a good outcome. Now, why does the local physician emigrate to the West rather than just moving down the road to another village that doesn’t have western volunteers? Is it because there’s more money to be made by emigrating? (In that case, surely the temptation is there even without the western volunteers.) Is it because the village down the road also has volunteers undercutting the physician? (If that’s commonly the case, then a large fraction of the country must be getting free medical care from these volunteers—so are you sure they aren’t doing more good than harm overall?) Is it because the village down the road has its own physician? (If that’s commonly the case, then the country isn’t so desperately short of physicians as you describe.) I dunno—I’m just having trouble seeing how your account fits together. Is it actually well founded on evidence?
Would those African rural outposts have been better off if their first-aid volunteers had all been wearing masks and keeping their identities secret?
No, that’s a terrible outcome. Long-term solutions to persistent, difficult problems come about when capable people with skin in the game take action. Malawian doctors have skin in the African game but are sidelined when Milwaukeean dairy farmers fill in for free.
Further, when we look closer to home we understand that there are many problems for which the best possible solution is to do nothing. That misfit brother who has to learn to stand on his own two feet would be much better off if mom and dad would let him fail a few times. We understand the nuance of the situation because we are part of the culture and part of the family. The further we are removed from the person needing help the harder it becomes to understand that nuance.
Eric Sevareid’s had a wonderful saying, “The chief cause of problems is solutions.”
How very convenient that the best thing for millions of desperately poor people is for comfortable Westerners like us to do nothing to help them.
(It may well be true in some cases, but I do find it striking how very little evidence seems to be needed to convince some people that the best charity is no charity.)
To the contrary, it is very inconvenient.
We naturally want to help. I want to help. More than you could ever know. After being on the ground in Africa for a while I just realized that:
Most of the things I could do are more harmful than allowing those desperately poor people to solve their problems themselves.
There is an upward spiral of confidence, strength and capability when someone solves their own problems and a downward spiral of dependence when problems are solved for them.
It is nearly impossible for my comfortable Westerner eyes to distinguish between those problems I can solve without doing harm and those where I would wreak havoc.
My comfortable Western mind is biased toward action. Action makes me feel good. Refraining from action makes me feel bad. This action-bias causes me to do great harm.
My presence enables and permits dysfunction in the one organization that could solve these problems: government.
For those trying to solve persistent problems closer to home, look at those points and see how many apply to your pet project.
OK; in that case it sounds as if I have misjudged your motivations (and perhaps also how broadly you are claiming that the best charity is no charity; that’s still not altogether clear to me). It is possible that your choice of username influenced me in the direction of thinking you more likely to be advocating something like egoism :-).
How do you feel about charitable activity that only supplies its beneficiaries with useful resources? For instance, two of GiveWell’s current recommendations are:
A charity that provides people in poor malaria-afflicted parts of the world with bednets impregnated with insecticide.
A charity that simply gives money to poor people. (In one-off donations, which are explicitly intended to enable them to do things they otherwise couldn’t—though there are no strings attached.)
These seem to me like they don’t get in the way of anything the beneficiaries could have done for themselves, and the available evidence seems to suggest that in fact they do substantially more good than harm.
Dambisa Moyo specifically addresses the bednet issue in her excellent book Dead Aid.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123758895999200083
Even what may appear as a benign intervention on the surface can have damning consequences. Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa. Say he employs 10 people who together manufacture 500 nets a week. Typically, these 10 employees support upward of 15 relatives each. A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They’ll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.
Privileging a hypothesis, lump of labor fallacy / ignoring comparative advantage, cherrypicking consequences, and not thinking on the margin, to boot.
That’s the first stage at which I am most doubtful about Moyo’s argument. Sure, one can postulate situations in which sending a lot of mosquito nets to Africa does a lot of damage by putting a lot of local mosquito-net makers out of business. But is that actually happening? (Or, failing that, is there good reason to think it would be happening if it weren’t for charitable mosquito-net provision?)
The other point at which I am doubtful: let’s suppose that supplying mosquito nets puts N people out of work per year. That’s bad (unless N=0). But it also stops M people getting malaria per year. How do those effects balance out? Does Moyo make any attempt at such a calculation, or is she doing a cost-benefit analysis that completely ignores the benefits?
Pick an industry that is thriving in, say, South Africa and compare it to the same industry in a high-aid country like Uganda. Inevitably you will find that the more sector-aid they receive, the worse their industries produce. It is hard to out-compete free. I gave the Malawi-medical example below but they are everywhere.
I was there this time last year and saw that the rhino horn crisis was actually being encouraged by officials who had positioned family and friends as the ready solution for the deep pockets aid organizations to buy.
How about orphans. Who could be against helping them? There are the countless orphan scandals across Africa and South Asia where parents rent or sell their children to the orphanage. https://www.zammagazine.com/chronicle/chronicle-12/217-child-abuse-in-the-name-of-voluntourism
Chances are, if you live in a U.S. city you will walk past a homeless person today. You can continue walking without dropping a coin in their cup because you have empathy (you understand the complexities of his/her plight) and realize that by giving the quarter you will do more harm than good. But we want to be good so we pick people far away with whom we cannot empathize (in the truest sense of the word.… able to walk in their shoes) and then send them money.
This idea is objectionable to your mind (and mine) because we desperately want to help people. So we become good at ignoring the fact that our help actually hurts.
Google Moyo and watch a few of her interviews.
How do you distinguish between the following two hypotheses?
Country A receives more aid than Country B, and this makes its industry do worse.
Country A is more badly messed up than Country B, and this makes its industry do worse and also makes people send it more aid.
I think you are arguing with a straw man. Of course there will be cases where something looks like a good idea but is actually a terrible idea. The question that actually matters is about what’s best overall.
Well, that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that “the fact that our help actually hurts” is not readily apparent, and wouldn’t be even if we didn’t care about helping people. Another is that it isn’t actually a fact.
For what it’s worth, both of those seem more likely to me right now than your proposal that if someone doesn’t agree that aid’s harmful it’s because they “want to be good” and “cannot empathize” with the people on the receiving end.
“Beware the man of one study”. Yes, Moyo argues that aid is harmful. It’s not as if everyone familiar with the area agrees with her, though. Why should I accept what she says rather than what, say, Jeffrey Sachs says?
You should not uncritically accept anything. But you should recognize that there is a point of view (not limited to Moyo) which claims that many (or most) forms of aid have net negative consequences. Many people would be surprised to learn that this point of view exists.
It’s also worth pointing out that the usual bias mechanisms will push you towards believing that aid really helps.
So recognized. (And, as it happens, already known.)
Some will. Some will push the other way. (I don’t know about you, but I like having money, and anything that has the consequence that the best thing for the world happens to involve me having more money is going to get at least a bit of a boost from that. I don’t think I’m unusual in this respect.)
In the end she is giving her opinion. I am giving mine. I am telling you what I saw and how I came to my conclusions. You can do with them as you choose.
The thing I find deeply troubling is that I know good people would not do what they are doing if they knew the consequences. They would not toss the quarter into the cup of the homeless guy.
It is very common for those outsiders who work on the front lines of aid/charity to talk (to rage!!!) about the fubar consequences while they are there together in the muck. But the moment they come home they sing a different tune. It is very frustrating to see that when they are back home and faced with their own deep investment in it, they forget the lessons. Very frustrating.
They would have to believe that they could obscure their actions from their all-seeing, all-knowing god since their motivations were driven by the belief that they were gaining status toward a day of ultimate reckoning.
Those outposts would have been better had the amateurs stayed home.
EA doesn’t do that kind of thing. The currently popular idea is buying malaria nets. I don’t think there’s a large indigenous malaria net industry that is being displaced by this.
You’re actually right—giving Africans free things can destroy the indigenous economy by making it hard for natives to make money—but not right about EA.
Ipse dixit and motivated reasoning.
Why not just be absolutely anonymous?
Accountability matters.
Being public does not provide accountability. Is Zuckerberg being held accountable for the Newark schools debacle? No. People are saying, “At least he tried.”
Here’s the thing.… We understand the idea of creative destruction in other realms but fail to see it when our attention is attracted, like a bull to the red cape, to the people who are suffering in the destruction phase. Propping up a dysfunctional system is worse than letting it fail and rebuilding entirely.