James, the discussion was about things that one can donate to as a private individual looking to have a maximal positive impact, using resources like GiveWell and so on. So arguments that governments doing foreign aid are often not trying to help or serving crazy side-concerns (e.g. with DDT, although that’s often greatly exaggerated for ideological reasons) aren’t very relevant.
I gave smallpox as an example of a benefit conferred to poor people by transferring resources (medical resources) to their countries. I agree about sloppiness on the part of governments and most donors, but that doesn’t mean that those rare birds putting effort into efficacy can’t attain some.
I agree that Africa’s main problem is low economic growth, and that vampire states play a key role there (along with disease, human capital, etc). You never answered my earlier question, “why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” Would you guess that the World Bank Doing Business Report saves one net life per $1000 of expenditure?
“why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” I don’t think it would do any good, although I don’t know enough about these groups to be certain of this.
I believe that on average charity given to poor people in poor countries does more harm than good, and I don’t think most people (myself included) are smart enough (even with the help of GiveWell) to identify situations in which giving aid helps these people in large part because of the negative unintended indirect effects of foreign charity.
In contrast, I think that technological spillovers hugely benefit humanity and so while spending money on cryonics isn’t the first best way of helping humanity it is better than spending the money on most types of charities including those designed to help poor people living in corrupt dictatorships.
I agree. It seems likely to me that for-profit investment in developing new technologies (and commercializing existing technologies on a large scale) has had a greater positive impact on human welfare than charitable spending over the last few hundred years. Given that it has also made a lot of early investors wealthy in the process (while no doubt also destroying the wealth of many more) and likely has a net positive expected return on investment I personally like it as a way to allocate some of my resources.
James, the discussion was about things that one can donate to as a private individual looking to have a maximal positive impact, using resources like GiveWell and so on. So arguments that governments doing foreign aid are often not trying to help or serving crazy side-concerns (e.g. with DDT, although that’s often greatly exaggerated for ideological reasons) aren’t very relevant.
I gave smallpox as an example of a benefit conferred to poor people by transferring resources (medical resources) to their countries. I agree about sloppiness on the part of governments and most donors, but that doesn’t mean that those rare birds putting effort into efficacy can’t attain some.
I agree that Africa’s main problem is low economic growth, and that vampire states play a key role there (along with disease, human capital, etc). You never answered my earlier question, “why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” Would you guess that the World Bank Doing Business Report saves one net life per $1000 of expenditure?
“why not fund anti-corruption/transparency/watchdog groups?” I don’t think it would do any good, although I don’t know enough about these groups to be certain of this.
I believe that on average charity given to poor people in poor countries does more harm than good, and I don’t think most people (myself included) are smart enough (even with the help of GiveWell) to identify situations in which giving aid helps these people in large part because of the negative unintended indirect effects of foreign charity.
In contrast, I think that technological spillovers hugely benefit humanity and so while spending money on cryonics isn’t the first best way of helping humanity it is better than spending the money on most types of charities including those designed to help poor people living in corrupt dictatorships.
I agree. It seems likely to me that for-profit investment in developing new technologies (and commercializing existing technologies on a large scale) has had a greater positive impact on human welfare than charitable spending over the last few hundred years. Given that it has also made a lot of early investors wealthy in the process (while no doubt also destroying the wealth of many more) and likely has a net positive expected return on investment I personally like it as a way to allocate some of my resources.