Trying to take into account those and other factors of war besides being shot in battle led me to this statistical estimate of the effect of the Iraq War. The lowest bound was 400,000, and treating excess mortality as happening on the average between 16 and 67 (an overtly optimistic hope that people under 16 remain the least affected-by-war group), we get 10.2 million expected life years lost. Assume that for every person killed, there is one person disabled in some way (a quick check suggested 3:1 serious injury:death ratio for soldiers and 1.8:1 for civilians, I went with 1:1 because disability doesn’t always follow from serious injury, but concerns like PTSD can bring the ratio up to equal) and the figure is just above 20 million DALYs lost to the Iraq war. GiveWell’s figure of $100 per DALY being the upper bound of efficient charity means that a lobby group or charity that could have stopped the Iraq War given 2 billion dollars would have been a gold-standard efficient charity.
I believe this answers your query, Nancy. Stopping wars most definitely rates as some of the best charity around.
There’s another level, I think. Afaik, wars are less likely between democracies than for other permutations of government types, so charities which spread democracy might also be a good choice, depending on one’s estimate of their effectiveness.
Indeed. To the extent that a charity spreads democracy, and to the extent that democratization reduces likelihood of war, these democracy charities are stop-war charities.
“Excess mortality” is a difficult concept.
Most estimates I’ve seen calculate excess mortality based on a pre-hostilities baseline because this is relatively easy to calculate and produces the highest possible figure for excess mortality.
But the number we really want would compare that mortality to the expected post-war mortality. In the case of Iraq, this would provide a higher expected value than the rate immediately pre-war.
This argument is based on completely ignoring future costs and benefit analysis and the available alternatives. To accept this as a (implicit?) axiom seems unnatural. Imagine a powerful lobby group stopped American involvement in the Korean war and all of South Korea ended up like the North. Imagine NATO did not strike Serbia and Milosevic continued to reign. Even the Iraq war did have some positive effect—Hussein was evil, and potentially the new government in Iraq would lead to less suffering, both internally and because of other—local and global—conflicts avoided. The particulars of these arguments are debatable (the Iraq government may collapse into chaos; even if it does not, we will never know the ultimate costs of keeping or not keeping Saddam in power), but the larger point stands. Other comments mentioned promoting democracy as a means of promoting peace. War can be a radical mean of promoting democracy (at least in Serbia it seems to have worked), and this should not be ignored.
Even the Iraq war did have some positive effect—Hussein was evil, and potentially the new government in Iraq would lead to less suffering, both internally and because of other—local and global—conflicts avoided.
If you take the after-invasion Iraq government and subtract that from Hussein’s governing, you get the improvement in governance. Is that improvement going to save 400,000 lives in its reduction of local and global conflicts? Please keep in mind it is not a dichotomy of “Invade and fix Iraq XOR abandon countries to the whims of evil dictators”. It is closer to “Improving Iraq: Military intervention, or other means?”.
Assassinating Hussein and backing a democratic coup is a much better way of radically promoting democracy in Iraq. I accuse you of completely ignoring available alternatives.
Shall I contribute to charities promoting assassinations of evil foreign leaders (there are still a few left) and backing democratic coups instead of the blanket pro-peace movements?
Charities aren’t well-suited to radical political tasks. You would be better off pursuing a career in international diplomacy or statesmanship, focusing on networking with espionage rather than the military-industrial complex, if you wish to achieve these kinds of changes.
Hmm. Watch out, more numbers.
Trying to take into account those and other factors of war besides being shot in battle led me to this statistical estimate of the effect of the Iraq War. The lowest bound was 400,000, and treating excess mortality as happening on the average between 16 and 67 (an overtly optimistic hope that people under 16 remain the least affected-by-war group), we get 10.2 million expected life years lost. Assume that for every person killed, there is one person disabled in some way (a quick check suggested 3:1 serious injury:death ratio for soldiers and 1.8:1 for civilians, I went with 1:1 because disability doesn’t always follow from serious injury, but concerns like PTSD can bring the ratio up to equal) and the figure is just above 20 million DALYs lost to the Iraq war. GiveWell’s figure of $100 per DALY being the upper bound of efficient charity means that a lobby group or charity that could have stopped the Iraq War given 2 billion dollars would have been a gold-standard efficient charity.
I believe this answers your query, Nancy. Stopping wars most definitely rates as some of the best charity around.
I’ve been amazed for a long time how much people don’t add up the costs of war.
There’s another level, I think. Afaik, wars are less likely between democracies than for other permutations of government types, so charities which spread democracy might also be a good choice, depending on one’s estimate of their effectiveness.
Indeed. To the extent that a charity spreads democracy, and to the extent that democratization reduces likelihood of war, these democracy charities are stop-war charities.
“Excess mortality” is a difficult concept. Most estimates I’ve seen calculate excess mortality based on a pre-hostilities baseline because this is relatively easy to calculate and produces the highest possible figure for excess mortality. But the number we really want would compare that mortality to the expected post-war mortality. In the case of Iraq, this would provide a higher expected value than the rate immediately pre-war.
I aimed for the lower bound. If you go by strictly what has been confirmed then something like 400 million dollars is the efficiency cut-off.
This argument is based on completely ignoring future costs and benefit analysis and the available alternatives. To accept this as a (implicit?) axiom seems unnatural. Imagine a powerful lobby group stopped American involvement in the Korean war and all of South Korea ended up like the North. Imagine NATO did not strike Serbia and Milosevic continued to reign. Even the Iraq war did have some positive effect—Hussein was evil, and potentially the new government in Iraq would lead to less suffering, both internally and because of other—local and global—conflicts avoided. The particulars of these arguments are debatable (the Iraq government may collapse into chaos; even if it does not, we will never know the ultimate costs of keeping or not keeping Saddam in power), but the larger point stands. Other comments mentioned promoting democracy as a means of promoting peace. War can be a radical mean of promoting democracy (at least in Serbia it seems to have worked), and this should not be ignored.
If you take the after-invasion Iraq government and subtract that from Hussein’s governing, you get the improvement in governance. Is that improvement going to save 400,000 lives in its reduction of local and global conflicts? Please keep in mind it is not a dichotomy of “Invade and fix Iraq XOR abandon countries to the whims of evil dictators”. It is closer to “Improving Iraq: Military intervention, or other means?”.
Assassinating Hussein and backing a democratic coup is a much better way of radically promoting democracy in Iraq. I accuse you of completely ignoring available alternatives.
Good, now we are talking.
Shall I contribute to charities promoting assassinations of evil foreign leaders (there are still a few left) and backing democratic coups instead of the blanket pro-peace movements?
Charities aren’t well-suited to radical political tasks. You would be better off pursuing a career in international diplomacy or statesmanship, focusing on networking with espionage rather than the military-industrial complex, if you wish to achieve these kinds of changes.