You know… that actually seems like potentially a good idea. Not just a tongue in cheek style good idea, but I’m thinking that this could be an actually for real good idea, and not just as a way to make “those other people” see what they’re doing. I’d want this implemented as a way to make it easier for me to keep such things in mind!
(The “infected wounds” link is broken, though, so mind explaining the concept re that?)
The only real difficulty that I see is that as things change (tech, economic conditions, etc), the actual cost of saving a child and the relative costs of saving a child vs saving puppies, etc might shift around. So you’d need some way to dynamically rename chunks of the currency. For instance, if improving tech and such leads to the equivalent of 400$ being sufficient to save a child, then what was called a DC would have to be renamed 2 DC.
The “infected wound” originally linked to some organization that donated first aid kits to those who couldn’t afford them. I’ll try to fix that next time I update the site.
Float “dead children” as a currency and regulate that all prices must be expressed in US dollars and time-of-pricing equivalent value of dead children. Determine the exchange rate not through any normal currency concerns but strictly through the change in how many lives US dollars save.
Passing a law that does something like this seems almost feasible.
For all shops that don’t yet use electronic price tag type things, there’d obviously have to be a grace period along the lines of having a week/month/whatever to update the equivalences (due to changes in the exchange rate)
Of course, a rather uglier problem would be: “How do we manage to protect the equivalences calculation from extreme politicization and such?”
Even worse: How do we avoid businesses getting together to try to sabotage the efforts of efficient charities, that way leading to a higher dollar per child amount. ie, the less dead children per item, the more willing someone would be to purchase it, so there’s a bit of a perverse incentive there.
Finally, if we solved all this: how do we push to make it a reality?
there’d obviously have to be a grace period along the lines of having a week/month/whatever to update the equivalences (due to changes in the exchange rate)
It doesn’t even need that, just whenever a price is printed out, it needs the equivalent in dead children, at the time of printing. This is an incentive to change or reprint prices when the value of dead children rises and leave old labels alone when the value of dead children has dipped, but as long as the value of dead children doesn’t fluctuate wildly (ie it doesn’t respond to speculation about a new dirt cheap cure, only to extensive statistics on the current cost to save a child) then it should be mostly right.
The perverse incentives, political influence, and potential for Goodhart’s Law and lost purposes to come into play are all serious concerns—all the more terrifying because these surely play a part in current aid schemes.
...
You would need some kind of X-Rationalist Reserve Bank of Dead Children who recite the Litany of Tarski (“If this change is to the truthful value of dead children, I desire to make this change. If this change is not to the truthful value of dead children, I desire not to make this change”) every morning, and have an investigative group empowered to seek out and punish interference in charitable work, preferably in the form of huge fines payable to the affected charities (the Perverse Incentive Disincentives Task Force).
Finally, if we solved all this: how do we push to make it a reality?
You know… that actually seems like potentially a good idea. Not just a tongue in cheek style good idea, but I’m thinking that this could be an actually for real good idea, and not just as a way to make “those other people” see what they’re doing. I’d want this implemented as a way to make it easier for me to keep such things in mind!
(The “infected wounds” link is broken, though, so mind explaining the concept re that?)
The only real difficulty that I see is that as things change (tech, economic conditions, etc), the actual cost of saving a child and the relative costs of saving a child vs saving puppies, etc might shift around. So you’d need some way to dynamically rename chunks of the currency. For instance, if improving tech and such leads to the equivalent of 400$ being sufficient to save a child, then what was called a DC would have to be renamed 2 DC.
This would be confusing.
The “infected wound” originally linked to some organization that donated first aid kits to those who couldn’t afford them. I’ll try to fix that next time I update the site.
Ah, okie, thanks.
Float “dead children” as a currency and regulate that all prices must be expressed in US dollars and time-of-pricing equivalent value of dead children. Determine the exchange rate not through any normal currency concerns but strictly through the change in how many lives US dollars save.
Passing a law that does something like this seems almost feasible.
Hrm… That might work
For all shops that don’t yet use electronic price tag type things, there’d obviously have to be a grace period along the lines of having a week/month/whatever to update the equivalences (due to changes in the exchange rate)
Of course, a rather uglier problem would be: “How do we manage to protect the equivalences calculation from extreme politicization and such?”
Even worse: How do we avoid businesses getting together to try to sabotage the efforts of efficient charities, that way leading to a higher dollar per child amount. ie, the less dead children per item, the more willing someone would be to purchase it, so there’s a bit of a perverse incentive there.
Finally, if we solved all this: how do we push to make it a reality?
It doesn’t even need that, just whenever a price is printed out, it needs the equivalent in dead children, at the time of printing. This is an incentive to change or reprint prices when the value of dead children rises and leave old labels alone when the value of dead children has dipped, but as long as the value of dead children doesn’t fluctuate wildly (ie it doesn’t respond to speculation about a new dirt cheap cure, only to extensive statistics on the current cost to save a child) then it should be mostly right.
The perverse incentives, political influence, and potential for Goodhart’s Law and lost purposes to come into play are all serious concerns—all the more terrifying because these surely play a part in current aid schemes.
...
You would need some kind of X-Rationalist Reserve Bank of Dead Children who recite the Litany of Tarski (“If this change is to the truthful value of dead children, I desire to make this change. If this change is not to the truthful value of dead children, I desire not to make this change”) every morning, and have an investigative group empowered to seek out and punish interference in charitable work, preferably in the form of huge fines payable to the affected charities (the Perverse Incentive Disincentives Task Force).
Yvain for President?
Some seastead somehting should try this I think.