I’m skeptical. I understand that driving around dispensing antibiotics yourself cuts out various (possibly corrupt) middlemen. But wouldn’t that just reduce the benefit somewhat, rather than make it useless? If you instead of doing it yourself just dropped off a backpack full of antibiotics with the first reasonable-seeming person you met, and then they went and started a business selling it to various people who sold it to various people who sold it to users… wouldn’t all the antibiotics still make it out to people who needed them? Arguably with an allocation more skewed to people who actually need it as opposed to people who happened to be in your random path. The downside is that said people would need to pay instead of getting it for free, but still. Say they get a bad bargain and pay 2/3rds of the total surplus, gaining only 1/3rd for themselves. Well, then doesn’t that mean that your charitable act of dropping off a backpack full of antibiotics was 1/3rd as good for the recipients as driving around finding them yourself and giving them antibiotics for free? A haircut-to-impact like that is actually small potatoes I’d imagine, easily outweighed by the other benefits.
Yup, I think that’s one of the right questions to ask. I expect that there’s a real market inefficiency somewhere in there, but it’s definitely the sort of thing I’d recommend actively investigating while on the ground. If it turns out there’s not an inefficiency in distribution (or end-use), then yeah, just drop the load on someone. Ideally, one figures out exactly where the inefficiency is and can then pivot to a much higher-impact strategy.
It also could be that the market is efficient & the people of the Sahel have better things to spend their money on than antibiotics; i.e. you’d be better off giving them money than antibiotics. Or whatever. I’d be interested to see more argument that they need that stuff in particular, rather than just money.
I’m skeptical. I understand that driving around dispensing antibiotics yourself cuts out various (possibly corrupt) middlemen. But wouldn’t that just reduce the benefit somewhat, rather than make it useless? If you instead of doing it yourself just dropped off a backpack full of antibiotics with the first reasonable-seeming person you met, and then they went and started a business selling it to various people who sold it to various people who sold it to users… wouldn’t all the antibiotics still make it out to people who needed them? Arguably with an allocation more skewed to people who actually need it as opposed to people who happened to be in your random path. The downside is that said people would need to pay instead of getting it for free, but still. Say they get a bad bargain and pay 2/3rds of the total surplus, gaining only 1/3rd for themselves. Well, then doesn’t that mean that your charitable act of dropping off a backpack full of antibiotics was 1/3rd as good for the recipients as driving around finding them yourself and giving them antibiotics for free? A haircut-to-impact like that is actually small potatoes I’d imagine, easily outweighed by the other benefits.
Yup, I think that’s one of the right questions to ask. I expect that there’s a real market inefficiency somewhere in there, but it’s definitely the sort of thing I’d recommend actively investigating while on the ground. If it turns out there’s not an inefficiency in distribution (or end-use), then yeah, just drop the load on someone. Ideally, one figures out exactly where the inefficiency is and can then pivot to a much higher-impact strategy.
It also could be that the market is efficient & the people of the Sahel have better things to spend their money on than antibiotics; i.e. you’d be better off giving them money than antibiotics. Or whatever. I’d be interested to see more argument that they need that stuff in particular, rather than just money.