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SforSingularity comments on Utilons vs. Hedons - Less Wrong
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This example is hardly hypothetical. According to GiveWell, you can save the life of one African person for $200 - $1000.
Almost everyone has spent $5000 on things that they didn't need - for example a new car as opposed to a second hand one, a refurbishment of a room in the house, a family holiday. $5000 comes nowhere close to "doubling your hedons" - in fact it probably hardly makes a dent. Furthermore, almost everyone is aware of this fact, but we conveniently don't pay any attention to it, and our subconscious minds don't remind us about it because the deaths in Africa are remote and impersonal.
Since I know of very few people who spend literally all their spare money on saving lives at $1000 per life, and almost everyone would honestly claim that they would pay $200 - 1000 to save someone from a painful death, it is fair to say that people pretty universally don't maximize "utilons".
I am not an expert on development in Africa, but my guess is that there is no single cause to the overall problem. Africa's population density is 26 people per km^2 source, whereas the EU's population density is 114 people per km^2 Source. Thus it is probably the case that Africa could easily sustain its current population if it were more economically developed.
Reducing the population artificially, whether by force or by education wouldn't make the problem magically go away, though it may help as part of an overall strategy.
If one is interested in charitable projects to improve overall African standards of living, take a look at the Copenhagen Consensus. Improvements in infrastructure, peacekeeping, health and womens' education are all needed.
I think the main reason food aid has been criticized is that it is often implemented in a way which a) empowers dictators or b) reduces profit opportunities for for African farmers and food distributors which reduces their incentive to invest in improving their farming or other businesses.
IOW, over-population is not the source of the negative externalities.
No; it's fair to say that their utilons are not a linear function of human lives saved.
If you think there are too many people in the world, you might be willing to pay to prevent the saving of lives.
Funny thing is, the only people I know who don't agree that there are too many people in the world, are objectivists, libertarians, and extropians (there's a high correlation between these categories), who are among the least-likely to give money to save people in Africa.
Africa's population density is 26 people per km^2 source, whereas the EU's population density is 114 people per km^2 Source. Thus it is probably the case that Africa could easily sustain its current population if it were more economically developed.
That's a huge "if".
Sending money there is not a way to get the local economy to develop. It's been done for decades and the African economy is barely developped.
IMO, I think the main reasons aid has been ineffective is the particular ways it has been given. It often a) empowers dictators or b) reduces profit opportunities for for African farmers and food distributors which reduces their incentive to invest in improving their farming or other businesses.
In my opinion, it would be easy to make sending money somewhat helpful. But even if I'm right, somewhat helpful is far from maximally helpful.
Something like the Grameen Bank would probably be the best bet. If there's room for economic growth but no capital to power it, then making microcredit available seems like the obvious choice.
How reliable is this information?
I found a second source
According to Peter Unger, it is more like one dollar:
Even if this is true, I think it is still more important to spend money to reduce existential risks given that one of the factors is 6 billion + a much larger number for successive generations + humanity itself.
One dollar is the approximate cost if the right treatment is in the right place at the right time. How much does it cost to get the right treatment to the right place at the right time?
The price of the salt pill itself is only a few pennies. The one dollar figure was meant to include overhead. That said, the Copenhagen report mentioned above ($64 per death averted) looks more credible. But during a particular crisis the number could be less.
In the footnote, Unger quotes UNICEF's 10 cents and makes up the 40 cents. UNICEF lied to him. Next time UNICEF tells you it can save a life for 10 cents, ask it what percentage of its $1 billion budget it's spending on this particular project.
According to the Copenhagen Consesus cited by SforSingularity, the goal is to provide about 100 pills per childhood and most children would have survived the diarrhea anyhow. (to get it as effective as $64/life, diarrhea has to be awfully fatal; more fatal than the article seems to say) They put overhead at about the same as the cost of the pills, which I find hard to believe. But they're not making it up out of thin air: they're looking at actual clinics dispensing ORT and vitamin A. (actually, they apply to zinc the overhead for vitamin A, which is distributed 2x/year 80% penetration, while zinc is distributed with ORT as needed at clinics, with much less penetration. I don't know which is cheaper, but that's sloppy.)
CC says that only 1/3 of bouts of diarrhea are reached by ORT, but the death rate has dropped by 2/3. That's weird. My best guess is that multiple bouts cumulatively weaken the child, which suggests that increasing from 1/3 to 100% would have diminishing returns on diarrhea bouts, but might have hard to account benefits in general mortality. (Actually, my best guess is that they cherry-picked numbers, but the positive theory is also plausible.)
ETA: there's a simple explanation, since the parents seek treatment at the clinics, which is that the parents can tell which bouts are bad. But I think my first two explanations play a role, too.
I'm very suspicious that all these numbers may be dramatic underestimates, ignoring costs like bribing the clinicians or dictators. (I haven't looked at them carefully, so if they do produce numbers based on actual start-to-finish interventions, please tell me.) It would be interesting to know how much it cost outsiders to lean on India's salt industry and get it to add iodine.
+1 for above.
As a separate question, what would you do if you lived in a world where Peter Unger was correct? And what if it was 1 penny instead of 1 dollar and giving the money wouldn't cause other problems? Would you never have a burger for lunch instead of rice since it would mean 100 children would die who could otherwise be saved?
Salt as rehydration therapy?!
People lose electrolytes in their body fluids. If you rehydrate them without replacing the electrolytes, they get hyponatremia.