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CarlShulman comments on Against Cryonics & For Cost-Effective Charity - Less Wrong
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Rich countries used aid dollars to pressure African countries to stop using DDT. Aid has probably increased the number of poor people who have died from Malaria.
Most of the agricultural improving techs were developed for profit not charity reasons, although dwarf wheat is an important exception that supports your viewpoint.
Eliminating smallpox wasn't really done for chartable reasons, meaning that rich countries had an incentive to be efficient about it. It also caused the USSR to develop smallpox bio-weapons.
Africa's main problem is low economic growth caused mostly by its many "vampire" governments. Aid feeds these vampires and so does create negative effects large enough "to negate the direct lifesaving effects of the best medical aid, e.g. vaccines or malarial bed nets."
I'm not claiming Malthusian factors should dominate moral considerations, just that they need to be taken into account.
Although I can't prove this, I believe that the vast sums of money spent on foreign aid to poor nations have done much to convinced the elite of poor nations that their nations' poverty is caused by unjust distribution of the world's resources not the elites' corruption and stupid economic policies.
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.