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utilitymonster comments on The Effectiveness of Developing World Aid - Less Wrong
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On this point, it is noteworthy that international health aid eliminated small pox. According to Toby Ord, it is estimated that this has prevented over 100 million deaths, which is more than the total number of people that died in all wars in the 20th century. If you assumed that all of the rest of international health aid achieved nothing at all, this single effort would make the average number of dollars per DALY achieved by international health aid better than what the British Government achieves.
You can always pick a reference class which supports any conclusion you want.
You could just as plausibly claim that international aid mostly propped up various third world dictators and fueled local wars (no matter what "aid money" was for, government could always shift money it would otherwise need to spend on that area into buying weapons or beating up dissidents instead), leading to economic and civilizational stagnation, and over 100 million deaths which would otherwise not have happened.
Or you could categorize reality into reference classes any other way.