= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
multifoliaterose comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (182)
Are there any really good reasons for this kind of charity (throwing money at some highly specific problem affecting some very poor people without changing anything about the system), as opposed to paying for vastly underfunded highly scalable public goods such as wikileaks, wikipedia, or even GiveWell for that matter?
In the world we currently live in, nearly all "poor" people are reasonably well off by historical standards, with their standards of living extremely rapidly improving anyway. Global inequality is far below historical peak as well.
I like what GiveWell does on the margin, but we'll run out of abjectly poor people outside warzones (like DRC, Afghanistan) or disaster zones (like Haiti) before they get good at what they're doing.
To give you some perspective, take a look at this map. You see those black areas? They still live longer, are better nourished, better educated, and better off in every possible sense than world average just a century ago and very rapidly improving.
Upvoted.
Recall the purpose of the present article. See JGWeissman's comment. Explicitly citing tangible charities with easily measurable output is useful for discussing of effective philanthropy with people who have not thought about the topic.
I'm not at all committed to a particular cause and could easily imagine the cost-effectiveness of such highly scalable public goods being much greater. As I say above:
My present interest in VillageReach over charities working in other causes is about incentive effects. VillageReach has a strong case for being outstanding at what it does and a strong case for room for more funding. I think that funding such a charity sends a message to the philanthropic world that such charities will be rewarded and produces a good incentive effect. As I said elsewhere
I would welcome any suggestions here. It seems like there might be an issue of the intended signal to the philanthropic world being misinterpreted on account of GiveWell's (brief) history of focus on charities engaged in projects with highly tangible and measurable impact.