jimrandomh comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong

31 Post author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 10:27AM

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Comment author: FormallyknownasRoko 04 December 2010 11:31:50PM *  1 point [-]

Giving dollars to China is precisely what we are already doing. China has bazillions of $ lying in their soveriegn wealth funds and foriegn currency reserves.

But some people have argued that the most important thing we give to china is not dollar notes, but a market for their goods.

So maybe the answer is to just go out and spend money on consumer goods.

Or, to put it another way, that the global economy is a self-organizing system which solves these problems automatically as long as the rule of law and enforcement of contracts is upheld.

Perhaps western countries should consider re-colonizing Africa in order to get those institutions working stably and then let the economy do the rest?

Comment author: jimrandomh 05 December 2010 01:27:13AM 1 point [-]

But some people have argued that the most important thing we give to china is not dollar notes, but a market for their goods.

I think this is much less important than the other thing we give them: manufacturing specifications for all the goods we want them to make for us. If it was a market they wanted, the Chinese government could just allocate more money to the lower classes, and they'd have one.