Mass_Driver comments on Efficient Charity - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: taw 06 December 2010 08:34:33PM 6 points [-]

It's cool if you don't care about suffering per se and you do care about economic growth, but honestly I find it hard to even articulate a hypothesis on which

Let me help you with some hypotheses, all of them take place in the real world to some extent, but I have little idea which are important, and which aren't:

  • Governments have less incentive to run deworming campaigns on their own - they know failure will invite aid, and they can spend money they planned for deworming on shiny military hardware and/or Spanish real estate
  • Poor farmers at first have more money, but governments and their absentee landlords soon notice it, and raise taxes and rents, leaving them as miserable as before, all money ending up buying shiny military hardware and/or Spanish real estate
  • Governments become less accountable to taxpayers - and more corrupt - and more to foreign aid organizations - this aid usually comes with strings attached
  • Large inflow of foreign money makes exchange rates less beneficial to local exporters, and as these are usually struggling businesses barely making it, and also one of main drivers of sustainable economic growth, this disruption can be extremely bad
Comment author: Mass_Driver 07 December 2010 07:42:15AM 2 points [-]

Thanks, that's helpful. Feel free to poke me in 2-3 weeks when I've had time to digest this.