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Charity Effectiveness and Third-World Economics
In a recent Facebook status update, Eliezer Yudkowsky asked a question:
Does the causal model for GiveDirectly's positive effects imply that the government of those countries could achieve the same effects by printing money in the local currency and giving the same amount to the same recipients? "Yes" is a legitimate answer because it's a dreadful truth that many governments around the world are not increasing their money supply enough, and also that choosing the right recipients can redistribute value productively even when supplies of medium-of-exchange are already sufficient.
My first thought was object-level; the obvious answer is that some fraction of the money given will eventually be converted into imports, transferring the burden of inflation out and onto richer countries which can easily afford it. This seems plausible. If true, it implies that we should multiply our effectiveness estimates by dImports/d$, which is (asspull) 0.5. By this line of reasoning, direct giving is less effective than we thought, but still a reasonably good deal.
My second thought was that it's likely true that some developing country governments could improve their economies by printing and distributing money, but they won't because they're corrupt, and giving directly is a workaround to force that policy upon them. This seems plausible at first, but it feels forced; the leaders' incentives here are ambiguous, not clearly aligned against this sort of policy.
My third thought was that it's likely true that developing countries' governments could improve their economies by printing and distributing money, and they might not know this.
Sanity check. What sort of people do the poorest countries' governments have, in their economic advisory roles? Is anyone making a serious effort to connect good economists with governments that need them?
If developing countries are short on competent economic advisors at the top levels, and no one is working to fix this, then funding that charity would outperform direct giving by multiple orders of magnitude. But what reason do we have to think that a well-placed economist can make a difference? Well, history does contain at least one big, salient success story: Brazil, where a clever scheme halted hyperinflation and turned the economy around. And on a smaller scale, Otjivero-Namibia.
So now I have some questions for the efficient altruism community:
- Which developing nations have competent economic advisors, and which ones need them?
- If a developing nation's leader needs good economic advisors to fill his/her cabinet, does he/she get them?
- Do any nations have economic problems that seem especially amenable to fixing by clever economists?
Meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups recur on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148.
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups recur on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148.
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
Meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups recur on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148.
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge First-Sunday Meetup
Meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148. Room number subject to change based on availability, signs will be posted with the actual room number.
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sunday meetup
Meetup : Cambridge, MA first-Sunday meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA first-Sunday meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148.
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA first-Sunday meetup
Meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sundays meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sundays meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148. Room number subject to change based on availability, signs will be posted with the actual room number.
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA third-Sundays meetup
Meetup : Cambridge, MA Sunday meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Sunday meetup
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups recur on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66].
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Sunday meetup
Less Wrong Polls in Comments
You can now write Less Wrong comments that contain polls! John Simon picked up and finished some code I had written back in 2010 but never finished, and our admins Wesley Moore and Matt Fallshaw have deployed it. You can use it right now, so let's give it some testing here in this thread.
The polls work through the existing Markdown comment formatting, similar to the syntax used for links. Full documentation is in the wiki; the short version is that you can write comments like this:
What is your favorite color? [poll]{Red}{Green}{Blue}{Other}
How long has it been your favorite color, in years? [poll:number]
Red is a nice color [poll:Agree....Disagree]
Will your favorite color change? [poll:probability]
To see the results of the poll, you have to vote (you can leave questions blank if you want). The results include a link to the raw poll data, including the usernames of people who submitted votes with the "Vote anonymously" box unchecked. After you submit the comment, if you go back and edit your comment all those poll tags will have turned into Error: Poll belongs to a different comment. You can edit the rest of the comment without resetting the poll, but you can't change the options.
It works right now, but it's also new and could be buggy. Let's give it some testing; what have you always wanted to know about Less Wrongers?
Meetup : Cambridge, MA Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA Meetup
The usual schedule is to have meetups on the first and third Sundays of each month, but some cool Less Wrongers are in town who've been away for awhile, so let's also have one tomorrow! (Sunday the 22nd). The usual time and place (2:00pm, 25 Ames St, Cambridge, room number posted at the entrance based on availability). No formal agenda, just socializing and intellectual conversations.
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