All of Michael Simm's Comments + Replies

We need to take a bit of a step back here. I am just as keen as you are to get good unbiased data that can be relied upon to know precisely how impactful cash transfers - and other interventions - are at helping people. And I'd like to acknowledge that you're correct that we should not rely solely on unchecked survey data when trying to figure out impact results.

So I did a bit of a deep dive into meta-analyses and systematic reviews of cash transfer studies. It turns out that while surveys are generally one part of the data collected, researchers have been... (read more)

Our organization is not big enough to hire a statistician, although we will for sure get one when we are able to build a sufficiently large study / program. I'd be happy to refer you to the people that do have a ton of statisticians: 

https://www.givedirectly.org/research-at-give-directly/

https://basicincome.stanford.edu/research/ubi-visualization/

https://www.penncgir.org/research

Let's use a different analogy. Let's say that you are in exactly the same situation you are in right now, and some random organization decided to start giving you $1,000 check... (read more)

Good thing I'm not particularly interested in being a charity, I'm interested in building a tool for funders and fundraisers that maximizes their impact against poverty. So bring on the criticism.

That said, I think you're being excessively negative towards surveys in general. There are two primary reason why surveys are (seemingly) the only way to go about getting decent data, and not nearly as unreliable as you're suggesting.

1. I can't think of another way to go about collecting more accurate & less biased information. The only way 100% know exactly what

I do not agree that hospital visits and incarceration statistics, (although I'd love to have those numbers), are foundational to measuring the impactfulness of a homeless intervention:

Overwhelming demographic data as well as medical analysis make it evident that living on the streets directly accounts for most, though not all, of the massive mortality rate increase. There is a causal relationship between living on the streets and high death rates, especially in Arizona due to the high summer heat.

I'd be happy to hear why you might disagree, but I beli... (read more)

Those people are trying to persuade the whole public at first and then moving. With this apporoach we first move and then show it was a good thing. Sure need to get funders on board but private money pushing ahead of public policy is a "shoot first, ask permission later" approach.

You're pretty much right. I started my journey writing about UBI policy and its potential to improve society, but I got fed up with politics. I do think the danger isn't quite as bad at first. We basically have permission to 'shoot' because guaranteed income pilots are very common... (read more)

Thanks for reading this 30-minute thing. I first wanted to make a short 5-minute read but I realized that many of you would probably really want all of the evidence laid out clearly, and our plan explained in excruciating detail. - so you can point out the super obvious reason why this has a 0% chance of success, that I've completely overlooked  -  despite my search for fundamental issues since I came up with the idea, and asking all of the experts I can find. 

The EA community is probably the most knowledgeable community in the world about h... (read more)

Taking out at scale the most extractive labour globally will both do a lot of good and draw the ire of the most aggressive economic players. Making a chair taller by chopping of a leg for building materials is not a repeatable strategy. One may not like what is going on in the kitchen, but serving unprocessed ingredients will improve nutrition and will drive down patreonage.

I think I'm missing your point. UBI is a long way off, but there are a lot of (mostly economic theory) writings about how guaranteed income at a large scale would drastically shift powe... (read more)

First, thank you for your rigor in analyzing the homelessness part of the post! I most certainly agree with you that cash transfers - explicitly relating to homeless individuals - need more studies and more rigorous RTCs from independent sources. 

According to surveys given to the participants. Even if you tell them that the payments aren't contingent on positive results, they don't necessarily believe you. And even if they do, they'll still feel obliged to give you the results you're after. This is a commonly known effect in psychology and sociology,

I think at first, definitely not. I see it playing out like this: 

1. While other forms of assistance are going about things like normal, someone (us) builds a big enough guaranteed income program to provide half or most of the homeless population in an area with guaranteed income.
2. When that program happens, hopefully, most homeless people attain far better situations within a year, and the existing assistance services find themselves with more resources available to assist fewer people (the ones in highly bad mental states/addiction).
3. Using guaranteed inco

So we've got two major types of guaranteed income experiments, those on homeless individuals, and those on the general (impoverished) public.

I agree with you that the New Leaf Project experiment (that I cited quite a bit) was quite positive, and also that the problem is still getting worse. Although It's important to note that that experiment only had 115 participants, so it covered only a drop in the bucket. 

The real question is, "If guaranteed income was scaled up to cover the entire population in homelessness or in danger of becoming homeless, woul... (read more)

to be successful one would need to guarantee UBI to everyone, without means testing, for credibly unlimited duration, linked to a reasonable index to protect against inflation.

I would like to see a reason stated for any of these assertions. We're not doing UBI, or unlimited durations (at first at least). We also will be forced to do some means testing because of IRS limitations on 501(c)(3)s, but it will be only a 30-minute application. Our initial experiments will not be indexed to inflation because we still need to figure out the optimal amount to help p... (read more)

Thanks for the comment! I also do not think cash will be more effective for - every - impoverished person. I do think, however, that most are a lot closer to almost all with the only exceptions being people that are suffering from extreme drug addiction and/or mental illness. Actually, there's some spotty evidence (we need a good RTC study on this) that cash transfers could actually be a cost-effective way to reduce drug usage. (check out Simon, a case study who was a 20-year homeless heroin addict).

individuals come and go from populations, and there's a t