I feel like the concept of “neocolonialism” is pointing at some important things, but it’s also fuzzy and maybe muddling the waters a bit on top of that, since it seems to come with some ideological baggage?
In particular, while I haven’t read the texts you’re referring to, it gives me the impression that it might be mixing together some things that are morally bad and preventable, like exploitation/greed and not treating certain groups the way we’d want ourselves to be treated, with things that are bad/unfair features of the world that can only be mitigated to a certain degree,because they reflect some of the very things that are bad about poverty and needing help in the first place. (Concretely: The potential for dependencies to develop when help is given—that’s a negative side-effect that we should try to mitigate, but it’s to some extent inherent to the dynamics of receiving help and it’s not clear it’s a priority to mitigate it down to zero, and it certainly shouldn’t categorically “taint” the help that was given in an absolute way independent of determining that the negative side-effects do in fact outweigh the positives. Or, on the cited demographics, it makes sense that people with less resources and power will find the idea of becoming an EA less appealing, since part of the appeal of EA, to many EAs, was that their personal resources can do an outsized amount of good or go further overseas. Lastly, there are some things about the nature of tradeoffs around effectiveness that will seem “cold and calculating,” but in a way that doesn’t let us draw any conclusions about a lack of care.)
So, I liked that you distilled the bad and preventable things that “neocolonialism” might be pointing to into three concrete questions. I find these questions important and think they point to challenging issues (and it would be surprising if anyone did a perfect job across the board).
However, at the end of your post, you go back to the fuzzy thing (EA not yet being free of “neocolonial dynamics”):
In short: Effective Altruism may be an improvement over traditional philanthropy of the past, but it’s not yet entirely free of neocolonial dynamics either.
Here, I’m not sure to what degree you think this reflects:
(1) serious (“systemic”/”blind spot”) failings of EA (perhaps not in the sense of EA being worse than other groups, but let’s agree that we do want to hold ourselves to high standards);
(2) things that are good/important to improve, but more on the level of dozens other things that would be good to have as well, so not necessarily the cause of a systemic/blind spot issue;
(3) things that may match some of the connotations of “neocolonialism,” but, on reflection, these things don’t imply that EAs should do major things differently, because we disagree that the fuzzy concept “neocolonialism” is a well-suited lens for telling us what to do/avoid.
FWIW, in the abstract I think there most likely many things under (2) and perhaps also there could be something under (1), but my point is that it’s particularly valuable here to be concrete. Your discussion does mention some things (like supporting grassroots work), but these are of the form “one expert critic said we should do this” and it’s not clear how much you think that critic is right, and how much it matters compared to other things we could try to improve.
I feel like the concept of “neocolonialism” is pointing at some important things, but it’s also fuzzy and maybe muddling the waters a bit on top of that, since it seems to come with some ideological baggage?
In particular, while I haven’t read the texts you’re referring to, it gives me the impression that it might be mixing together some things that are morally bad and preventable, like exploitation/greed and not treating certain groups the way we’d want ourselves to be treated, with things that are bad/unfair features of the world that can only be mitigated to a certain degree, because they reflect some of the very things that are bad about poverty and needing help in the first place. (Concretely: The potential for dependencies to develop when help is given—that’s a negative side-effect that we should try to mitigate, but it’s to some extent inherent to the dynamics of receiving help and it’s not clear it’s a priority to mitigate it down to zero, and it certainly shouldn’t categorically “taint” the help that was given in an absolute way independent of determining that the negative side-effects do in fact outweigh the positives. Or, on the cited demographics, it makes sense that people with less resources and power will find the idea of becoming an EA less appealing, since part of the appeal of EA, to many EAs, was that their personal resources can do an outsized amount of good or go further overseas. Lastly, there are some things about the nature of tradeoffs around effectiveness that will seem “cold and calculating,” but in a way that doesn’t let us draw any conclusions about a lack of care.)
So, I liked that you distilled the bad and preventable things that “neocolonialism” might be pointing to into three concrete questions. I find these questions important and think they point to challenging issues (and it would be surprising if anyone did a perfect job across the board).
However, at the end of your post, you go back to the fuzzy thing (EA not yet being free of “neocolonial dynamics”):
Here, I’m not sure to what degree you think this reflects:
(1) serious (“systemic”/”blind spot”) failings of EA (perhaps not in the sense of EA being worse than other groups, but let’s agree that we do want to hold ourselves to high standards);
(2) things that are good/important to improve, but more on the level of dozens other things that would be good to have as well, so not necessarily the cause of a systemic/blind spot issue;
(3) things that may match some of the connotations of “neocolonialism,” but, on reflection, these things don’t imply that EAs should do major things differently, because we disagree that the fuzzy concept “neocolonialism” is a well-suited lens for telling us what to do/avoid.
FWIW, in the abstract I think there most likely many things under (2) and perhaps also there could be something under (1), but my point is that it’s particularly valuable here to be concrete. Your discussion does mention some things (like supporting grassroots work), but these are of the form “one expert critic said we should do this” and it’s not clear how much you think that critic is right, and how much it matters compared to other things we could try to improve.