I feel I have to start this comment with the caveat that I stand with Ukraine.
I don’t think this is a project for effective altruism for two main reasons. First, this is a highly funded area with people donating already. The World Bank has pledged billions with $350 million being sent this week. Nations are sending supplies. Musk has provided internet access. Regular people are donating money to people. What benefit is there to add additional funds in the order of perhaps millions? This could be spent in a much more productive manner. Secondly, with a rational hat on, I don’t know if extending this war is good long term. Putin has mentioned nuclear weapons, however slim the reality of that threat may be, so the thing we should be focusing on is de-escalation not escalation through funding. I’d need to be seriously persuaded that the benefit of supporting Ukraine to prolong this war is greater than the risk of Russia moving closer to nuclear war with the West.
I agree with your first point here. Looks like various nations have already committed military aid on the order of $2B to Ukraine, plus quite a lot of in-kind donations of military equipment. I’m very unsure about how elastic the supply of military equipment is at the current margin. Is it really the case that there are military supplies available that Ukraine would purchase but for lack of funds? That would surprise me.
It reminds me a bit of the early Covid days when everyone wanted to purchase PPE, but supply was bottlenecked, so donations increased prices and changed the distribution of who received the available supply.
I feel I have to start this comment with the caveat that I stand with Ukraine.
I don’t think this is a project for effective altruism for two main reasons. First, this is a highly funded area with people donating already. The World Bank has pledged billions with $350 million being sent this week. Nations are sending supplies. Musk has provided internet access. Regular people are donating money to people. What benefit is there to add additional funds in the order of perhaps millions? This could be spent in a much more productive manner. Secondly, with a rational hat on, I don’t know if extending this war is good long term. Putin has mentioned nuclear weapons, however slim the reality of that threat may be, so the thing we should be focusing on is de-escalation not escalation through funding. I’d need to be seriously persuaded that the benefit of supporting Ukraine to prolong this war is greater than the risk of Russia moving closer to nuclear war with the West.
I agree with your first point here. Looks like various nations have already committed military aid on the order of $2B to Ukraine, plus quite a lot of in-kind donations of military equipment. I’m very unsure about how elastic the supply of military equipment is at the current margin. Is it really the case that there are military supplies available that Ukraine would purchase but for lack of funds? That would surprise me.
It reminds me a bit of the early Covid days when everyone wanted to purchase PPE, but supply was bottlenecked, so donations increased prices and changed the distribution of who received the available supply.