I agree that the ‘people counteract your action’ vs ‘people don’t’ axis and the ‘systemic’ vs ‘atomic’ axis are different—but I think that there’s a strong correlation between the two. Of course any intervention could have people working to counteract it, but I think these counter-actions are much more likely for systemic-type interventions.
This is because many systemic interventions have the property that, if a large majority of people agreed the intervention was a good idea, it would be easy to accomplish, or would have already been accomplished. This is at least true of systemic interventions that take the form of advocacy for social/political change in democracies—there might be other significant classes of systemic change to which this argument does not apply though—perhaps those where we think that many of those who disagree with us can be easily persuaded, or forced to comply.
This means that it’s likely to be the case that the systemic interventions that still need doing must be those that have a significant group of people who disagree with us, and it is these people who are likely to counteract. It is hard to think of ways to campaign for removing rich-world agricultural subsidies in a way that is both effective, and does not invoke counteraction. Drug policy reform would also likely provoke counteraction (and by people who will genuinely believe that they, not we, are the altruists).
But non-systemic interventions seem like they would generally be easier to do in ways that avoid counteraction, because they tend to take the form of atomic improvements rather than sweeping change. I don’t think there actually are many, if any, people who will really spend their money attempting to give more people malaria or schistosomiasis as a response to us spending ours the other way.
Having said all this I think this ceiling-cost approach is a very useful one, and systemic changes can be extremely effective. Rather, I just think these are the sorts of reasons that make might make one `suspicious about systemic changes per se.′ as you put it.
I agree that the ‘people counteract your action’ vs ‘people don’t’ axis and the ‘systemic’ vs ‘atomic’ axis are different—but I think that there’s a strong correlation between the two. Of course any intervention could have people working to counteract it, but I think these counter-actions are much more likely for systemic-type interventions.
This is because many systemic interventions have the property that, if a large majority of people agreed the intervention was a good idea, it would be easy to accomplish, or would have already been accomplished. This is at least true of systemic interventions that take the form of advocacy for social/political change in democracies—there might be other significant classes of systemic change to which this argument does not apply though—perhaps those where we think that many of those who disagree with us can be easily persuaded, or forced to comply.
This means that it’s likely to be the case that the systemic interventions that still need doing must be those that have a significant group of people who disagree with us, and it is these people who are likely to counteract. It is hard to think of ways to campaign for removing rich-world agricultural subsidies in a way that is both effective, and does not invoke counteraction. Drug policy reform would also likely provoke counteraction (and by people who will genuinely believe that they, not we, are the altruists).
But non-systemic interventions seem like they would generally be easier to do in ways that avoid counteraction, because they tend to take the form of atomic improvements rather than sweeping change. I don’t think there actually are many, if any, people who will really spend their money attempting to give more people malaria or schistosomiasis as a response to us spending ours the other way.
Having said all this I think this ceiling-cost approach is a very useful one, and systemic changes can be extremely effective. Rather, I just think these are the sorts of reasons that make might make one `suspicious about systemic changes per se.′ as you put it.