I don’t think it’s normally useful to preemptively direct aid because of the predictability issues you point out (coming famines being an exception). My point is more that there is a large value to quickly reacting to emergencies that we will miss if we only focus on systemic issues.
Aid infrastructure costs are a valid point, and that pushes the limit of how useful my point is as an abstract claim. I imagine that in many emergencies, a sufficiently effective infrastructure already exists and can be augmented if people put in a lot of effort (again leaning on the India COVID emergency example). But that’s just my imagination and could definitely be wrong.
I don’t think it’s normally useful to preemptively direct aid because of the predictability issues you point out (coming famines being an exception). My point is more that there is a large value to quickly reacting to emergencies that we will miss if we only focus on systemic issues.
Aid infrastructure costs are a valid point, and that pushes the limit of how useful my point is as an abstract claim. I imagine that in many emergencies, a sufficiently effective infrastructure already exists and can be augmented if people put in a lot of effort (again leaning on the India COVID emergency example). But that’s just my imagination and could definitely be wrong.