It’s hard to predict exactly where and when the urgent need happens. There’s many regions and countries that will suffer from famine. Their degree of suffering and need is uncertain and exquisitely dependent on local factors, so it’s easy to misallocate aid (compared to a more longterm, chronic problem that can be approached more slowly).
Timing and limited window of need limits the “envelope” of raw cost effectiveness. By definition (but sadly many are sort of ongoing) emergencies last for only a short time. Because of the investment and planning required, it’s not possible to create a very cost effective aid infrastructure in a short time, and even if you did, ultimately much of this investment will be wasted because of the limited duration.
So these limit “raw cost effectiveness”, maybe by a large factor.
Another issue is that interventions can be miscarried with negative effects. One example is dumping a lot of food in a way that destroys local farmers.
These are theoretical considerations about acting in emergencies. This isn’t an argument against food aid or mean that they are less effective than bed nets.
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.
It seems like there are some considerations:
It’s hard to predict exactly where and when the urgent need happens. There’s many regions and countries that will suffer from famine. Their degree of suffering and need is uncertain and exquisitely dependent on local factors, so it’s easy to misallocate aid (compared to a more longterm, chronic problem that can be approached more slowly).
Timing and limited window of need limits the “envelope” of raw cost effectiveness. By definition (but sadly many are sort of ongoing) emergencies last for only a short time. Because of the investment and planning required, it’s not possible to create a very cost effective aid infrastructure in a short time, and even if you did, ultimately much of this investment will be wasted because of the limited duration.
So these limit “raw cost effectiveness”, maybe by a large factor.
Another issue is that interventions can be miscarried with negative effects. One example is dumping a lot of food in a way that destroys local farmers.
These are theoretical considerations about acting in emergencies. This isn’t an argument against food aid or mean that they are less effective than bed nets.
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.