Thanks again Matt. Yes, negative externalities could be a helpful way to think about at least some of those six challenges.
To your question, in the short term I wouldn’t advise individual small donors to change their behaviour. In absence of a coordinated effort to improve donor harmonisation, I support giving based on cost-effectiveness principles and my intuition is not that this kind of giving is a net harm. Our pitch is perhaps to global health institutions—including EA orgs like GiveWell and Open Phil—that we could do better. We don’t yet have the institutions that would allow individuals to support the kind approach we outline (essentially TA + harmonised support to marginal services), but perhaps that’s something we need… Of course that’s a trickier sell but I’m sure some smart strategic comms folk could help.
Thanks again Matt. Yes, negative externalities could be a helpful way to think about at least some of those six challenges.
To your question, in the short term I wouldn’t advise individual small donors to change their behaviour. In absence of a coordinated effort to improve donor harmonisation, I support giving based on cost-effectiveness principles and my intuition is not that this kind of giving is a net harm. Our pitch is perhaps to global health institutions—including EA orgs like GiveWell and Open Phil—that we could do better. We don’t yet have the institutions that would allow individuals to support the kind approach we outline (essentially TA + harmonised support to marginal services), but perhaps that’s something we need… Of course that’s a trickier sell but I’m sure some smart strategic comms folk could help.