Ok prohibition didn’t work but I don’t think we know of alcohol and tobacco taxes etc are having good or ill effects.
I agree the overall shares look ok on DRC spending but that doesn’t tell the whole story obviously. According to a quick Wikipedia dig and my memory of reading DRC is known for tremendous corruption.
Another data point against “locals know there own interests best”?:
The 2013–2014 DHS survey (pp. 299) found that 74.8% of women agreed that a husband is justified in beating his wife in certain circumstances.
On this point:
Turning it around, if we think the DRC government, health administrators, doctors and nurses make bad spending decisions then that seems like a much better opportunity to improve things.
What intervention/opportunity would you propose to address this?
I don’t have a specific intervention/opportunity in mind for the scenario where health spending is broken.
I’m reminded of a survey of several poor countries which revealed many were not following best practice for treating complications in pregnancy and childbirth despite the treatments being cheap and well-known. Digging into it showed there wasn’t a single reason for this, so no single intervention would change things everywhere.
If the underlying reality is locals make bad choices, as normal individuals and health practitioners and policiticians, I don’t think distributing nets for free is going to make much difference. The moral argument for intervening seems to be a lot weaker too. In that set-up we have replaced Singer’s drowning child with an adult who refuses swimming lessons and ignores all advice to stay out of the water.
Ok prohibition didn’t work but I don’t think we know of alcohol and tobacco taxes etc are having good or ill effects.
I agree the overall shares look ok on DRC spending but that doesn’t tell the whole story obviously. According to a quick Wikipedia dig and my memory of reading DRC is known for tremendous corruption.
Another data point against “locals know there own interests best”?:
On this point:
What intervention/opportunity would you propose to address this?
I don’t have a specific intervention/opportunity in mind for the scenario where health spending is broken.
I’m reminded of a survey of several poor countries which revealed many were not following best practice for treating complications in pregnancy and childbirth despite the treatments being cheap and well-known. Digging into it showed there wasn’t a single reason for this, so no single intervention would change things everywhere.
If the underlying reality is locals make bad choices, as normal individuals and health practitioners and policiticians, I don’t think distributing nets for free is going to make much difference. The moral argument for intervening seems to be a lot weaker too. In that set-up we have replaced Singer’s drowning child with an adult who refuses swimming lessons and ignores all advice to stay out of the water.