In my experience, an extremely common lay objection to GiveDirectly is something along the lines of, “Won’t recipients waste the money on alcohol/drugs/tobacco/luxuries/etc.?”, with a second-tier objection of, “Won’t cash transfers cause inflation/conflict/dependence/etc.?”.
I think both these questions have been pretty well addressed by the research, but those who are not aware of (or do not trust) that research are, I think, pretty likely to believe that cash transfers are neutral or harmful.
The second objection does sound like saying it is harmful, thanks!
The first one is more mixed. My interpretation has always been that people were saying they didn’t think it was very useful, not that it was harmful: I doubt the person making the objection thinks that all of the money will go to buy luxuries, and if some of the money goes to buy valuable things and some of it goes to buy luxuries that are essentially morally neutral then the effect is less positive than if it all went to buy valuable things. But maybe they think that providing luxuries is actually harmful, and not just neutral? (Which, conditional on thinking they spend lots of the money on drugs and alcohol, it could easily be, since it’s funding people to buy addictive drugs they won’t be able to continue consuming.)
In my experience, an extremely common lay objection to GiveDirectly is something along the lines of, “Won’t recipients waste the money on alcohol/drugs/tobacco/luxuries/etc.?”, with a second-tier objection of, “Won’t cash transfers cause inflation/conflict/dependence/etc.?”.
I think both these questions have been pretty well addressed by the research, but those who are not aware of (or do not trust) that research are, I think, pretty likely to believe that cash transfers are neutral or harmful.
The second objection does sound like saying it is harmful, thanks!
The first one is more mixed. My interpretation has always been that people were saying they didn’t think it was very useful, not that it was harmful: I doubt the person making the objection thinks that all of the money will go to buy luxuries, and if some of the money goes to buy valuable things and some of it goes to buy luxuries that are essentially morally neutral then the effect is less positive than if it all went to buy valuable things. But maybe they think that providing luxuries is actually harmful, and not just neutral? (Which, conditional on thinking they spend lots of the money on drugs and alcohol, it could easily be, since it’s funding people to buy addictive drugs they won’t be able to continue consuming.)