(When I say ‘we’ I mean ‘me, if I had control over the EA community’. This is just my view, and the actual reasons behind funding decisions are probably somewhat different)
Well, I’m not sure about the numbers but I’d say a pretty substantial percentage of EA funding and donations is going to GiveWell-style global health initiatives. So it’s not like we are ignoring the plight of people right now.
The reason why there is more money that we can spend is that we don’t know a lof of effective interventions to reduce say, pandemic risk, which scale well with more money.
We could just spend all that money on interventions that might help, like trying to develop broad spectrum antivirals, but it’s legitimately a hard problem and it’s likely that we would end up with no more money to spend without having solved anything.
Going back to improving equity, the three people you mentioned (rohingya, yemeni, afghan) are victims of war and persecution. The root causes of their suffering are political. We could spend hundreds of billions trying to improve their political system so that this does not happen again, but Afghanistan itself is an example of just how hard that is.
In short, even though helping people now is very valuable, we also don’t know a lot of interventions that scale well with money. Malaria nets and deworming are the exception, not the rule. Remember that the entire world has been trying to eliminate poverty for centuries. It’s just a hard problem.
Maybe paying for vaccines in lower income countries is an effective and scalable intervention. The right way to evaluate this is with a cost-benefit analysis, not by how much money the WHO says it needs.
Yes, I agree on the point that interventions are best assessed with cost-benefit analysis, rather than propping up inefficient institutions. I was not necessarily suggesting support for WHO, only indicating that the purported leader in global health is spending more time fundraising than leading.
I, perhaps mistakenly, thought EA, particularly Open Phil, was about funding high risk, low yield, but fat tail causes, vs the “sure thing” that Give Well funds.
For pandemic risk, what about funding campaigns to back the TRIPs waiver proposal for all pandemic vaccines?
For people of conflict-affected countries, what about supporting impartial organizations which can access people in need? Advocate for impartial access? The latter would scale well, if effective, because the entire southern Afghanistan is unvaccinated against every childhood disease, not just COVID.
I agree with you, when the root cause of suffering is political, the solution is complicated, and improving the political system would be costly and ineffective. This is why I think the creativity of the EA community could be so beneficial, by seeking other solutions.
(When I say ‘we’ I mean ‘me, if I had control over the EA community’. This is just my view, and the actual reasons behind funding decisions are probably somewhat different)
Well, I’m not sure about the numbers but I’d say a pretty substantial percentage of EA funding and donations is going to GiveWell-style global health initiatives. So it’s not like we are ignoring the plight of people right now.
The reason why there is more money that we can spend is that we don’t know a lof of effective interventions to reduce say, pandemic risk, which scale well with more money.
We could just spend all that money on interventions that might help, like trying to develop broad spectrum antivirals, but it’s legitimately a hard problem and it’s likely that we would end up with no more money to spend without having solved anything.
Going back to improving equity, the three people you mentioned (rohingya, yemeni, afghan) are victims of war and persecution. The root causes of their suffering are political. We could spend hundreds of billions trying to improve their political system so that this does not happen again, but Afghanistan itself is an example of just how hard that is.
In short, even though helping people now is very valuable, we also don’t know a lot of interventions that scale well with money. Malaria nets and deworming are the exception, not the rule. Remember that the entire world has been trying to eliminate poverty for centuries. It’s just a hard problem.
Maybe paying for vaccines in lower income countries is an effective and scalable intervention. The right way to evaluate this is with a cost-benefit analysis, not by how much money the WHO says it needs.
Yes, I agree on the point that interventions are best assessed with cost-benefit analysis, rather than propping up inefficient institutions. I was not necessarily suggesting support for WHO, only indicating that the purported leader in global health is spending more time fundraising than leading.
I, perhaps mistakenly, thought EA, particularly Open Phil, was about funding high risk, low yield, but fat tail causes, vs the “sure thing” that Give Well funds.
For pandemic risk, what about funding campaigns to back the TRIPs waiver proposal for all pandemic vaccines?
For people of conflict-affected countries, what about supporting impartial organizations which can access people in need? Advocate for impartial access? The latter would scale well, if effective, because the entire southern Afghanistan is unvaccinated against every childhood disease, not just COVID.
I agree with you, when the root cause of suffering is political, the solution is complicated, and improving the political system would be costly and ineffective. This is why I think the creativity of the EA community could be so beneficial, by seeking other solutions.