I don’t think most development economists would endorse the idea that a viable pathway exists for LDCs to escape the poverty trap based on ~$600-800MM/year in EA funding (even assuming you could concentrate all GH&D funding on a single project) and near-zero relevant political influence, either. And those are the resources that GH&D EA has on the table right now in my estimation.
To fund something at even the early stages, one needs either the ability to execute any resulting project or the ability to persuade those who do. The type of projects you’re implying are very likely to require boatloads of cash, widespread and painful-to-some changes in the LDCs, or both. Even conditioned on a consensus within development economics, I am skeptical that EA has that much ability to get Western foreign aid departments and LDC politicians to do what the development economists say they should be doing.
Okay, so why is the faction of EA with ostensibly the most funds the one with “near-zero relevant political influence” while one of the animalist faction’s top projects is creating an animalist movement in East Asia from scratch, and the longtermist faction has the president of RAND? That seems like a choice to divide influence that way in the first place.
I don’t think most development economists would endorse the idea that a viable pathway exists for LDCs to escape the poverty trap based on ~$600-800MM/year in EA funding (even assuming you could concentrate all GH&D funding on a single project) and near-zero relevant political influence, either. And those are the resources that GH&D EA has on the table right now in my estimation.
To fund something at even the early stages, one needs either the ability to execute any resulting project or the ability to persuade those who do. The type of projects you’re implying are very likely to require boatloads of cash, widespread and painful-to-some changes in the LDCs, or both. Even conditioned on a consensus within development economics, I am skeptical that EA has that much ability to get Western foreign aid departments and LDC politicians to do what the development economists say they should be doing.
Okay, so why is the faction of EA with ostensibly the most funds the one with “near-zero relevant political influence” while one of the animalist faction’s top projects is creating an animalist movement in East Asia from scratch, and the longtermist faction has the president of RAND? That seems like a choice to divide influence that way in the first place.