The academic fields most relevant to GH&D work are fairly mature. Because of that, it’s reasonable for GH&D to focus less on producing stuff that is more like basic research / theory generation (academia is often strong in this and had a big head start) and devote its resources more toward setting up a tractable implementation of something (which is often not academia’s comparative advantage for various reasons).
GH&D also has a clearly successful baseline with near-infinite room for more funding, and so more speculative projects need to clear that baseline before they become viable. You haven’t identified any specific proposed area to study, but my suspicion is that most of them would require sustained political commitment over many years in the LDC and/or large cash infusions beyond the bankroll of EA GH&D to potentially work.
GH&D also has a clearly successful baseline with near-infinite room for more funding, and so more speculative projects need to clear that baseline before they become viable.
Again, that is exactly what I am calling “constantly retreading the streetlight-illuminated ground”. I do not think most institutional development economists would endorse the idea that LDCs can escape the poverty trap through short-term health interventions alone.
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.
The academic fields most relevant to GH&D work are fairly mature. Because of that, it’s reasonable for GH&D to focus less on producing stuff that is more like basic research / theory generation (academia is often strong in this and had a big head start) and devote its resources more toward setting up a tractable implementation of something (which is often not academia’s comparative advantage for various reasons).
GH&D also has a clearly successful baseline with near-infinite room for more funding, and so more speculative projects need to clear that baseline before they become viable. You haven’t identified any specific proposed area to study, but my suspicion is that most of them would require sustained political commitment over many years in the LDC and/or large cash infusions beyond the bankroll of EA GH&D to potentially work.
Again, that is exactly what I am calling “constantly retreading the streetlight-illuminated ground”. I do not think most institutional development economists would endorse the idea that LDCs can escape the poverty trap through short-term health interventions alone.
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.