Most of the interventions from Pure Earth is political, right? So I’d guess that #4 is correct. I think it should be relatively straightforward why rational selfish actors are not incentivized to make political interventions for their own interests:
Suppose you have V voters. As V increases, the total benefit of a good political intervention grows proportionally.
However, the benefit to each voter for the intervention succeeding remains constant, regardless of V.
The probability of an individual vote changing the outcome decreases as V increases (roughly 1/V).
From a selfish standpoint, as V grows larger, the incentive for an individual to be well-informed decreases.
Sure, there is an intuitive plausibility to this. But how extraordinary must the political dysfunction be for no one within Bangladesh to be capable of solving this themselves through political agitation without NGO support? If the DALY calculations are to be believed, the potential gains are enormous and comparatively cheap. As an outsider to the situation, I am looking for context on why this hasn’t happened yet. A good theory in the social sciences will abstract from specifics of the situation, or map a theory onto specific things that have happened (or that haven’t), rather than making the general observation that collective action problems cause some public goods to be underprovisioned.
Hmm I guess I wouldn’t be that surprised if we observed similar levels of what you call “dysfunction” in the US. Earlier you asked:
Framed differently, what would it take for you to accept the same thing for yourself—that an organization is hundreds of times better at helping you than you are at helping yourself?
I guess the intuitive plausibility of this is rather low (or perhaps I have an overly high opinion of myself) if the problem is framed as one of my own rationality, but I can much more easily buy that there are collective action problems that benefit “people like me” at >100x the costs.
Most of the interventions from Pure Earth is political, right? So I’d guess that #4 is correct. I think it should be relatively straightforward why rational selfish actors are not incentivized to make political interventions for their own interests:
Suppose you have V voters. As V increases, the total benefit of a good political intervention grows proportionally.
However, the benefit to each voter for the intervention succeeding remains constant, regardless of V.
The probability of an individual vote changing the outcome decreases as V increases (roughly 1/V).
From a selfish standpoint, as V grows larger, the incentive for an individual to be well-informed decreases.
Sure, there is an intuitive plausibility to this. But how extraordinary must the political dysfunction be for no one within Bangladesh to be capable of solving this themselves through political agitation without NGO support? If the DALY calculations are to be believed, the potential gains are enormous and comparatively cheap. As an outsider to the situation, I am looking for context on why this hasn’t happened yet. A good theory in the social sciences will abstract from specifics of the situation, or map a theory onto specific things that have happened (or that haven’t), rather than making the general observation that collective action problems cause some public goods to be underprovisioned.
You might find this article helpful for context: https://undark.org/2023/07/19/the-vice-of-spice-confronting-lead-tainted-turmeric/
Fwiw I’m sympathetic to your general point
Thanks, I think this was featured on Marginal Revolution last year — definitely good background.
Hmm I guess I wouldn’t be that surprised if we observed similar levels of what you call “dysfunction” in the US. Earlier you asked:
I guess the intuitive plausibility of this is rather low (or perhaps I have an overly high opinion of myself) if the problem is framed as one of my own rationality, but I can much more easily buy that there are collective action problems that benefit “people like me” at >100x the costs.