It seems that part of the reason communism is so widely discredited is the clear contrast between neighboring countries that pursued more free-market policies. This makes me wonder— practicality aside, what would happen if effective altruists concentrated all their global health and development efforts into a single country, using similar neighboring countries as the comparison group?
Given that EA-driven philanthropy accounts for only about 0.02% of total global aid, perhaps the influence EA’s approach could have by definitively proving its impact would be greater than trying to maximise the good it does directly.
This is a really interesting idea and would obviously need a relatively uncorrupt country that is on board with the project.
To some extent this kind of thing already happens, with aid organisations focusing their funding on countries which use it well. Rwanda is an interesting example of this over the last 20 years as they have attracted huge foreign funding after their dictator basically fixed low level corruption and organized the country surprisingly well. This has led to dis proportionate improvements in healthcare and education compared with surrounding countries, although economically the jury is still out.
The big problem in my eyes then is how do you know it’s your interventions baking the difference, rather than just really good governance—very hard to tease apart.
Superficially, it sounds similar to the idea of charter cities. The idea does seem (at face value) to have some merit, but I suspect that the execution of the idea is where lots of problems occur.
So, practically aside, it seems like a massive amount of effort/investment/funding would allow a small country to progress rapidly toward less suffering and better life.
My general impression is that “we don’t have a randomized control trial to prove the efficacy of this intervention” isn’t the most common reason why people don’t get helped. Maybe some combination of lack of resources, politics & entrenched interests, and trade-offs are the big ones? I don’t know, but I’m sure some folks around here have research papers and textbooks about it.
Feels unlikely either that it would create an actually valid natural experiment (as you acknowledge, it’s not a huge proportion of aid, and there are a lot of other factors that affect a country) or persuade people to do aid differently.
Particularly when EA’s GHD programmes tend to be already focused on stuff which is well-evidenced at a granular level (malaria cures and vitamin supplementation) and targeted at specific countries with those problems (not all developing countries have malaria), by organizations that are not necessarily themselves EA, and a lot of non-EA funders are also trying to solve those problems in similar or identical ways.
Also feels like it would be a poor decision for, say, a Charity Entrepreneurship founder trying to solve a problem she identified as one she could make a major difference with based on her extensive knowledge of poverty in India deciding to try the programme in a potentially different Guinean context she doesn’t have the same background understanding of simply because other EAs happened to have diverted funding to Guinea for signalling purposes.
It seems that part of the reason communism is so widely discredited is the clear contrast between neighboring countries that pursued more free-market policies. This makes me wonder— practicality aside, what would happen if effective altruists concentrated all their global health and development efforts into a single country, using similar neighboring countries as the comparison group?
Given that EA-driven philanthropy accounts for only about 0.02% of total global aid, perhaps the influence EA’s approach could have by definitively proving its impact would be greater than trying to maximise the good it does directly.
This is a really interesting idea and would obviously need a relatively uncorrupt country that is on board with the project.
To some extent this kind of thing already happens, with aid organisations focusing their funding on countries which use it well. Rwanda is an interesting example of this over the last 20 years as they have attracted huge foreign funding after their dictator basically fixed low level corruption and organized the country surprisingly well. This has led to dis proportionate improvements in healthcare and education compared with surrounding countries, although economically the jury is still out.
The big problem in my eyes then is how do you know it’s your interventions baking the difference, rather than just really good governance—very hard to tease apart.
Superficially, it sounds similar to the idea of charter cities. The idea does seem (at face value) to have some merit, but I suspect that the execution of the idea is where lots of problems occur.
So, practically aside, it seems like a massive amount of effort/investment/funding would allow a small country to progress rapidly toward less suffering and better life.
My general impression is that “we don’t have a randomized control trial to prove the efficacy of this intervention” isn’t the most common reason why people don’t get helped. Maybe some combination of lack of resources, politics & entrenched interests, and trade-offs are the big ones? I don’t know, but I’m sure some folks around here have research papers and textbooks about it.
Feels unlikely either that it would create an actually valid natural experiment (as you acknowledge, it’s not a huge proportion of aid, and there are a lot of other factors that affect a country) or persuade people to do aid differently.
Particularly when EA’s GHD programmes tend to be already focused on stuff which is well-evidenced at a granular level (malaria cures and vitamin supplementation) and targeted at specific countries with those problems (not all developing countries have malaria), by organizations that are not necessarily themselves EA, and a lot of non-EA funders are also trying to solve those problems in similar or identical ways.
Also feels like it would be a poor decision for, say, a Charity Entrepreneurship founder trying to solve a problem she identified as one she could make a major difference with based on her extensive knowledge of poverty in India deciding to try the programme in a potentially different Guinean context she doesn’t have the same background understanding of simply because other EAs happened to have diverted funding to Guinea for signalling purposes.