Cause Prioritization. Does It Ignore Political and Social Reality?
People should be factoring in the risk of waste, fraud, or mismanagement, as well as the risk of adverse leadership changes, into their cost-effectiveness estimates. That being said, these kinds of risks exist for most potential altruistic projects one could envision. If the magnitude of the risk (and the consequences of the fraud etc.) are similar between the projects one is considering, then it’s unlikely that consideration of this risk will affect one’s conclusion.
EA says encourages donations where impact is highest, which often means low income countries. But what happens when you live in one of those countries? Should I still prioritize problems elsewhere?
I think this is undertheorized in part because EA developed in, and remains focused on, high-income countries. It also developed in a very individualistic culture.
EA implicitly tells at least some members of the global top 1% that its OK to stay rich as long as they give a meaningful amount of their income away. If it’s OK for me to keep ~90% of my income for myself and my family, then it’s hard for me to see how it wouldn’t be OK for a lower-income community to keep virtually all of its resources for itself. So given that, I’d be pretty uncomfortable with there being a “EA party line” that moderately low-income communities should send any meaningful amount of their money away to even lower-income communities.
Maybe one could see people in lower-income areas giving money to even lower-income areas as behaving in a supererogatory fashion?
I would generally read EA materials through a lens of the main target audience being relatively well-off people in developed countries. That audience generally isn’t going to have local knowledge of (often) smaller-scale, highly effective things to do in a lower-income country. Moreover, it’s often not cost-effective to evaluate smaller projects thoroughly enough to recommend them over the tried-and-true projects that can absorb millions in funding. You, however, might have that kind of knowledge!
Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom) says that well-being isn’t just about cost-effectiveness, it’s about giving people the capability to sustain improvements in their lives. That makes me wonder: Are EA cause priorities too detached from local realities? Shouldn’t people closest to a problem have more say in solving it?
I think that’s a fair question. However, in current EA global health & development work, the primary intended beneficiaries of classic GiveWell-style work are children under age 5 who are at risk of dying from malaria or other illnesses. Someone else has to speak for them as a class, and I don’t think toddlers can have well-being in the broader sense you describe. Moreover, the classic EA GH&D program is pretty narrow—such as a few dollars for a bednet—so EA efforts generally cause only a very small fraction of all resources spent on the child beneficiary’s welfare to have low local control.
All that makes me somewhat less concerned about potential paternalism than I would be if EAs were commonly telling adult beneficiaries that they knew better about the beneficiary’s own interest than said beneficiaries, or if EAs controlled a significant fraction of all charitable spending and/or all spending in developing countries.
You’re not missing anything!
People should be factoring in the risk of waste, fraud, or mismanagement, as well as the risk of adverse leadership changes, into their cost-effectiveness estimates. That being said, these kinds of risks exist for most potential altruistic projects one could envision. If the magnitude of the risk (and the consequences of the fraud etc.) are similar between the projects one is considering, then it’s unlikely that consideration of this risk will affect one’s conclusion.
I think this is undertheorized in part because EA developed in, and remains focused on, high-income countries. It also developed in a very individualistic culture.
EA implicitly tells at least some members of the global top 1% that its OK to stay rich as long as they give a meaningful amount of their income away. If it’s OK for me to keep ~90% of my income for myself and my family, then it’s hard for me to see how it wouldn’t be OK for a lower-income community to keep virtually all of its resources for itself. So given that, I’d be pretty uncomfortable with there being a “EA party line” that moderately low-income communities should send any meaningful amount of their money away to even lower-income communities.
Maybe one could see people in lower-income areas giving money to even lower-income areas as behaving in a supererogatory fashion?
I would generally read EA materials through a lens of the main target audience being relatively well-off people in developed countries. That audience generally isn’t going to have local knowledge of (often) smaller-scale, highly effective things to do in a lower-income country. Moreover, it’s often not cost-effective to evaluate smaller projects thoroughly enough to recommend them over the tried-and-true projects that can absorb millions in funding. You, however, might have that kind of knowledge!
I think that’s a fair question. However, in current EA global health & development work, the primary intended beneficiaries of classic GiveWell-style work are children under age 5 who are at risk of dying from malaria or other illnesses. Someone else has to speak for them as a class, and I don’t think toddlers can have well-being in the broader sense you describe. Moreover, the classic EA GH&D program is pretty narrow—such as a few dollars for a bednet—so EA efforts generally cause only a very small fraction of all resources spent on the child beneficiary’s welfare to have low local control.
All that makes me somewhat less concerned about potential paternalism than I would be if EAs were commonly telling adult beneficiaries that they knew better about the beneficiary’s own interest than said beneficiaries, or if EAs controlled a significant fraction of all charitable spending and/or all spending in developing countries.