I would bracket all kinds of developing world health and social interventions into this cluster of “things that are vastly less important than improving developing world governance”
This is why we have the ITN model, right? Improving governance is super important, but it seems to fail the tractability test most of the time. Trying to improve institutions with government officials who profit from the existing, more extractive institutions is a massive, intractable, relatively thankless task. Also, outsiders are in a worse position to create institutional change, so you have to spend a lot of your time and resources just trying to get a place at the table. For the neglectedness part, loads of people are dedicated to trying to make poor nations rich- it’s been the objective of development economists/ IMF/ World Bank people/ many of the smartest people in developing countries way before RCTs and micro-interventions came into fashion. If you can find neglected sub-areas, that’s obviously great, but low-hanging fruit seems rare.
“I don’t remotely understand what the point is of mental health interventions like StrongMinds. I’d also be quite depressed if my government was as dreadful as most governments are in sub-Saharan Africa, and even the best mental health treatment surely can’t last for long given the stark reality...”
The fact that people have a valid external reason to be depressed doesn’t mean that it’s pointless treating their depression. People in poor countries can have decent mental health, as any life satisfaction survey should be able to demonstrate. From solely first-order effects, if you think their data is valid, it’s probably a better way of improving lives than most Give Well interventions. There are also some second-order, or ‘trickle-up’ effects for most micro-interventions. The human capital theory of development argues that culture, education, health etc. lead to greater productivity, which leads to a more educated and mobile populace, which leads to better institutions and leads to growth. This piece explains this part of the debate- should also note that randomistas think that their interventions are robustly good, even if they cause comparatively little growth.
″ I’m not saying that EA should pivot into figuring institutional mechanisms for Amazon to buy out Zimbabwe, but it does seem a vastly more effective cause area than most other things you could spend your time on in this field.”
I agree that we should be considering ambitious institutional interventions (SEZs / charter cities, or at least something like growth diagnostics), but this one is surely a non-starter. It’s hard enough getting a low-income country to marginally decrease agricultural tariffs, let alone selling your whole country to Amazon.
I would bracket all kinds of developing world health and social interventions into this cluster of “things that are vastly less important than improving developing world governance”
This is why we have the ITN model, right? Improving governance is super important, but it seems to fail the tractability test most of the time. Trying to improve institutions with government officials who profit from the existing, more extractive institutions is a massive, intractable, relatively thankless task. Also, outsiders are in a worse position to create institutional change, so you have to spend a lot of your time and resources just trying to get a place at the table. For the neglectedness part, loads of people are dedicated to trying to make poor nations rich- it’s been the objective of development economists/ IMF/ World Bank people/ many of the smartest people in developing countries way before RCTs and micro-interventions came into fashion. If you can find neglected sub-areas, that’s obviously great, but low-hanging fruit seems rare.
“I don’t remotely understand what the point is of mental health interventions like StrongMinds. I’d also be quite depressed if my government was as dreadful as most governments are in sub-Saharan Africa, and even the best mental health treatment surely can’t last for long given the stark reality...”
The fact that people have a valid external reason to be depressed doesn’t mean that it’s pointless treating their depression. People in poor countries can have decent mental health, as any life satisfaction survey should be able to demonstrate. From solely first-order effects, if you think their data is valid, it’s probably a better way of improving lives than most Give Well interventions. There are also some second-order, or ‘trickle-up’ effects for most micro-interventions. The human capital theory of development argues that culture, education, health etc. lead to greater productivity, which leads to a more educated and mobile populace, which leads to better institutions and leads to growth. This piece explains this part of the debate- should also note that randomistas think that their interventions are robustly good, even if they cause comparatively little growth.
″ I’m not saying that EA should pivot into figuring institutional mechanisms for Amazon to buy out Zimbabwe, but it does seem a vastly more effective cause area than most other things you could spend your time on in this field.”
I agree that we should be considering ambitious institutional interventions (SEZs / charter cities, or at least something like growth diagnostics), but this one is surely a non-starter. It’s hard enough getting a low-income country to marginally decrease agricultural tariffs, let alone selling your whole country to Amazon.