Agree that improving economic growth in LMICs + international wealth redistribution would be effective in solving lots of social problems in LMICs, but both are highly intractable in my opinion, so would probably not solve a specific social problem more cost-efficiently than a targeted intervention aimed at that social problem.
(But FWIW, I don’t think improving economic growth in LMICs and international wealth redistribution are so intractable that they have no place in the EA movement)
and yet AI alignment is apparently tractable whereas “improve LMIC govenance” isn’t? EA confuses me sometimes. We have a hypothetical solution to a hypothetical problem vs concrete solutions to concrete problems -we just need to figure out the implementation!
I think AI beats LMIC governance on scale and neglectedness in the ITN framework, so would deserve greater attention from EA even with equal tractability
we’ve already done massive historic governance interventions in LMICs and still do through more indirect means today, so the idea that we can’t more efficiently intervene and this is some massive intractable problem is so for the birds IMO. This logic speaks more to the inherent dislike and distrust of power within EA than anything else IMO.
the historical examples I had in mind are various empires, or “empire moments” as such as MacArthur in Japan.
Today the IMF is a reasonable effective cudgel for institutional reform, but I don’t think it would take much to expand its operations and make them more ambitious both on the level of the cash it lends and the degree of involvement in recipient governance that it has.
Agree that improving economic growth in LMICs + international wealth redistribution would be effective in solving lots of social problems in LMICs, but both are highly intractable in my opinion, so would probably not solve a specific social problem more cost-efficiently than a targeted intervention aimed at that social problem.
(But FWIW, I don’t think improving economic growth in LMICs and international wealth redistribution are so intractable that they have no place in the EA movement)
and yet AI alignment is apparently tractable whereas “improve LMIC govenance” isn’t? EA confuses me sometimes. We have a hypothetical solution to a hypothetical problem vs concrete solutions to concrete problems -we just need to figure out the implementation!
I think AI beats LMIC governance on scale and neglectedness in the ITN framework, so would deserve greater attention from EA even with equal tractability
we’ve already done massive historic governance interventions in LMICs and still do through more indirect means today, so the idea that we can’t more efficiently intervene and this is some massive intractable problem is so for the birds IMO. This logic speaks more to the inherent dislike and distrust of power within EA than anything else IMO.
Would be interested in historical examples of this, and also on elaboration on what the indirect means today are.
(I think philanthropic funding of economic policy research in India pre 1991 would be one example?)
the historical examples I had in mind are various empires, or “empire moments” as such as MacArthur in Japan.
Today the IMF is a reasonable effective cudgel for institutional reform, but I don’t think it would take much to expand its operations and make them more ambitious both on the level of the cash it lends and the degree of involvement in recipient governance that it has.