This is an example of a general phenomenon I don’t really understand: the lack of attention to how to make poor nations rich. If we can figure that out, a lot of plausibly-bad phenomena like child marriage will just disappear of their own accord. 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”. I don’t remotely understand what the point is of mental health interventions like StrongMinds, in particular. 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. 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 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.
Responding just to the comment about StrongMinds – I think mental health is an incredibly complicated issue, and mental illness is very multi-factored, so even if some people in sub-Saharan Africa are depressed due to bad governance, others may be depressed due to reasons that mental health services would alleviate. In any event, the fact that depression in sub-Saharan Africa is not even remotely close to 100% means the statement “I’d also be quite depressed if my government was as dreadful as most governments are in sub-Saharan Africa” is basically a non sequitur.
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.
This is an example of a general phenomenon I don’t really understand: the lack of attention to how to make poor nations rich. If we can figure that out, a lot of plausibly-bad phenomena like child marriage will just disappear of their own accord. 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”. I don’t remotely understand what the point is of mental health interventions like StrongMinds, in particular. 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. 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 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.
Responding just to the comment about StrongMinds – I think mental health is an incredibly complicated issue, and mental illness is very multi-factored, so even if some people in sub-Saharan Africa are depressed due to bad governance, others may be depressed due to reasons that mental health services would alleviate. In any event, the fact that depression in sub-Saharan Africa is not even remotely close to 100% means the statement “I’d also be quite depressed if my government was as dreadful as most governments are in sub-Saharan Africa” is basically a non sequitur.
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.