Oh and here is google’s response on UN funding:
How much is the regular budget of the UN in 2021?
In 2021, UN humanitarian agencies and partner organizations needed a total of $37.7 billion to provide aid to 174 million people in 60 countries. At the end of the year, however, they had only received $17.2 billion, or 46 percent, of the total they requested.
And here is the more telling actual central budget to provide all the coordination that the world needs to run seamlessly (except for war-mongering):
How much does UN spend each year?
The regular United Nations budget for the 2018/2019 biennium, approved by the 73rd session of the General Assembly on 22 December 2018, amounts to 5.811 billion US dollars, inclusive of all supplements.
What an interesting area of debate. I want to add my views, with a language and experience from beyond EA, and welcome any kind of response.
As a leadership coach, I hold that my principal aim in coaching is to deepen my clients’ ability to act from the greatest personal integrity, on the basis that the greater their integrity, then the better the consequences of their actions are likely to be for themselves and others, and the whole world—along the EA principles of Do Good Better and Be Kind. People can sense integrity and it is closely bound up with trustworthiness. Yes, it can also be mis-judged by others.
As I read these posts I found myself looking at a headline in our local paper which said “My mum says to do everything with love”. Simple. In my experience, greater integrity leads to greater understanding of love. As the Dalai Lama puts it: loving-kindness. My coaching method of increasing integrity is to challenge (to resolve) internal conflicts of belief, as this develops greater integration of the personality in the whole body-mind and spirit, rather than just continuing a rationalising argument in the head alone. Solve the war inside yourself, don’t create it outside yourself.
I don’t see the rationalisation of actions such as lying, deceit, revenge, shaming or punishment, even in part, as having any place whatsover in a person who wants to demonstrate integrity, love, Doing Good Better or Being Kind. These are unintegrated actions, coming from limiting personal beliefs, which just produce an escalation in lowering standards of behaviour, increasing the harms, and making the world a worse place for everyone. The problem is that the world seems to be adopting such principles, including non-compliance with the law.
The first post seems to be written on the premise that the purpose of integrity is to enhance one’s own reputation, rather than the better consequentialist purpose of Doing Good Better. But reputation is entirely subjective within the eye of the other beholder, whereas integrity is entirely subjective within the control of the subject, even though the ultimate consequences might be beyond control.
The problem with concepts like acting out of revenge, or indeed offence, is that they are usually based upon subjective and irrational emotions, devoid of care about the important details, such as ascertaining the true facts, compliance with the rule of law, and the fact that perceptions differ. In any action, whether intended to be good or bad, we cannot predict how others will perceive and respond to our actions. “Others” may just project their own lack of integrity onto us as the “subject”, to make us into “perpetrator” to fit their “victim” belief in themselves. The smart response to perceived harm is to see the crisis as an opportunity for active resolution for greater good, not as a self-appointed victim who responds with greater self-justified harm.
Unfortunately, this is not how our current major national leaders act, because they appear not to have done the necessary personal introspection to see the value of acting out of integrity and loving-kindness. Their knee-jerk reaction is to use greater military power to try to destroy their unintegrated sense of “evil” that they project onto others.
Our system for selecting our leaders, at every level, in every institution, is outdated and entirely corrupt (for evidence, read The Dictator’s Handbook). Given that it is the most powerful ones who create (and continue) the greatest man-made global existential risks (whilst supposedly being responsible for “Peace & Security” on our planet), personally, I would love to see EA rationalise about how best to change this horrible system which produces the most dangerously corrupt leaders desperately lacking with integrity. And then ACT to create anew. Develop the DAOs?