That’s a fair point that the affected communities making their own nets isn’t necessarily the most efficient path, but it could be, I don’t know. I guess what I wrote there isn’t really the all that’s potentially problematic with the Malaria Consortium institution, but there are a few other details about how they operate that worry me. Things like how they make distributions in a 2 year interval, and people who want bednets can’t get any because they need to wait for another distribution, since there is no longer any bednets being produced locally because the donations made those producers run out of business. This issue alone doesn’t necessarily outweigh the benefits of the distributions, so maybe the impact is still net positive. There are a few other issues that I’ve heard raised on that video as well though
Arguably I should look more in depth into how exactly those bed nets operate, and really think everything through. But I don’t feel like I have the time or energy, or am smart and knowledgeable enough to be able to do that on my own. Also I’m not sure the detailed information about how those institutions operate will be fully available to me even if I wanted to
I feel like ultimately I need to find some person who has the resources to make those assessments, including competency to think through these nuanced complicated problems, and who I feel like I can trust
Maybe what I need to do right now is to just save my monthly allocation to altruism and keep accumulating it until I feel like I can make a decent decision of where to put this money
I like your point about the word “sustainability” as well. That’s probably not the right term to describe what I’m thinking. I used it as the “sustainability” of the impacts and their unfolding remaining a net positive, and not the sustainability of the particular measure that’s being taken to help people
I guess there’s some subjectivity to what “positive impact” means as well. For me I would say my desire in terms of altruism is currently to just reduce suffering as much as possible, that’s my goal. Things like happiness, advancing technology and reducing the likelihood of mass extinction events I don’t really care as much
Anyway I appreciate your reply and some of the links you posted, that’s helpful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts
That’s a fair point that the affected communities making their own nets isn’t necessarily the most efficient path, but it could be, I don’t know. I guess what I wrote there isn’t really the all that’s potentially problematic with the Malaria Consortium institution, but there are a few other details about how they operate that worry me. Things like how they make distributions in a 2 year interval, and people who want bednets can’t get any because they need to wait for another distribution, since there is no longer any bednets being produced locally because the donations made those producers run out of business. This issue alone doesn’t necessarily outweigh the benefits of the distributions, so maybe the impact is still net positive. There are a few other issues that I’ve heard raised on that video as well though
Arguably I should look more in depth into how exactly those bed nets operate, and really think everything through. But I don’t feel like I have the time or energy, or am smart and knowledgeable enough to be able to do that on my own. Also I’m not sure the detailed information about how those institutions operate will be fully available to me even if I wanted to
I feel like ultimately I need to find some person who has the resources to make those assessments, including competency to think through these nuanced complicated problems, and who I feel like I can trust
Maybe what I need to do right now is to just save my monthly allocation to altruism and keep accumulating it until I feel like I can make a decent decision of where to put this money
I like your point about the word “sustainability” as well. That’s probably not the right term to describe what I’m thinking. I used it as the “sustainability” of the impacts and their unfolding remaining a net positive, and not the sustainability of the particular measure that’s being taken to help people
I guess there’s some subjectivity to what “positive impact” means as well. For me I would say my desire in terms of altruism is currently to just reduce suffering as much as possible, that’s my goal. Things like happiness, advancing technology and reducing the likelihood of mass extinction events I don’t really care as much
Anyway I appreciate your reply and some of the links you posted, that’s helpful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts