Thanks for the clarification. I’ve had a curiosity if these types of logistics developments would have a significant impact, but had yet to run into anyone with good context to give a rough check / back-of-the-envelope potential impact calculation.
Tyler Kolota 🔹
Karma: 135
Last mile delivery is efficient & not a problem?
The point of things like drone & cargo airship developments is more point to point delivery without extra things like unloading & loading trucks that navigate unimproved roads.
If we are considering pushing more people to start businesses in developing countries & building out their own supply chain / logistics, then what might we think about interventions to ease & accelerate logistics in more widespread ways?
Like should EAs focus some support for things like the further development of drone delivery or cargo airships, which could lower the cost of transport & trade to, from, & among developing countries, especially those without good ports, roads, or rail?
Cargo Airships Could Be Big:
https://www.elidourado.com/p/cargo-airshipsCargo Airships Are Happening:
https://www.elidourado.com/p/airship-industries
I wonder if EA or something similar was mostly made up of say people from various countries in Africa with more ties & influence over local settings then would we see different and/or more ambitious interventions or business interventions or even political pushes from the community?
Like for example would we see interventions to create more trade between specific neighboring countries or the funding of political campaigns?
Or like if I were the economics nerd I am in a country in Africa I’d be pushing politically to create a stronger African Union that could create larger common markets of consumer demand & use the consolidated demand to bargain for things that would increase technology transfers & then push for forced-export lead industrial policy like what several Asian countries did (https://byrnehobart.medium.com/lessons-from-the-east-asian-economic-miracle-5f8d0f2354d9), essentially trying to replicate China or South Korea’s rise but for a lot of Africa.
For anything trade & industrial policy related, I find the Atlas Of Economic Complexity (https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/156) an interesting resource.
I like the categorizing of countries into different economic strategies & the prioritized list of suggested new product opportunities for countries. Could be very useful for anyone exploring the markets & business opportunities of developing countries.
Comment copied from comments on: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnDQPGFW8vRFiAhrN/what-three-years-of-program-delivery-in-west-africa-taught
Agreed.
Also for trade & industrial policy purposes I find the Atlas Of Economic Complexity (https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/384) an interesting resource.
I like the categorizing of countries into different economic strategies & the prioritized list of suggested new product opportunities for countries.
I also wonder if EA or something similar was mostly made up of say people from various countries in Africa with more ties & influence over local settings then would we see different and/or more ambitious interventions or even political pushes from the community? Like for example would we see interventions to create more trade between specific neighboring countries or the funding of political campaigns?
Like if I were the economics nerd I am in a country in Africa I’d be pushing politically to create a stronger African Union that could create larger common markets of consumer demand & use the consolidated demand to bargain for things that would increase technology transfers & then push for forced-export lead industrial policy like what several Asian countries did (https://byrnehobart.medium.com/lessons-from-the-east-asian-economic-miracle-5f8d0f2354d9), essentially trying to replicate China’s rise but for a lot of Africa.
I also wonder if EA or something similar was mostly made up of say people from various countries in Africa with more ties & influence over local settings then would we see different and/or more ambitious interventions or even political pushes from the community?
Like for example would we see interventions to create more trade between specific neighboring countries or the funding of political campaigns?
Or like if I were the economics nerd I am in a country in Africa I’d be pushing politically to create a stronger African Union that could create larger common markets of consumer demand & use the consolidated demand to bargain for things that would increase technology transfers & then push for forced-export lead industrial policy like what several Asian countries did (https://byrnehobart.medium.com/lessons-from-the-east-asian-economic-miracle-5f8d0f2354d9), essentially trying to replicate China’s rise but for a lot of Africa.
As for your post about EA & a lot of EA participants being in far away developed countries, I agree & my exposure to this line of thinking largely comes from the book The Anti-Politics Machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anti-Politics_Machine) describing previous failures in international development from a lack of local knowledge. It’s actually something I find interesting about EA interventions, as instead of trying to develop detailed local knowledge they work around the issue with things that require less local knowledge to work. It’s easier to support a one-time technical intervention like vaccines with like New Incentives that do not require continued follow-up throughout a person’s life or to just send cash with GiveDirectly. And I can’t say this is a bad or even sub-optimal approach as things like vaccines have such great benefits for such low cost & low risk of intervention failure. It more reveals how under funded everything is that things like vaccines & cash transfers to expectant mothers aren’t fully saturated leaving only interventions that could use more local context.
Hello Arthur,
Welcome to the EA forum & to the bootcamp. Do you have a Linked-In or other preferred social media account to connect? It may be worth linking it here for people.
As for me, I am also listening in to the bootcamp & I am a software developer for Chemonics, previously the largest USAID global health contractor. With the dismantling of USAID we may soon look to provide other services to multi-laterals & to individual country governments & organizations so your opinions may be interesting.
The malaria vaccines are a great tool to have. One thing that may temper the criticism though is the cost per DALY of increasing funding to malaria vaccines for poor countries is about the same if not a little higher than more bed-net campaigns.
But there may also be a better argument in the same style for EA not advancing the full eradication of mosquito species that carry the parasite through gene drives and/or other means.
It will likely be simpler to find one person donating a large amount to swap with, but if you really don’t find anyone else then I plan to donate another $751 towards the 2026 $1000 above the line US standard tax deduction. I already donated $249 to Screwworm Free Future.
In addition to Screwworm Free Future I plan donations to:
Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)
New Incentives
GiveWell All Grants
State Department Siphons Over $1B From Disaster Relief To Trump Slush Fund
On 1 I think you are making a few common assumptions & the world may actually be more bottlenecked on broadly implementing existing ideas, thus we need higher average intelligence around the world for that implementation.
And a more general point, a lot of genes associated with higher intelligence are also associated with introversion/anti-socialness & with various mental abnormalities like OCD & others. By optimizing purely for IQ in genes you may be creating less collaborative & less happy individuals.
Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) can increase people’s IQ for like less than $1 per point of IQ. I doubt you will find any better intervention for increasing IQ.
Could this technology improve methods to vaccinate large amounts of farmed & wild animals to help reduce vectors for pandemics?
If we’re doing a constitutional convention then really make it count…
-Statehood for Puerto Rico & Washington D.C.
-Expand the house so each representative represents fewer people.
https://youtu.be/KhQGHY44XPM?si=iLivhjAUAl-igEtd
-Make some extra Senators elected by popular vote.
-Make it easier to remove the president/executive with a congressional vote of no confidence or a 60% referendum vote at each mid-terms.
-Add term limits to the supreme court & elect new justices on a schedule. Or make the Supreme Court a rotating lottery of Appellate judges.
I’m still catching up on some work for a global health contractor, but when I get more spare time I want to develop a website to help people contact their representatives about several EA topics.
And it would be nice to enable multiple channels of contact like email, phone, text message, mail/post-card, social media, etc, so people can partly express intensity of interest through varied & frequent messaging.
Small to medium donors should also consider making some more speculative donations with even higher expected impact than the GiveWell All Grants & EA Animal Welfare funds.
For example…
Donations to the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) are more speculative as some of their government & corporate advocacy campaigns to eliminate lead may fail, but on average they expect to generate 1 extra healthy year of life (DALY) for every $5-$15 donated, which is about 3X better than malaria bed-nets at $50 per healthy year of life (DALY).
https://leadelimination.org/how-cost-effective-are-leeps-paint-programs/
Donations to the Shrimp Welfare Project are more speculative as they are reliant on early & not entirely certain research indicating shrimp have some level of consciousness and reliant on one’s own valuing of animal sentience & suffering and reliant on studies indicating stunning shrimp actually renders them unconscious. But even given those points, the potential scale of suffering reduction is enormous. Every $1 donated to the Shrimp Welfare Project could avoid the painful death of 14,000 shrimp.
Donations to Screwworm Free Future are speculative because they are highly reliant on advocacy of governments / policy outcomes. But screwworm elimination would likely save at least 5 billion wild & farmed animals over 25 years from a very torturous death of being eaten alive from the inside out. Assuming this project has a 50⁄50 chance of success at a funding of $5million, each $1 donated could avoid the torturous death of ~500 animals.https://manifund.org/projects/anti-screwworm-gene-drive-advocacy
After looking up more stuff I think small & medium EA donors have at least a few solid options to beat GiveWell All Grants & EA Animal Welfare Fund and I personally am adjusting over 25% of my giving to them…
Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)
The cost per DALY (healthy year of life gained) on LEEP is like 5-10x better than the best GiveWell interventions like malaria bed-nets. Instead of taking $50 to get a healthy year of life their estimate is like $5 for lead elimination programs. I gather this is because they can leverage policy changes in government & companies to remove lead from many many products & because some products like house paint may be around a lot of people for a lot of time. Please comment if you know of any other factors affecting their DALY estimates.
Shrimp Welfare ProjectUsual arguments: number of animals involved, ease of stunning intervention to avoid suffering, neglected, etc.
https://open.substack.com/pub/benthams/p/the-best-charity-isnt-what-you-think?r=87ph2&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Screwworm EliminationArguments listed in previous comment.
Okay @danielyu & @Arno what about the secondary part of this with the Atlas Of Economic Complexity resources?
Wouldn’t it be helpful to use some of these tools/data to come up with the highest potential impact ventures to support?
Like maybe one could look for what African countries have the highest similarity scores / adjacent capabilities to start building more generics pharmaceutical industries to support the region’s global health goals.
Or what countries may be most able to develop very low-cost meat alternatives / plant-based protein products for better animal welfare?
Like are there opportunities for donors to support both private business in low income countries & other high impact cause areas simultaneously?