Mayo’s strategy makes sense to me. If she’s right about the simple facts of the matter, then there might still be many things that can be done to help Africa, but first she has to oppose the knee-jerk approval of charity money—establish a burden of proof and skepticism that will shame the current donors if they keep on throwing counterproductive Africa-harming donations at the problem. Celebrities at parties must be made ashamed to confess their donations to Africa unless they can also claim strong logic and evidence that their aid is an exception to the usual rule of indirect harm. To do this, she has to be willing to stand up and say, “Stop the aid! Stop it entirely! You’re hurting Africa! We would be better off without any aid at all than this.” The phrasing of the message has to be simple or it won’t carry publicly. That means “Stop the aid!” not “Stop aid W, X, Y, but perform studies to see if we should keep Z”.
Mayo’s strategy makes sense to me. If she’s right about the simple facts of the matter, then there might still be many things that can be done to help Africa, but first she has to oppose the knee-jerk approval of charity money—establish a burden of proof and skepticism that will shame the current donors if they keep on throwing counterproductive Africa-harming donations at the problem. Celebrities at parties must be made ashamed to confess their donations to Africa unless they can also claim strong logic and evidence that their aid is an exception to the usual rule of indirect harm. To do this, she has to be willing to stand up and say, “Stop the aid! Stop it entirely! You’re hurting Africa! We would be better off without any aid at all than this.” The phrasing of the message has to be simple or it won’t carry publicly. That means “Stop the aid!” not “Stop aid W, X, Y, but perform studies to see if we should keep Z”.