Right, maybe I should’ve clarified. For me, this post was about charity and aid in general, not EA in specific. Apologies for any confusion involved. I tagged the post EA because the post that inspired mine was EA adjacent and because I felt that much of what I said about charity in general also applies to EA. I’m new, so I don’t fully understand the tagging system. If my reasoning for the tag is flawed feel free to explain how, and I will remove it.
That said, let me break down my thoughts on EA charity once again, for the sake of clarity. I believe that everything I said in this post (ignoring institutional problems, not addressing poverty traps, being blind to nuances of specific situations) also applies to EA charities. This is not to say that other charities don’t have the same problems, but rather, that EA has them also. Now, I won’t claim to be aware of a wide scale of EA charities, in fact, I’m still new and I’ve encountered only a very few, with the one I referenced in the post being one example. I understand there might be many more, but when I made this post I had the unconditional cash transfers in mind.
The unconditional cash transfers, while circumventing many issues (middlemen, corruption, etc) fail in my view to address the myriad roots of poverty. Presupposing that there are markets capable of supplying needs for the recipients at scale, we would likely be safe in assuming that the recipients have a temporary boost in quality of life. We would not, however, be safe to assume that crime would go down, schools would be built, healthcare would be provided for… etc etc. Fundamentally, the unconditional cash transfers are just that: cash transfers that are unconditional. There is no impetus for providing any long term solution to the root issues at play. Do you take issue with this reasoning? If so, feel free to respond as such.
The reason I chose the millennium villages project was because it was an answer to my own framework. Unlike unconditional cash transfers, it made a serious (and under certain viewpoints, successful) attempt at addressing root issues. I could’ve used my framework of analysis to critique unconditional cash transfers, but I don’t think that would have been worthwhile. Clearly if you accept my framework that institutions and unique circumstances make poverty hard to solve there is little doubt that cash transfers will not be an adequate solution. Use of the project, was, in short, my attempt at steel manning the position that aid works or could work.
That said, if you have any examples of aid that has ‘worked’, I would be happy to look over them. For the purposes of this post I was merely laying out general principles I had gathered from a variety of sources. I do not have the same depth of research or knowledge as an actual subject matter expert, hence the disclaimer.
Onto the point about the goal of reducing poverty by half, I don’t dispute that. The problem is, however, that I don’t believe it has any great connection to aid. For instance, here is an article from the world bank on how China has contributed the vast majority of people lifted from extreme poverty. While it’s fair to claim the west has benefitted from economic growth, the causes of China’s rise have little to do with charity aid and more with improved governance, western investment, and sheer force of population. China’s poverty was not reduced by an influx of aid programs, but rather, a rapid industrialization that resulted in massive quality of life increases. This increase was in large part due to the growth of trade networks, infrastructure, and other fruits of strong (if corrupt) institutions. I don’t have any evidence directly on hand for this claim, but I think most would agree with it from common sense and their understanding of history. If you would like more rigorous proof feel free to request it. I don’t believe its necessary.
People exit poverty for a variety of reasons. It could be immigration, hard work, freak luck, or even aid, in some circumstances. But by and large I believe that history proves institutions to be the strongest factor behind poverty eradication. Attributing the poverty reduction of recent decades to aid alone is grossly misleading. As such I don’t find reductions in poverty to contradict my claim that aid fails. If anything i find it to prove my point, as the poverty decrease correlates with institutional growth (particularly of markets under a strong central government) rather than aid.
I hope this answers any questions you may have had. If not, feel free to ask for clarification. I’m new and still learning, so please feel free to correct me.
Damn! Nice!
Can see where lesswrong gets it’s reputation from, amazing post.
You do have me wondering on authoritarianism though. What sort of authoritarian government do you think is not subject to molloch? Stalin, for instance, was certainly influenced by Molloch. As a communist dictator he needed control of the military, the party elite, some smidge of popular power and a variety of other things. Absolute authority, in the end, is rather illusory in basically all dictatorships I know of. The dictator gives a order and someone carries the order out. To ensure that his orders are carried out, the dictator must stay in power, and let’s not forget all the personal goodies a human ruler might desire (yatchs, money, that one pretty girl that caught your eye). I believe all these things would function as incentives which tend to be against or at the very least not for the interests of a state. Your thoughts?