What countries are ‘pulling their weight’ for Haiti? | Hacker News Reader

What countries are ‘pulling their weight’ for Haiti?

drewconway.com

18 pointsagconway22 comments

Seems like it may be an incomplete comparison as it underweights/excludes private contributions though it's difficult to tell. I suspect once you add remittances + private charitable contributions, you would see the US punch significantly higher than even its current outlier position.

Private contributions almost certainly bias towards the US where when it comes to foreign aid/charities, the majority comes from private individuals versus almost every other country where the bulk of funds go through official government aid channels.

I have to also imagine that this doesn't include the contributions through the US military (which Michael Moore's site has also cited in its ability to provide enough water purification to a mid sized city through the air craft carrier now stationed there) which cannot be cheap.

In addition to the analytical faults, the notion of "pulling their weight" has all sorts of moral imperative baggage which is more typically used in the context of the free-rider problem from game-theory.

At the very least you'd have to make a strong argument that any nation has an obligation (which is what "pulling their weight" refers to) to help.

Source on American charitable contributions: "Americans gave, per capita, three and a half times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Similarly, in 1998, Americans were 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss, and 32 percent more likely than the Germans." [1]

So yes, the data is heavily skewed if it does not include private donations, although the OP does indicate that the graph was just a rough draft. But it's also important to note that America has a vested interest in ensuring Haiti's stability, whereas most of the other countries aren't as nearly invested in the country's future. We don't want a Somalia in the Western hemisphere (they're actually not that far from each other from a PPP standpoint - Haiti is ranked 203 vs Somalia's 225 [2])

The potential effect of this could be observable through the 2004 Tsunami, wherein many of the listed countries were much more geopolitically connected to the affected countries than the US. If these countries made sizably larger donations, I would think it's because of this factor.

1: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-co... 2: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

The absence of private contributions makes the chart rather meaningless. Take for example The Netherlands: a pledge of 4.3 million dollars according to the data. This was an initial pledge by the government shortly after the disaster. In the mean time over 42 million euros in private contributions have been donated to relief organizations and the Dutch government will double that amount.

But it's a log plot. Adding a factor of 20 just moves the Netherlands up by 1.3 units on the graph, which means it's still landing below the median even without including the private contributions of the other nations.

Sorry, but the Dutch dropped the ball on this one, at least relative to other EU governments. As other folks have pointed out, simple proximity makes the much higher US contribution sensible and sane. But really, the Netherlands, Italy and (especially) Germany need to be up near the UK and France.

> But really, the Netherlands, Italy and (especially) Germany need to be up near the UK and France.

In the end, it's their choice based on their values, means, and priorities. The extent to which Americans turn out for private charity is one thing I'm particularly proud of about the USA, but in the end it's everyone's choice individually.

Why? So they can have a 'score' that's on par with other nations?

Isn't it entirely possible that the actual aid physically deliverable in the short term has been maximized?

That is, that the Dutch might be better off waiting and raising/sending targeted expertise and funds during the inevitable, but not starting any time soon, reconstruction phase? (Where much of their expertise is something that very few other nations could even offer)

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to pledge that they'll do that now, but any amounts tied to unspecified quantities of work would be fiction anyway. So the number would only be moved for the sake of making it move.

> That is, that the Dutch might be better off waiting and raising/sending targeted expertise and funds during the inevitable, but not starting any time soon, reconstruction phase? (Where much of their expertise is something that very few other nations could even offer)

Please tell us more about this reconstruction expertise that few countries have. (The Dutch have unique expertise in reclaiming land from the sea, but that's not relevant to Haiti.)

You don't think erosion is an issue in Haiti?

Huh? Much of the Netherlands is below sea level. That's their unique expertise. Erosion from above sea level stuff is an issue almost everywhere.

And, it's not clear that erosion is high on Haiti's list of significant problems.

The chart has base e, not base 10. My point is not about how much the Dutch have donated or not, but to show that the inclusion of private donations of all countries would significantly change the chart.

See the comments for the article. The numbers used are so far off that they are meaningless.

I cant help but feel the point is somewhat disingenuous.

Definitely. if we're going to talk about weight, anything that any country (except haiti, obviously) pulls is above and beyond "their" weight

I'm surprised Cuba isn't mentioned. Cuba had several hundred doctors on the ground in Port au Prince while the rest of the developed world was still trying to locate Haiti on a map: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1229192...

If you counted in-kind donations, rather than just currency (which is actually less effective in this case), I'm guessing Cuba would beat every other country on that list.

Why are you surprised? He said it right on the first para in bold letters:

"Again, this is by no means a complete, or even partially complete analysis, simply a quick exploration of the data."

To bo honest this posts shouldn't be even taken mildly seriously. It would have been interesting to look at the data if the data had some substance to it. In summary: "I woke up today, grabbed some numbers the threw it in to a plot." Thats basically what it is.

I also did some rough estimations based on 2B in aid, which the data actually corroborates which is amusing. Anyway, It comes out to about 28% of GDP, and would be the equivalent to giving every man, woman, and child a one lump payment of 12k.

No conclusions drawn. But there is always the problem of dropping that much liquidity in to any economy, no matter developing or rebuilding or both.

are they dropping liquidity in or food, water and medical supplies?

This is a classic problem of international aid.

In a nutshell, any indicators of progress revert completely when the aid stops flowing in with no lasting infrastructure/education/anything actually getting developed.

In short, the countries don't make any lasting progress, but are temporarily propped up and become entirely dependent on the aid.

Look at Africa for numerous examples of this phenomenon.

Of course, that's only a long term issue, in the short term you should absolutely send in as much food, shelter and medicine as possible.

And that long-term foundation is the core of the international aide plan. If there can ever be said to be a silver lining in a cloud such as this, it is this: almost the entirety of the existing infrastructure was destroyed in the quake, and Haiti gets to do it right this time -- buildings that "meet code", city planning that makes some kind of sense, distribution of services that has some correlation to demographic distribution, and so on, all under the eye of international observers who must be present while Haiti, once again, tries to build a police and law enforcement system from scratch. It will cost a mint in foreign generosity to give Haiti the leg up it needs, but it will, at the same time, reduce the need for continual infusions of aide over the long term. (Haiti has certainly never been off of the aide map in Canada; money, material, medical, police and military contributions have been going there pretty much since Baby Doc bit the big one.)

Agreed. It's been encouraging to hear all the talk about "sustainable aid".

I'll be curious how they solve the corruption problems though. If you have international observers on hand, others will scream "colonialism".

But honestly, after Haiti was ranked as the most corrupt nation on earth in 2006[1], I don't think there's anyway you give long-term aid without intensive supervision.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6120522.stm

> Haiti gets to do it right this time

What are the odds that it will?

> all under the eye of international observers who must be present

This isn't the first time that "international observers" have been present. What has happened in the past when they were around? If this time will be different, why?

> Haiti has certainly never been off of the aide map in Canada; money, material, medical, police and military contributions have been going there pretty much since Baby Doc bit the big one.

That is not encouraging. Canada is pretty good at this stuff and pre-quake Haiti suggests that it wasn't enough.

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