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Comment by cwan | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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/...

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.

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.

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