Comment by mrmcd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrmcd | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of when I came across an article about this charity last year: https://cleantheworld.org/

I'm sure they are good people with good intentions, but everything about it just annoyed me to no end. Aside from the unintentionally condescending aspect of literally giving the world's poor our half used personal cleaning products, how could this possibly be efficient from either a monetary cost or energy use point of view? Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility.

Then once they have the soap, there doesn't even appear to be an on the ground logistical operation for distributing it to people efficiently. Instead volunteers go on trips where they apparently just show up and hand out soap to random villages and towns, resulting in tons of unfortunate website and fundraising photo ops of smiling white volunteers handing bars of soap to poor black and brown kids. Also, sometimes they wear super hero capes: https://cleantheworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/medium-...

So like the article said, this all seems simple, straightforward, and helpful on paper. But issues like clean water, sewage treatment, personal hygiene and public health are complex engineer and policy problems even in rich countries, and doubly so in ones with very limited resources. Just air dropping a bunch of recycled soap probably doesn't achieve much beyond making you feel good.

> Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility.

Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need. But this thing you linked seems especially bad, among the many awful "charities".

>Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need.

And potentially sink that money into large, corrupt systems (such as some 3rd world governments) that at best use it inefficiently and at worst make the problem worse...

Which is, I suppose, the point. There is no single solution, a combination of outside groups and internal tools are needed to resolve systemic problems. The can't be fixed exclusively from the outside.

No, it is well known from the research that money _is_ the best solution, much better than any form of in-kind gifts. I don't have time to educate you now, but the research is widely available and easily googlable. I suggest you start with GiveWell and JPAL. Also Dylan Matthews from Vox writes about before mentioned orgs findings a lot.

Money is a necessary but not sufficient solution.

Well, the statement "give money so people can buy what they need" is very different than what you are supporting in this comment. Giving money to charities that have experience "on the ground" and at least some solutions is a good thing. What you appeared to be advocating for (at least how I read it) is dropping into a country and giving people money to buy cleaning supplies. This is very different. Dumping money onto people is rarely a good solution. Even targeted microlending has been met with some skepticism [1].

[1]: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/measuring-impact-...

> What you appeared to be advocating for (at least how I read it) is dropping into a country and giving people money to buy cleaning supplies.

C'mon, you really thought I was 'advocating' for each of us to buy a plane ticket and fly into some country, and hand people money to buy cleaning supplies.

Microlending is not giving people cash. It's giving people loans. That microlending has limited/negligible effect has also been well known for some time (as you know as well since you linked one of the studies, but the same organization has a new meta-study over multiple countries also worth looking into). The same organization has much better study results with giving people cash. Every study of cash grants (conditional or unconditional from Oportunidades onwards) I have ever seen is net positive, and most very positive.

The systemic problem is further usually linked to rich first world countries entrenching those systems so they can exploit the country for whatever reason. Or further their geopolitical interests. One aspect that gets overlooked is how much external forces affect internal politics and policies. At the end of the day third world countries need independent governments that are functional for providing for their own people. That is the interest of the elites are aligned with those of the people. Capitalism is one way to do that. But not external capitalism, internal Capitalism. But internal Capitalism does not just emerge, and we don't seem to want to actually spread it, because that's not the natural way capital moves. And that's not going to further anyone in the first world's interests/.

Instead, external Capitalists move in to exploit the people and resources while the country stays corrupt not benefiting from the profits, because profits are for the most part siphoned off by external investors. So there isn't much money left over to do actual work in the country. To build its systems and an internal Capitalist elite that will look after the country, its interests, and properly socializing and educating people.

So the countries continue to stay charity cases. Exception of this being countries which already have a class interested in Capitalism that is enabled by other foreign countries, rather than private interests. Like Japan and South Korea.

This is just pollution laundering, selling people smug self righteousness.

See also: every give one get one company that way overcharges and then dumps shit noone needs like cheap shoes and and thin socks.

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