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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Some problems like smallpox can be permanently fixed with targeted aid. In those cases the benefits to local economies can be huge and long lasting.

I feel a mix of the highest ROI directed aid along side programs like give directly, is probably ideal.

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Not to be pedantic, but ROI as a concept only makes sense when you're trying to achieve your own goals. If you're really empowering other people, then they are the ones who should be evaluating the ROI on their decisions, not you.

Ultimately, I do agree that a mix of giver-goal aid and receiver-goal aid is useful. I think it's a very laudable goal to i.e. end polio. But I think that western aid has very little concept of helping people achieve their own goals. As a result, we're very far unbalanced in favor of the goals of those giving aid rather than the goals of those receiving aid. Until that balance is fixed, I think there's far more need in receiver-goal programs.

Incidentally, besides GiveDirectly, I give to Planned Parenthood and the FSF. While they both have slightly more complex models, I think both of those organizations are geared toward empowering people to achieve their own goals.

Worms and other parasites are known to influence behavior. If you give money to someone whose decisions are being influenced by a parasite, are you really giving the money to them, or are you giving it to the parasite?

People give Aid so things the giver wants to happen happen. As such, you can talk about ROI in terms of achieving the givers goals.

That's what I said.

> ROI as a concept only makes sense when you're trying to achieve your own goals. If you're really empowering other people, then they are the ones who should be evaluating the ROI on their decisions, not you.

While a noble concept in theory, people are notoriously both selfish and short-sighted. Especially when basic infrastructure is missing, and assuming the giver-goals are unbiased, I would expect that an observer would typically say that the society helped by giver-goal aid is better off than the society helped by receiver-goal aid.

Receivers, being selfish and shortsighted, will be unlikely to invest in things like a local hospital, or sewage, water, and electricity. They'll buy themselves a trip to a hospital to get taken care of, and purchase a private well, a septic tank (or just a longer pipe to the local canal) and a generator. If they get a propane tank, propane delivery service, and a modern furnace and stove, that's great for them, but the observer would probably say it would be better to run natural gas to all the houses rather than individual propane tanks to a small number of residents. And you may have better results in the short term by giving people money to buy the generator they want rather than a solar array that puts out fewer watts per dollar, but the city will eventually be covered in smog. Or they might invest in better tires for their vehicle to navigate the potholed roads, but they won't pay to pave or maintain them. And while individual smartphones are a wonderful luxury, many more people would benefit if you put PCs in the local library.

Perhaps these things would have eventually sorted themselves out when the empowered receivers start using their elevated position on Maslow's hierarchy of needs to become wealthier. They would then contribute more to the tax base and eventually an effective government will have the funds to start investing in these public works that eventually people realize they want for a few percent of their wealth. But I think it's more effective to skip that "perhaps" stage.

Except the exact same criticism applies to the alternative: everyone involved in allocating and spending the money you give to build and supply that natural gas pipe is also selfish and short-sighted, and is much more likely to try to enrich themselves over providing a good service.

At least by giving directly, it's easier to control that the money actually gets to the people it's supposed to, even if they don't spend exactly as we might wish they did.

> everyone involved in allocating and spending the money you give to build and supply that natural gas pipe is also selfish and short-sighted, and is much more likely to try to enrich themselves over providing a good service.

The point where the money is allocated to one goal or another is when someone donates the money altruistically. They are hopefully trying to be less selfish and short-sighted.

Sure, the implementors will take some profit, but so will any business to which the recipient could give the money.

Keeping the power of determining where the money goes is in itself selfish, so I don't buy the argument.

More to the point, why are we optimizing for altruism and forward thinking? Are those end goals, or merely means to an end goal?

You start off by claiming that people are notoriously selfish and short-sighted, but mysteriously the rest of your post only applies this to the receivers of aid. The givers are people too.

More fundamentally, you're only looking at material outcomes. What I'm saying is that freedom (a non-material ouycome) is a good in itself, one which is under-considered in aid.

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