So, "out of sight, out of mind?"
We cannot solve the problems of the people by not knowing them in depth and that is major investment. We cannot offer one size fits all "learn to code" solution that earned the tech industry the recent mocking.
You can slice the world to arbitrarily small groups of people, making any problem someone else's. I don't feel the national borders are particularly meaningful in this context, especially considering the amount of Indians living in Silicon Valley.
I'm sure Rayiner feels deep sympathy for places that are not presently near to him (such as India, in this thread).
If every major problem in the United States were already solved, it would be more reasonable to then try to help others solve their problems. But that's not the case.
If you have people suffering right in front of you, it just makes sense logistically to help them first. Helping our own homeless and unemployed would aid in stimulating the American economy.
The bottom line is that there isn't any sane reason why an American would prioritize the needs of another country before his own. Nor would it be sane for an Indian to prioritize America's while she lives in India. It just doesn't make sense. You tend to your side of the street first.
> If you have people suffering right in front of you, it just makes sense logistically to help them first.
> there isn't any sane reason why an American would prioritize the needs of another country before his own
You're making several statements basically asserting that proximity is the only relevant factor when determining how easy it is to help one person or grow an economy. But we're not all paramedics. I'd argue that the American economy has already grown so much, and people are already given so many opportunities here, that making improvements here is going to be way more expensive in terms of natural resources and manpower, than improving an area where much simpler problems are still unsolved.
For example, spending $1M fighting malaria in Africa improves the GDP of Africa by $12M.[1]
> Helping our own homeless and unemployed would aid in stimulating the American economy.
This seems to be evidence of national bias. Why should I care about the American economy in particular?
1. http://www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/330/415680a_r.pd...
(Personally, I'd answer 'yes' and 'probably not', respectively. If you want to help people in bulk, you can probably get easier targets if you're willing to look in some of the poorer countries in the world. GiveWell's charity evaluations seem to confirm this: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities)
"Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person."