It is one thing to rationally know that people are without food and basic medicine through the reading I did or videos I watched. It is another to be in a high-need community and find myself trying to explain to a father that I just ran out of the antibiotics he needed to help his sick child fight an infection. Of course it would have been more effective to not buy the plane ticket and ship $1000 more of antibiotics to the community, but that is the cost we (myself and the community) paid to change a lifetime of decisions I would make as a privileged American. The cost sickens me, but it is the reality I have come to understand.
Emotional connections are powerful, but they are difficult to form without the personal connection. My hope is that as technology improves, we will be able to build empathy more effectively even without the aforementioned expensive plane ticket. Perhaps then we will be more hesitant about war and more vigorous in helping refugees, victims of natural disasters, and others.
"Voluntourism is ultimately about the fulfillment of the volunteers themselves, not necessarily what they bring to the communities they visit." [1]
“Basically, we failed at the sole purpose of our being there. It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level.” [2]
[1] http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/instagrammingafrica-...
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/voluntou...
Take for example Bill Gates. If he had donated all his "surplus" money instead of building a business, he wouldn't have been able to donate the amount that he has; the amount wouldn't even be of the same order.
> in 2011, 17 percent of people in the developing world lived at or below $1.25 a day. That’s down from 43 percent in 1990.
It seems worth pushing to nearly-eradicate this "extreme poverty" now, rather than waiting another 20 years and doing something that would likely have a lesser effect on suffering.
But how do charities get donations without advertising? How do they let people know why they need the money and encourage them to donate? At some point, yes, a charity can spend too much of its donations on advertising, but advertising in general is a necessary evil.
Same with this. The charities might take in less overall if they "saved" money by scrapping these types of programs.
This isn't 100% useless, as it causes economic activity, but it's done under the lie that non-profits are de facto good things.
This is the challenging thing about charities. If I want to evaluate the person selling me socks or smart phones, I look at the good they offer and decide if it is worth $N. If it is, I make the trade. If not, I don't.
But with charities, you have to figure out "is the marginal change the charity will do with $5 worth me having five dollars less?" And that's incredibly hard to figure out. Even the charity itself, assuming it even wants to know, can have a hard time figuring out the net difference of five dollars.
Which is the whole point of effective altruism.
or non-good, marginal good, regular doings, etc.
I will say that I took a holiday last year, and technically that is money I could have used to donate. So in that sense I am just as bad as they are.
Even in the case where the donation drop the payer to a lower tax bracket, I don't see how it helps. Any insight greatly appreciated.
I'm not sure why you're picking on these guys in particular.
Maybe my anecdote goes against the norm?
Most of us could be doing a lot more.
Why does it have to be so explicit? My observations align with yours in regards to how these trips are marketed (if I can use the term) and how most people I know who have done them describe the experience. But I have another anecdote, one which describes why I don't want to hold my speculations or "understanding of the world" in too high esteem:
I know at least one person who was so sheltered that the big realizations on her trip (a "mission" trip as it were so) were that: not all children are born in fancy suites with a host of doctors tending to every need; you can't get processed American lunches out in the middle of the desert; "kids are literally hungry because they don't have enough food". Hearing this was equal parts astonishing and enraging and yet it made me check my own entitlement as well. Why should I want to attack her motivations? Why should I challenge her because the "result" wasn't "good enough", i.e. she didn't suddenly become enlightened as to what it was like to live in such a situation, instead she merely realized that she had a desire to care about the issue and support others who care as well (see: cash donations)? Any minute I could have said obviously, there are people in terrible situations all over the world and it would have done nothing because I already thought it. There will always be "those kinds" of people; we don't want to be them, but they also don't want to be us. The truth is that even if her interests end up being entirely selfish, she'll probably have more of an impact on those things than I ever will. I can appreciate that, even if it's not efficient, altruistic, or whatever. It's frustrating, but not terrible.
Spending $500 on a plane ticket and then spend $500 at local restaurants, vendors, and accommodations won't do as much good as the $1000 would straight-up donated, but it's better than the $100 I would _actually_ donate. Don't make perfect the enemy of good.
And ultimately, it will make me care more about wherever I visited, and prompt further donations in the future.
[0] Easterly's book is great if you're interested in the stats: http://www.amazon.com/The-Elusive-Quest-Growth-Misadventures...
Their top charity for a long time was a mosquito net distribution agency. It turned out that the mosquito nets were used as fishing nets instead and, since they were treated with insecticide, polluted the local lakes.
http://blog.givewell.org/2015/02/05/putting-the-problem-of-b... https://www.againstmalaria.com/NewsItem.aspx?newsitem=Net-us...
To me there are two issues at stake: taking their 90% claim at face value that may very well still leave them a very effective charity.
I am more concerned for the fishing stock. Assume 5% chooses to use their nets to fish with - is the this enough to have a material impact on fishing stocks? Will this effect the community to the point that the rest also have to use these nets to catch enough fish? Even if not, what is the effect of the insecticide?
Your articles seem to be really convincing with usages rate, but unfortunately rather handwavingly with the insecticide.
Obviously there was a lot more to the Civil Rights movement than a lack of malaria. But it was one of the factors that helped. How likely is someone with “body aches, headache and nausea, general weakness, and prostration” to make it to the polls, to school, or to work? How likely are they to march on Washington?
It's easier to dream big from behind a windowscreen. Easier when you're not hungry. When you're not sick. When you're not weakened from parasites and malnutrition. And for those of us who would love to see systemic change, the "one-trick ponies" may be a good way forward. """
http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/08/malaria-one-trick-ponies...
Giving $3.5k to save a child from dying of malaria is quite a different thing and seems obviously a good thing to do.
[1]http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374...