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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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You might think this kind of altruism is reckless, I think giving malaria nets to people whose problems we don't know is reckless.

Why do you think we don't know these people's problems? Tons of research has been conducted on how terrible malaria is, how it prevents economic development, has all sorts of higher-order effects, etc., and on how to treat and prevent malaria. Much more research than Dorothy Day conducted in your anecdote. Maybe the woman was just a drug addict who would sell the ring for a fraction of its value and spend the money on heroin, and giving her the ring rather than assistance in kind (food and shelter) is just feeding her addiction and funneling money into the pockets of criminals. A few days later, the ring is gone, the woman is still a homeless addict, and you get to pat yourself on the back because you weren't paternalistic and you respected her autonomy.

Apparently the Nigerians believe that imminent starvation is more important to them than malaria, and so use the free tools provided to wreck their environment and feed themselves for a moment instead of prevent malaria. People will use the tools provided to them as they see fit to benefit themselves.

Westerners are telling Nigerians, "look, I know you're hungry but the real problem, mathematically speaking, is malaria. Use these nets to prevent malaria and before long everything will be fine." And the Nigerian sees this as patronizing bullshit and does what they see best. If you need someone's cooperation to do something, they should have a seat at the planning table. If we had given them cash or something with resell value, maybe they'd have bought better fishing nets. If we'd talked to individuals first, we'd have known to give them a means to feed themselves before moving to malaria prevention. Instead we gave them a very specific tool that they are using on a problem it was not made to solve and making things worse in the process.

I mean, aren't there also stories (a la Live Aid) of people organizing to donate money/food to starving African communities, only for warlords to get their hands on said money/food and withold it for reasons of control? Who's to say that trying to give your recipients a seat at the table won't end up giving said seat to someone not interested in representing said recipients?

That's the point - you'd want the person actually needing help to have the most control of the funds/charity.

I don't think people misusing malaria nets is a major issue, but if you do, GiveWell also recommends funding malaria drugs and vitamin A supplements. Could something go wrong with those? I guess people might overdose. But GiveWell doesn't guess: they've actually run the numbers, and they've found that the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. If that still doesn't convince you, you can just donate to GiveDirectly.

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