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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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buying bed nets to prevent malaria

If you donate a bed net, it doesn't mean that your poor African is using the bed net to prevent malaria. Instead, they are being used to overfish, poisoning the water supply and possibly starving several communities in the long term.

Meanwhile, if I take care of an elderly neighbor I might not be saving lives or grand gestures like that, but I have a better idea of what they need and can avoid unintentionally hurting them and others.

That's a reasonable point, but then you just disagree with EA on their calculations, not their premises. That's something different than what OP was calling evil I think.

I think I disagree with EA on their premises because I think we can't really help someone unless we have a relationship with them and understand them. There is a balance between impact and knowledge. One side of the scale is something small that has low stakes but involves something you know well - like helping a neighbor pay for a much needed car repair. The other side of the scale has high stakes but involves situations where people don't have any idea what the ripple effects would be because they are too removed from the people they are trying to help - like the Mosquito Nets.

My principle would be that a problem should be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority that includes people directly impacted by the problem. Or in practice, this:

A wealthy woman once visited the twentieth century activist Dorothy Day and pulled a large diamond ring off her finger. She handed it to Dorothy and asked her to use it for good. Dorothy dropped it into her pocket.

Later that day, a homeless woman knocked on the door at Dorothy’s Catholic Worker house, begging for money. Dorothy calmly reached into her pocket and gave her the diamond ring.

Dorothy’s friends were appalled. Later, while alone, they asked Dorothy if it would not have been better to sell the ring and use the money to rent a room for the beggar woman. Or perhaps they should have invested the money in a bank for her.

Dorothy replied, “She can do that with the ring if she wants to. She can see it and go on vacation if she wants, or she can just wear it on her finger and enjoy it if that’s what she wants. Do you think God created diamonds only for the rich?”

Dorothy’s response exhibits not just one, but two key principles of Catholic social teaching. Not only did she lavishly take an option for the poor by gifting the diamond ring, she also embraced the principle of subsidiarity, which says that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible. In this case, the lady receiving the ring should decide how to use it - not Dorothy, not her friends, and not the state.

-Brandon Vogt (Saints and Social Justice: A Guide to Changing the World, page 91)

You might think this kind of altruism is reckless, I think giving malaria nets to people whose problems we don't know is reckless. All charity is risky and reckless because it requires involving yourself and your material goods in the well-being of another who may terribly misuse it - making you their accomplice.

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.

"homeless woman lucky to hock diamond ring for 5% of its value before someone just cuts her finger off for it. 95% of major charitable donation goes to shady pawn shop owner: social justice activists awed and inspired"

The whole anecdote reads like bragging about doing altruism in the most ineffective way possible.

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