How much work would a network net if a network could work nets?
Ugh.
I have to say, I'm coming around to the view that just-throw-money at things is looking better.
To put it in finance terms, if a (literal) helicopter drop happened in a third-world place, with the credible expectation of another one, and another, we'd see a massive build up of thug and counter-thug, some nets getting to people, sometimes, and a formation of nation-states, kinda like we have here at home.
More efficient, at least.
I am avoiding the pun on porpoise. It is warmer than anything else to snuggle with at the moment.
I thought it was interesting that the problem appears to be purely scale. The people themselves have been highly competent before and seem to be working the problem. The situation on the ground hasn't substantially changed (from my quick read). It is precisely scale that is confounding them. That's interesting.
The snark in the OP doesn't make sense. One charity having scale problems doesn't make it any less amazing to make a ton of money and give it to charity. Does that make me smarmy?
@3 - yes, on the ground, there is a lot that people could do, if only.
Everyone looks for a magic bullet. The reality is infrastructure. Clean water. Good septic in homes. Homes, for that matter, sometimes. Reliable food. Then we can talk about electricity, and how small groups of people can build things out of metal for themselves.
Cell phones seem to actually fix one part of it, in a magic bullet sense - coordination at distance really has fixed some problems for a lot of folks.
Most still have to shit where they eat, in other words, but some can individually build a house where they don't.
@4 You aren't smarmy. You are confused. Giving money to a charity != fixing problems in the lives of the people you are ostensably attempting to help. It is complicated.
Tithing, on the other hand, is well understood.
It may well have been the best choice -- it just isn't the best choice at this moment, since there's a temporary problem in setting up distribution for more nets.
As 3 and 4 say, it's just a scale issue, and it's the sort of thing that's going to happen periodically with any really awesome but hard-to-scale charity. Solution is to give to a different awesome but hard-to-scale charity. (I was planning to give to AMF, but instead gave $2000 to Deworm the World when I saw the change.)
At scale, would you say a food problem is more redi-mix? Just go down to the, oh, wait...
I'm sorry if I'm posting a lot. This matters to me.
Infrastructures matter. Air dropping shitloads of nets might seem like a clever in-30-years it will work. But we can build roads now. We can drop factories, refineries, now. Cf., Iraq.
Does anyone else read the post title to be about LB's sex life?
9: Human capital is hugely important too. And human capital exists only in a particular substrate called humans. And humans who are sick with malaria or TB can't contribute as much as humans who aren't.
The whole point of efficient charity is that it is stupid that while the most efficient charities are underfunded, people are giving to less efficient charities instead.
Fully funding the efficient charities is not an obstacle; it is the goddamn victory condition.
Well, the short-term one, at least. The long-term one is to radically reduce human suffering.
Isn't the scale issue exacerbated by the hefty reporting requirements and lack of ability/willingness to partner with other groups on various organisational issues, both of which were things GiveWell actively promoted AMF for having? I mean, that's a deeper problem, I think, than just "we can't scale".
12: I think you've got it almost perfectly, except that I suspect that the shortcomings are related. I think AMF could easily set their organization up exactly as they wanted when it was small, because limiting scope to getting nets and not bothering about delivery or distribution costs is reasonable if the quantities are small. The same is true for reporting - it could be the job of a single, very dedicated volunteer to generate reports. I suspect that when they were inundated with money they hadn't thought about what they might be able to do once the "easy" regions had been served. They should probably have been thinking about this earlier - establishing contacts both in the countries they wanted to serve and with other NGOs that have established distribution networks. I get the sense from the Givewell piece that AMF isn't exactly ready and willing to team with other groups because of the compromise it entails. Some folks get stubborn about purity.
Some folks get stubborn about purity.
My read between the lines was that the head of AMF is a bit of a rigid type who expects everyone to bend to his way of doing things and as such can't effectively work with other organizations. A lot of people setting out to save the world are like that. Obviously neither Givewell nor AMF have anything to gain by airing dirty laundry, but I suspect that the people AMF has attempted to work with would have a few choice words about attitudes and arrogance.
With $10 million, couldn't you build some mosquito-net factories at the periphery of the most benighted zones, staff them and buy a bunch of the raw materials? Then give them away or sell them at cost or a little of both. At this point, doesn't everybody pretty much agree that the "airdrop-and-blow" model of NGO interventions in various places, but especially in Africa, is doomed to failure? I'm not the biggest fan of industrialization, but you can't eat your cake and have it too. If we want to figure out some way to elevate poor, rural Africans to a better standard of living, the Santa Claus method is about 180 degrees ass-backwards from where we should start. What the fuck is going on in Lagos, a huge conurbation of 20 millions or more, right now? I don't know, you don't know, and yet people seem to feel they can prescribe some antidote for bad things happening in some little shitheel village out back-of-beyond. It's crazy.
So... uh... a lot of people are saying things like "build roads" and "build factories..." or build dams and such... we have tried that shit already. In many countries. It didn't work in almost any of them.
187: Very true. Our record of development aid is rather decidedly less stellar elsewhere.
So, yeah, not impossible or anything. Just not working *these days.*
The snark in the OP doesn't make sense. One charity having scale problems doesn't make it any less amazing to make a ton of money and give it to charity. Does that make me smarmy?
No, and it's a valid point, but part of the justification these people were giving for their approach was that they would use the sort of in-depth analysis of effectiveness that GiveWell represents to identify the very best ways to spend the money to maximize the benefits from it. What this incident shows, as GiveWell is very clear about in its post, is that there are a still a lot of kinks to be worked out in that approach.
And on this specific issue I think 12-14 get it right. AMF seems to have a innovative way of viewing the need for malaria nets and how to meet it that impressed GiveWell, but once they got all this money from their GiveWell recommendation they were forced to move up to a scale that is dominated by more established organizations with different approaches, and they don't seem to have been very good at adapting to that.
I was unaware that AMF did anything but run bowling alleys.
If you're aid intervention requires regular and expensive maintenance, spare parts, foreign expertise,
and is susceptible to sabotage . . . it probably won't work. The experts leave, the maintenance don't get done, the spare parts cost too much or get stolen en route, etc. As far as I can tell, development needs to maximize simple and unbreakable technologies. I don't see the problem with flooding the market with more cheap bed nets, bicycles, cell phones, shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows, shoes, etc etc. Even if the recipients turn around and sell them for cash, at least someone will benefit. What good is a shovel if you're not digging? What good is a wheelbarrow if you're not working? Forget the accountants, the controls, the double blind bullshit. And no roads or hospitals or anything else that costs money to repair or maintain. Just durable capital equipment that doesn't need to be plugged in.
22: Running bowling alleys leaves a lot to spare.
Anyway, I didn't really mean the OP to be harshly critical of AMF, or even of those income-maximizing philanthropists. (Slightly critical, yes, but just because they were so self-righteous before. It's not like they're doing any particular harm even if they're not doing as much good as they thought.) I just thought the GiveWell post was a really interesting and thoughtful discussion of the complications that arise from this kind of effort.
Maybe part of the problem in aid comes from trying to solve the hardest cases. It might be better to encourage the already prosperous in order to ultimately help the worst cases. Africans will often prefer to drape the bed net over their goats instead of their children. That's not an entirely crazy choice, alhtough it drives the donors insane.
Shorter version: the wonder of compound interest hasn't got off the ground. That's part of the reason why the poor see little reason to build wealth. Building hospitals and schools doesn't address that problem. But I should make clear, if it isn't already, that I know very little about this particular topic, other than reading about Jeff Sachs and his misguided plans.
It's fair to say that the difficulty of knowing what charities are best is an argument against the income-maximizing approach. Just not a very strong one.
The problem with buy a cow or buy a chicken programs is that the cows and chickens get eaten. It's no different than cash charity. You can't do anything with a shovel except shovel. Or bash somebody over the head, I suppose.
28: Sure, and it's not like it doesn't affect other approaches as well, especially those like "work (or volunteer) for a charity" that involve work rather than money as the means of helping. But some of these guys were talking like GiveWell etc. had solved that problem through metrics and data collection and so forth, and the only remaining issue was how to maximize the amount of money they could give. Turns out it's more complicated than that.
Also maybe it turns out (a) Western technocratic interventions are inappropriate and ineffectual in the context of other societies and (b) an unequal world system requires a political response, not apolitical charity.
Right, those are also plausible conclusions to draw. GiveWell doesn't actually draw them, but then of course they wouldn't.
Malaria has declined significantly since 2000. That's not a success?
32 -- I think it's interesting though that even from within the context of the GiveWell project, and just applying the kind of metrics they care about, you can start to see the cracks emerging.
34: Yeah, I think it actually speaks quite well of GiveWell that they're sufficiently honest and committed to applying their standards consistently to point out problems like this that potentially cast doubt on their approach.
Africans will often prefer to drape the bed net over their goats instead of their children.
Do you have any evidence for this statement?
I haven't heard of the situation in 26, using nets over goats, but use of insecticide-treated bed nets for fishing is fairly common and well-documented.
I tripped over the words "often" and "prefer."
Let's leave Abel out of this. He's suffered enough.
Someone keeps putting mosquito nets on his goats, for one thing.
Re goats and nets, it's an anecdote in The Idealist by Nina Munk. "Often" may be an overstatement, swap in "Somali goat herders" for "Africans." BTW, highly recommend the book, great read.
OT: I put this in this dead thread because obviously: more bang for the buck.
I logged into my MD Health Connection account to check, again, the status of my application for an ACA exchange health insurance plan.
How do you parse the term "disposed" in the following:
The status of your application is Disposed.
On Friday, it said the status was Pending. That word I understand. "Disposed", though: I'm supposing it means processed. (Strange use of the word, and I can't really make out how it's appropriate, but am I grasping its intended sense correctly, d'you think?)
I on the one hand want to know the status of my damn application, but on the other hand am a little mystified why anyone would choose that term for the various categories of application status. Maybe it means a standard sort of thing in application land.
Google seems to suggest that in a legal setting it's typical for a status of a case to either be "pending" or "disposed" and that the latter just means resolved. I agree that it's bizarre usage here.
That's right about the legal usage: disposed means "this court is done with this case", with no implication about what happened. But I wouldn't know what to think about it in an application context: it sounds uncomfortably negative.
Oh, you googled! Right, it's resolved. That would not necessarily mean "approved" (application), I imagine, but still, progress is being made.
Really dumb of them to use that term on the MD exchange site, as any number of people are going to think it means that their application has been thrown in the trash.
47 to 45. 46: Yes, the jury's still out on the, er, disposition of the application. Dreadful communication skills here, is my thought, but this is possibly the best a bureaucratic machine can do.
45, 46 -- law french strikes again.
Meanwhile, more snow here than anticipated: 2 inches had been forecast, and we're up to 5 inches at this point. I'm figuring on calling it a snow day for work tomorrow, as it's now turning to sleet ("icy pellets"), which, nah, not into driving tomorrow morning.
No sign of a single snow plow or sand truck as yet, which means everyone was caught off guard.
That is an amazingly bad choice of words. Let us ask for prayer now.
We were supposed to get more snow but only got two inches. Went for a walk in the snow and saw a chicken hawk kill a pigeon about four feet from me.
My son insists it was a falcon that made the kill, but it was too big and not grey.
Just heard some poor sap trying to get out of his driveway, in his car. Not happening. Way total spinning out helplessly on the ice. I suppose I should call my work partner later and tell him not to expect me tomorrow.
There's homemade soup on the horizon for this evening, assuming the electricity holds out, which so far it's not so bad as to think that.
Meanwhile yet again, this is a really interesting piece on the way in which partisan gridlock in Congress enriches the 1%.
53: Possibly a male falcon, or tiercel, so-called bec--I'm boring you, right?
44: Maybe they meant "Dispossessed" and you'll be on the next rocket to Anarres!
We were supposed to get more snow but only got two inches. Went for a walk in the snow and saw a chicken hawk kill a pigeon about four feet from me.
This almost belongs in the funk thread. You'd have to tighten up the second sentence.
Whee, snow. I've just landed in a mildly snowy Chicago, hopefully just long enough to connect to a flight going farther west. Took much longer than usual thanks to huge headwinds.
Also on the topic of health insurance bang for one's buck . . .
This post by Harold Pollack does an excellent job of making a familiar and very important argument about Health Insurance. Emphasis mine.
Economic intuition suggests that Harold Pollack and Ross Douthat alike would use care more efficiently if we had more skin in the game, if we were less comprehensively insured. Sure enough, non-poor participants in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment used roughly one-third less care when they were enrolled in something akin to a catastrophic plan than did their counterparts who were enrolled in more generous plans. Despite their reduced service use, participants in the catastrophic plan also appeared, on average, to be just as healthy. Such findings provide a powerful argument for catastrophic plans. (Recent results from the Oregon Medicaid experiment are another matter.)
The cracks in this argument become more noticeable when one shifts attention from the typical insured person to the typical insurance dollar spent for patient care, particularly when one considers the vulnerable populations overrepresented among public insurance recipients.
...
These distributional realities hold especially true among poor people. Figure 1 shows 2012 data for Illinois's 3.2 million Medicaid recipients, ranked by percentile from lowest to highest expenditure. The top line shows cumulative Medicaid spending. The bottom bars show average annual expenditures in dollars. (If you look closely, you'll notice straight lines where I interpolated between available data points.)
The bottom 72 percent of Illinois Medicaid recipients account for 10 percent of total program spending. Average annual expenditures in this group were about $564, virtually invisible on the chart. We can't save much money through any incentive system aimed at the typical Medicaid recipient. We spend too little on the bottom 80 percent to get much back from that. We probably spend too little on most of these people, anyway. For the bulk of Medicaid beneficiaries, cost control is less important than improved prevention, health maintenance and access to basic medical and dental services. spent for patient care, particularly when one considers the vulnerable populations overrepresented among public insurance recipients.