5 ms·

Why we need data on what the poorest think

40 points by jmadsen 11y ago

HiYaBarbie 11y ago
Have we got enough data on whether Aid works, though? Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Do our welfare systems lift people out of poverty? For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different!
- Udo 11y ago
  > For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. Some of them might need this on a temporary basis, some might never be able to provide for themselves, and some are right in the middle where a separate kind of support (for example sponsored re-training) would enable them to transition into independence eventually. It's a complex spectrum. There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. > But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different It depends a lot on what is being done with that money. Traditionally, large-scale aid is actually flowing back to first world contractors tasked with construction projects that are of little use to the people they're supposedly for. Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. It's difficult to find the correct modality that alleviates these issues across the board. Addressing just one of these at a time is essentially futile, because problems in the other areas will prevent help projects from yielding sustainable results.
  - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
    > The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. We've been meeting their "immediate" needs for decades now. When do they stop being immediate? > There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. Well, how exactly do I have an obligation to support some African person I don't know and will never even meet? Not that I have a choice in the matter now, but would it be unethical of me not to send my money to Africa to support whoever ends up with it? Would that work the other way round? Suppose I developed some "immediate needs". Would Africans have a moral obligation to send money my way? Obviously for there to be a moral obligation on my part, it would have to apply to all other people too. Otherwise some people would be more equal than others. > Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. Yeah, I know. But.. maybe our governments don't, judging by how they just keep throwing billions of dollars of our money at the local warlords etc? :D There are at least two different ways Aid could be "working". > The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. Yes, and again, while that's certainly unfortunate, why and how is it my problem, let alone to the extent that money should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? The worse off a country is, the more egregiously it's been looted by its rulers.
    - infosample 11y ago
      > should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? You don't see irony in that statement? America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. In general, you should clean up the mess you made. But when your meddling makes things worse, I agree, leave Africa alone finally.
      - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
        > America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. You don't see the fallacy in yours? I have never "hurt Africa", nor have I ever "made a mess" there, so I have no reparations to make. Please don't tell me I'm complicit in hurting Africa because of some piece of paper I may have dropped into a voting box. First, I don't vote because it's pointless, and second, I'm not even from the US (or any other Imperial country).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- onion2k 11y ago
  Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Much of the aid given to African nations over the past 30 years has been to keep them alive rather than resolve any problems in the long term. You can't raise people out of chronic poverty if they're dead. And, as it is, that aid has had a massive impact. In the 1980s Ethopia was ravished by droughts, famine, and a terrible civil war. Aid kept the people from dying, and 25 years on the country is now a democratic republic with one of the largest economies in East Africa that's still growing at around 7%. The country is far from 'perfect' but it's in a hell of a lot better shape today than it ever has been.
  - mgalka 11y ago
    There has actually been a lot of money wasted because people rushed in without making sure they were helping. Some people argue we have actually made things worse by imposing our solutions. http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-experts-by-william-easterly.html?referrer= http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-ex...
- Gravityloss 11y ago
  Hans Rosling always presents data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo
- venomsnake 11y ago
  The best we can do to help africa is remove food tarrifs in the west and remove agricultural subsidies. Feel free to implement it.
mgalka 11y ago
Reminds me of the playpump disaster, everyone assuming they know whats best for the poor. http://unitedexplanations.org/english/2012/03/22/the-story-of-playpumps-merry-go-rounds-water-and-failures-in-development-aid/ http://unitedexplanations.org/english/2012/03/22/the-story-o...
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Am I suffering from 20:20 hindsight, or was playpump an obviously bad idea from the very start?
  - cynicalkane 11y ago
    From the perspective of a certain kind of person, helping the poor has a strong appeal in that it's a way to feel like a good person. To put in a big effort that is appealing--children playing, women saved from work, water for free--is a victory, even if it was obviously doomed to failure from the start, because you have demonstrated to others, and to yourself, that you are a Good Person who cares about these things. Once you realize charity is more about this instinct than producing maximal good, the irrational charitable actions of others begin to seem more rational. Not every person is this way but it's easy to see how these bad ideas can take root once they have a critical mass of appeal and influence in an in-group. Many do-gooders--many people in general--have really never got the tools to think about physical or economic considerations, and can't distinguish between a correct naysayer and an incorrect one. So, under the influence of a highly appealing idea, even things that should seem obvious (like the laws of physical mechanics, or local socioeconomic considerations) are hard to distinguish as correct or incorrect. Critically, they are an obstacle to being a Good Person, and therefore probably wrong.
    - jawbone3 11y ago
      I like how you invent a need to pose as a good person that is rationally maximised to explain irrational behaviour, rather than accept that not all human behaviour is rational. Of course you can always reframe irrationality into a hidden-variable theory, I just don't think it's very helpful.
oneJob 11y ago
Because, we can't trust poor people to make good decisions. Otherwise, we'd empower them rather than clean up after them. Given that we have enough money to not be living hand to mouth, we make better decisions. That was sarcasm. Best piece I've come across on this topic, with applications even past development aid into social aid and other issues, is: https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...
JesperRavn 11y ago
Do medical providers focus primarily on how people feel they should be treated, or clinical outcomes? Does the FDA ask people whether the would like to live longer before crafting its dietary advice? Do macroeconomists ask how important jobs are to people before trying to prevent unemployment? A focus on measurable improvements (which the article itself states claims is a problem) is not strong evidence of supercilious, out of touch bureaucracy. It is simply a way of doing things that often makes a lot of sense. Also anyone familiar with the World Bank/IMF will know that there are quotas for jobs based on nationality, which favor donor countries, and also developing countries. So it's not like these organizations are devoid of input from developing nations, although the workers from these countries may not have been among the poorest. Finally the one concrete example of why surveys could be useful was a bit odd. It went: Consider the recent vogue for ‘empowerment’ programmes. On the face of it, they make sense only if people don’t already feel like the captains of their own destinies. The only empowerment programs I could find online were for women's empowerment. I think that very few people would agree with the logic that if 80% of people feel in control of their destinies, then we don't need women's empowerment programs. No amount of waving magic intersectionality wands is going to make this reasoning make sense.
ilaksh 11y ago
Here's the problem: elitism which includes rampant racism and classism. When the vast majority of most countries is relatively poor compared to some group at the top or some group of countries at the top, this is a fundamental structural problem. Deep down, racism and Social Darwinism are extremely popular. These false beliefs are used to rationalize structural inequality and prevent any fundamental systems changes from being made.

40 points by jmadsen 11y ago

Have we got enough data on whether Aid works, though? Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Do our welfare systems lift people out of poverty? For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different!

Udo 11y ago
> For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. Some of them might need this on a temporary basis, some might never be able to provide for themselves, and some are right in the middle where a separate kind of support (for example sponsored re-training) would enable them to transition into independence eventually. It's a complex spectrum. There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. > But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different It depends a lot on what is being done with that money. Traditionally, large-scale aid is actually flowing back to first world contractors tasked with construction projects that are of little use to the people they're supposedly for. Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. It's difficult to find the correct modality that alleviates these issues across the board. Addressing just one of these at a time is essentially futile, because problems in the other areas will prevent help projects from yielding sustainable results.
- HiYaBarbie 11y ago
  > The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. We've been meeting their "immediate" needs for decades now. When do they stop being immediate? > There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. Well, how exactly do I have an obligation to support some African person I don't know and will never even meet? Not that I have a choice in the matter now, but would it be unethical of me not to send my money to Africa to support whoever ends up with it? Would that work the other way round? Suppose I developed some "immediate needs". Would Africans have a moral obligation to send money my way? Obviously for there to be a moral obligation on my part, it would have to apply to all other people too. Otherwise some people would be more equal than others. > Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. Yeah, I know. But.. maybe our governments don't, judging by how they just keep throwing billions of dollars of our money at the local warlords etc? :D There are at least two different ways Aid could be "working". > The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. Yes, and again, while that's certainly unfortunate, why and how is it my problem, let alone to the extent that money should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? The worse off a country is, the more egregiously it's been looted by its rulers.
  - infosample 11y ago
    > should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? You don't see irony in that statement? America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. In general, you should clean up the mess you made. But when your meddling makes things worse, I agree, leave Africa alone finally.
    - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
      > America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. You don't see the fallacy in yours? I have never "hurt Africa", nor have I ever "made a mess" there, so I have no reparations to make. Please don't tell me I'm complicit in hurting Africa because of some piece of paper I may have dropped into a voting box. First, I don't vote because it's pointless, and second, I'm not even from the US (or any other Imperial country).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
onion2k 11y ago
Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Much of the aid given to African nations over the past 30 years has been to keep them alive rather than resolve any problems in the long term. You can't raise people out of chronic poverty if they're dead. And, as it is, that aid has had a massive impact. In the 1980s Ethopia was ravished by droughts, famine, and a terrible civil war. Aid kept the people from dying, and 25 years on the country is now a democratic republic with one of the largest economies in East Africa that's still growing at around 7%. The country is far from 'perfect' but it's in a hell of a lot better shape today than it ever has been.
- mgalka 11y ago
  There has actually been a lot of money wasted because people rushed in without making sure they were helping. Some people argue we have actually made things worse by imposing our solutions. http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-experts-by-william-easterly.html?referrer= http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-ex...
Gravityloss 11y ago
Hans Rosling always presents data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo
venomsnake 11y ago
The best we can do to help africa is remove food tarrifs in the west and remove agricultural subsidies. Feel free to implement it.

mgalka 11y ago

Reminds me of the playpump disaster, everyone assuming they know whats best for the poor. http://unitedexplanations.org/english/2012/03/22/the-story-of-playpumps-merry-go-rounds-water-and-failures-in-development-aid/ http://unitedexplanations.org/english/2012/03/22/the-story-o...

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Am I suffering from 20:20 hindsight, or was playpump an obviously bad idea from the very start?
- cynicalkane 11y ago
  From the perspective of a certain kind of person, helping the poor has a strong appeal in that it's a way to feel like a good person. To put in a big effort that is appealing--children playing, women saved from work, water for free--is a victory, even if it was obviously doomed to failure from the start, because you have demonstrated to others, and to yourself, that you are a Good Person who cares about these things. Once you realize charity is more about this instinct than producing maximal good, the irrational charitable actions of others begin to seem more rational. Not every person is this way but it's easy to see how these bad ideas can take root once they have a critical mass of appeal and influence in an in-group. Many do-gooders--many people in general--have really never got the tools to think about physical or economic considerations, and can't distinguish between a correct naysayer and an incorrect one. So, under the influence of a highly appealing idea, even things that should seem obvious (like the laws of physical mechanics, or local socioeconomic considerations) are hard to distinguish as correct or incorrect. Critically, they are an obstacle to being a Good Person, and therefore probably wrong.
  - jawbone3 11y ago
    I like how you invent a need to pose as a good person that is rationally maximised to explain irrational behaviour, rather than accept that not all human behaviour is rational. Of course you can always reframe irrationality into a hidden-variable theory, I just don't think it's very helpful.

oneJob 11y ago

Because, we can't trust poor people to make good decisions. Otherwise, we'd empower them rather than clean up after them. Given that we have enough money to not be living hand to mouth, we make better decisions. That was sarcasm. Best piece I've come across on this topic, with applications even past development aid into social aid and other issues, is: https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...

JesperRavn 11y ago

Do medical providers focus primarily on how people feel they should be treated, or clinical outcomes? Does the FDA ask people whether the would like to live longer before crafting its dietary advice? Do macroeconomists ask how important jobs are to people before trying to prevent unemployment? A focus on measurable improvements (which the article itself states claims is a problem) is not strong evidence of supercilious, out of touch bureaucracy. It is simply a way of doing things that often makes a lot of sense. Also anyone familiar with the World Bank/IMF will know that there are quotas for jobs based on nationality, which favor donor countries, and also developing countries. So it's not like these organizations are devoid of input from developing nations, although the workers from these countries may not have been among the poorest. Finally the one concrete example of why surveys could be useful was a bit odd. It went: Consider the recent vogue for ‘empowerment’ programmes. On the face of it, they make sense only if people don’t already feel like the captains of their own destinies. The only empowerment programs I could find online were for women's empowerment. I think that very few people would agree with the logic that if 80% of people feel in control of their destinies, then we don't need women's empowerment programs. No amount of waving magic intersectionality wands is going to make this reasoning make sense.

ilaksh 11y ago

Here's the problem: elitism which includes rampant racism and classism. When the vast majority of most countries is relatively poor compared to some group at the top or some group of countries at the top, this is a fundamental structural problem. Deep down, racism and Social Darwinism are extremely popular. These false beliefs are used to rationalize structural inequality and prevent any fundamental systems changes from being made.