16 ms·

The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems

88 points by kelukelugames 11y ago

cmrdporcupine 11y ago
I also wonder how much of this type of thing is rooted in the protestant evangelical cultural origins of much of our society, with its explicit missionary focus, and paradigm that the material problems of others can be solved with a message of intellectual/spiritual salvation. I grew up in a small rural evangelical church in rural Canada. A parade of missionaries were always coming through to talk about their good works in exotic places around the world, and seeking donations and support in various ways.
- musha68k 11y ago
  In my mind what you say applies to catholicism just the same. In "the west" it's been a well complementing way of lying to ourselves about our colonial schemes for a long time. There is still enough "systemic complexity" in terms of how Native Americans / First Nations ("tar sands", etc.) get treated in North America today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine
benmarks 11y ago
Wow. This resonates at several levels for me (middle aged, middle class white male in the US). I wonder how much this is influenced by the comforts of living in a relatively affluent and secure environment.
zipfle 11y ago
A bit ot, but I've found that you can tell a good engineer by whether, when you tell them about the design of something, their first response is a question or a suggestion or criticism. With good engineers it's almost always a question.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  A question - like, "How the fuck is that supposed to work? Did you even do the math?". Bringing the topic back to the article - a lot of technological non-solutions like those mentioned in the article are something that didn't make sense even on paper. My question is, how on Earth are such things getting funded? Even in humanitarian aid, is there no one with even a little background in engineering, science and sociology to tell them that "no, this shit won't work"? Or is it just like the startup industry, where the actual utility of a product is one of the least important things, because what matters (and gets funded) is for it to a) be sexy - so it grows fast, and b) have a high lock-in factor, so that customers don't escape, at least not without spreading the love some more. If so, could we please get someone else to fund aid? Also, maybe it's time for a service that would evaluate various aid-related products and business models and verify which ones make sense, and which don't. Like GiveWell, but instead of focusing on best charities, it would focus on calling out bullshit when they see it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
rubidium 11y ago
The best way to work on hard problems is to live there. For a long time. If you're interested in solving the US prison problem, live in neighborhood where many people are sent to prison. If you're interested in solving rural poverty, live in a poor rural area. Then the real issues will emerge.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I believe rather broadly that it is the community's duty to uphold the community, and that means every institution - the state, the church, the corporation, the family - has a part to play in creating a better place to live. "All they need is X" is often a misleading ideal. The further you are from your own context and culture, the less you will pick up on cues that seem small but can make all the difference in how people's behavior and environment can be changed for the better. Do people drive or walk/bus to work? Do they eat frozen food or go to the farmer's market? If they hear a bump in their house at night, is their first reaction to get their gun or 911? A wholly strong community benefits everybody. People are friendlier. Government is more trusted. Corporations can hire talent by touting their home as a pleasant alternative to the coastal city rat races. And if it works in one place, chances are people elsewhere will seek to emulate your model, instead of having it thrust upon them.
  - thex10 11y ago
    This assumes the community has a good deal of agency.
- logicallee 11y ago
  by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel. both of the mentioned companies are totally disrupting entire industries and the world, solving people's problems in transportation and in hospitality in ways the world never saw at scale before. I would venture to say that your advice would result in these solutions not coming into existence: with respect, I think your suggestion is not only not necessary, but doesn't work and may prevent certain solutions from coming into existence.
ceras 11y ago
I'm disappointed that this article excluded big groups making measurable improvements to "other people"'s lives, like The Gates Foundation and charities recommended by GiveWell (which include GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation, and more). In fact, the author went one step further and calls out the harm caused by specific charitable missteps. This is unfair since missteps in charity can occur all the same at home: you need to follow economic and social research to avoid them, but once you do you'll be well set to be at worst neutral. I get where the article is coming from--there are plenty of complex issues at home that we're far more in-tune to understand and solve--but the content is biased against supporting groups that we know how to help in huge ways, and that Americans actually neglect in favor of close-to-home charities anyway (donations don't tend to leave US borders).
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I agree they could've mentioned them. The Gates Foundation, and GiveWell + their recommended charities are basically an exception to the rule. I agree with the gist of the article though - you can do very good by donating to AMF or GiveDirectly, but if you want to go to help somewhere, consider a place where you'll have it easier to do something, as opposed to just looking good on Instagram. Doubly so if you want to be a social entrepreneur. Unless you take extra care with your idea and work to get to know the population, a much better way to help would be to start a normal business, and funnel excess profits to GiveWell's current favourites.
mrmcd 11y ago
Reminds me of when I came across an article about this charity last year: https://cleantheworld.org/ https://cleantheworld.org/ I'm sure they are good people with good intentions, but everything about it just annoyed me to no end. Aside from the unintentionally condescending aspect of literally giving the world's poor our half used personal cleaning products, how could this possibly be efficient from either a monetary cost or energy use point of view? Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility. Then once they have the soap, there doesn't even appear to be an on the ground logistical operation for distributing it to people efficiently. Instead volunteers go on trips where they apparently just show up and hand out soap to random villages and towns, resulting in tons of unfortunate website and fundraising photo ops of smiling white volunteers handing bars of soap to poor black and brown kids. Also, sometimes they wear super hero capes: https://cleantheworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/medium-033_dsc_0092-jpg https://cleantheworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/medium-... So like the article said, this all seems simple, straightforward, and helpful on paper. But issues like clean water, sewage treatment, personal hygiene and public health are complex engineer and policy problems even in rich countries, and doubly so in ones with very limited resources. Just air dropping a bunch of recycled soap probably doesn't achieve much beyond making you feel good.
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  > Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility. Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need. But this thing you linked seems especially bad, among the many awful "charities".
  - stinkytaco 11y ago
    >Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need. And potentially sink that money into large, corrupt systems (such as some 3rd world governments) that at best use it inefficiently and at worst make the problem worse... Which is, I suppose, the point. There is no single solution, a combination of outside groups and internal tools are needed to resolve systemic problems. The can't be fixed exclusively from the outside.
Laaw 11y ago
This article is pessimistic at best, and downright wrong at worst. Why can't a 22 yr. old college graduate from Uganda be the one to finally break the logjam in the US about gun control? Maybe different perspectives will find solutions to problems we haven't come up with. The Ugandan man/woman might get hired by one of those "nonprofit groups" and actually solve this problem once and for all. Who knows? Why can't a 22 yr. old college graduate from the US be the one to finally figure out how to get cheap water to remote villages in Uganda? Why must it be someone from Uganda? A then-40 something "college dropout" (we all know how irrelevant that is) from the US (Bill Gates) went to Africa and started working on the malaria problem. Do you think he did it all by himself? A bunch of 22 yr. old college grads helped him, along with a lot of others. Is this satire? It might be satire, because of how reductionist this article actually is, by claiming the problem is "simply" intractable.
- stinkytaco 11y ago
  Though I don't think it's well argued, I agree with the general principle: problems are generally much more complex than they seem from the outside. It's interesting that you mention gun control, because if I talk to my European relatives their answer is "make them illegal" as if Americans are too stupid to work this out on their own. The fact that you even say "solution" to something not everyone agrees is even a problem is an example of how difficult policy is to make in the US. I deal in my day job with a large homeless population and I can tell you the vast majority of policy discussions I have rotate around "what is the problem?" before we even begin to discuss solutions. And that's not bringing in the people themselves, who may not see the situation as a problem at all. So I agree that the article is a bit provincial, but I also agree that a very in depth understanding on issues and their complexity is often required, and very difficult to achieve from the outside. Incidentally, this is why, at least in my experience, federal programs are so inefficient compared to state programs which are, in turn inefficient compared to local ones. This isn't to say that they don't all have their place, especially when it comes to enforcing consistent standards in a large geographical region, but it's definitely the people closest to an issue that have the biggest impact.
  - Laaw 11y ago
xixi77 11y ago
Honestly, regardless of whether s/he stays home or goes somewhere, no one -- neither in Uganda nor in Indiana -- is going to consider a 22yo new employee as a source of expertise. She might stick to it and in the process learn something about what works, what doesn't, and what are the real issues, at which point she will be in a position to make better decisions; or she might go back home, having provided some much-needed, relatively cheap help to a charity, in exchange for experience and an opportunity to see more of the world. I don't see anyone losing here. And this experience is really a prerequisite for the commitment and analysis that he suggests the perspective worker does -- which again applies at home just as well. Now, the question of more vs less efficient charities and non-profits is a valid one; most of them are not headed by fresh college graduates though, so I don't see how the article helps there. I also suspect that overstating success while fundraising is not an experience unique to charity workers abroad :)
digler999 11y ago
Pretty insulting to call people's compassion a delusion. Fine. I'll never give a cent, nor even two blinks, to any African charity. I'll save my money and spend it on ME in my fat american consumerist culture, lest I become "delusional".
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  I think the article's point is to actually try to really understand the problem and not just jump in with a quick solution.
OrwellianChild 11y ago
For those who find this interesting and want to spend a bit more time on figuring out the most impactful ways to help in the developing world, I highly recommend you check out Doing Good Better [1] by Will MacAskill. He is part of the Effective Altruism movement and the book does a great job of breaking down the relative impact of different charities, whether to “earn to give” or participate directly through volunteerism, etc. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Difference/dp/1592409105/ http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Difference...
stillsut 11y ago
But it's not "Other People's Problems". No idealistic 22 year old is trying to solve the deflationary environment in Japan. The problems that are [potentially] open to solution are where post-scarcity economies don't exist. The problem is literally scarcity of resources; by getting more stuff you raise the standard of living. To complicate this basic proposition into a hand wringing essay on Medium is to itself go all non-profit hipster, just one meta level up from the humanitarian tinderiste. Here's a simple test to see if your able to focus on resource scarcity problems: Do you think gun reform in the US is a good analogy to your charity's mission?

88 points by kelukelugames 11y ago

I also wonder how much of this type of thing is rooted in the protestant evangelical cultural origins of much of our society, with its explicit missionary focus, and paradigm that the material problems of others can be solved with a message of intellectual/spiritual salvation. I grew up in a small rural evangelical church in rural Canada. A parade of missionaries were always coming through to talk about their good works in exotic places around the world, and seeking donations and support in various ways.

musha68k 11y ago
In my mind what you say applies to catholicism just the same. In "the west" it's been a well complementing way of lying to ourselves about our colonial schemes for a long time. There is still enough "systemic complexity" in terms of how Native Americans / First Nations ("tar sands", etc.) get treated in North America today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine

benmarks 11y ago

Wow. This resonates at several levels for me (middle aged, middle class white male in the US). I wonder how much this is influenced by the comforts of living in a relatively affluent and secure environment.

zipfle 11y ago

A bit ot, but I've found that you can tell a good engineer by whether, when you tell them about the design of something, their first response is a question or a suggestion or criticism. With good engineers it's almost always a question.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
A question - like, "How the fuck is that supposed to work? Did you even do the math?". Bringing the topic back to the article - a lot of technological non-solutions like those mentioned in the article are something that didn't make sense even on paper. My question is, how on Earth are such things getting funded? Even in humanitarian aid, is there no one with even a little background in engineering, science and sociology to tell them that "no, this shit won't work"? Or is it just like the startup industry, where the actual utility of a product is one of the least important things, because what matters (and gets funded) is for it to a) be sexy - so it grows fast, and b) have a high lock-in factor, so that customers don't escape, at least not without spreading the love some more. If so, could we please get someone else to fund aid? Also, maybe it's time for a service that would evaluate various aid-related products and business models and verify which ones make sense, and which don't. Like GiveWell, but instead of focusing on best charities, it would focus on calling out bullshit when they see it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

rubidium 11y ago

The best way to work on hard problems is to live there. For a long time. If you're interested in solving the US prison problem, live in neighborhood where many people are sent to prison. If you're interested in solving rural poverty, live in a poor rural area. Then the real issues will emerge.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
I believe rather broadly that it is the community's duty to uphold the community, and that means every institution - the state, the church, the corporation, the family - has a part to play in creating a better place to live. "All they need is X" is often a misleading ideal. The further you are from your own context and culture, the less you will pick up on cues that seem small but can make all the difference in how people's behavior and environment can be changed for the better. Do people drive or walk/bus to work? Do they eat frozen food or go to the farmer's market? If they hear a bump in their house at night, is their first reaction to get their gun or 911? A wholly strong community benefits everybody. People are friendlier. Government is more trusted. Corporations can hire talent by touting their home as a pleasant alternative to the coastal city rat races. And if it works in one place, chances are people elsewhere will seek to emulate your model, instead of having it thrust upon them.
- thex10 11y ago
  This assumes the community has a good deal of agency.
logicallee 11y ago
by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel. both of the mentioned companies are totally disrupting entire industries and the world, solving people's problems in transportation and in hospitality in ways the world never saw at scale before. I would venture to say that your advice would result in these solutions not coming into existence: with respect, I think your suggestion is not only not necessary, but doesn't work and may prevent certain solutions from coming into existence.

ceras 11y ago

I'm disappointed that this article excluded big groups making measurable improvements to "other people"'s lives, like The Gates Foundation and charities recommended by GiveWell (which include GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation, and more). In fact, the author went one step further and calls out the harm caused by specific charitable missteps. This is unfair since missteps in charity can occur all the same at home: you need to follow economic and social research to avoid them, but once you do you'll be well set to be at worst neutral. I get where the article is coming from--there are plenty of complex issues at home that we're far more in-tune to understand and solve--but the content is biased against supporting groups that we know how to help in huge ways, and that Americans actually neglect in favor of close-to-home charities anyway (donations don't tend to leave US borders).

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I agree they could've mentioned them. The Gates Foundation, and GiveWell + their recommended charities are basically an exception to the rule. I agree with the gist of the article though - you can do very good by donating to AMF or GiveDirectly, but if you want to go to help somewhere, consider a place where you'll have it easier to do something, as opposed to just looking good on Instagram. Doubly so if you want to be a social entrepreneur. Unless you take extra care with your idea and work to get to know the population, a much better way to help would be to start a normal business, and funnel excess profits to GiveWell's current favourites.

mrmcd 11y ago

Reminds me of when I came across an article about this charity last year: https://cleantheworld.org/ https://cleantheworld.org/ I'm sure they are good people with good intentions, but everything about it just annoyed me to no end. Aside from the unintentionally condescending aspect of literally giving the world's poor our half used personal cleaning products, how could this possibly be efficient from either a monetary cost or energy use point of view? Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility. Then once they have the soap, there doesn't even appear to be an on the ground logistical operation for distributing it to people efficiently. Instead volunteers go on trips where they apparently just show up and hand out soap to random villages and towns, resulting in tons of unfortunate website and fundraising photo ops of smiling white volunteers handing bars of soap to poor black and brown kids. Also, sometimes they wear super hero capes: https://cleantheworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/medium-033_dsc_0092-jpg https://cleantheworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/medium-... So like the article said, this all seems simple, straightforward, and helpful on paper. But issues like clean water, sewage treatment, personal hygiene and public health are complex engineer and policy problems even in rich countries, and doubly so in ones with very limited resources. Just air dropping a bunch of recycled soap probably doesn't achieve much beyond making you feel good.

goodJobWalrus 11y ago
> Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility. Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need. But this thing you linked seems especially bad, among the many awful "charities".
- stinkytaco 11y ago
  >Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need. And potentially sink that money into large, corrupt systems (such as some 3rd world governments) that at best use it inefficiently and at worst make the problem worse... Which is, I suppose, the point. There is no single solution, a combination of outside groups and internal tools are needed to resolve systemic problems. The can't be fixed exclusively from the outside.

Laaw 11y ago

This article is pessimistic at best, and downright wrong at worst. Why can't a 22 yr. old college graduate from Uganda be the one to finally break the logjam in the US about gun control? Maybe different perspectives will find solutions to problems we haven't come up with. The Ugandan man/woman might get hired by one of those "nonprofit groups" and actually solve this problem once and for all. Who knows? Why can't a 22 yr. old college graduate from the US be the one to finally figure out how to get cheap water to remote villages in Uganda? Why must it be someone from Uganda? A then-40 something "college dropout" (we all know how irrelevant that is) from the US (Bill Gates) went to Africa and started working on the malaria problem. Do you think he did it all by himself? A bunch of 22 yr. old college grads helped him, along with a lot of others. Is this satire? It might be satire, because of how reductionist this article actually is, by claiming the problem is "simply" intractable.

stinkytaco 11y ago
Though I don't think it's well argued, I agree with the general principle: problems are generally much more complex than they seem from the outside. It's interesting that you mention gun control, because if I talk to my European relatives their answer is "make them illegal" as if Americans are too stupid to work this out on their own. The fact that you even say "solution" to something not everyone agrees is even a problem is an example of how difficult policy is to make in the US. I deal in my day job with a large homeless population and I can tell you the vast majority of policy discussions I have rotate around "what is the problem?" before we even begin to discuss solutions. And that's not bringing in the people themselves, who may not see the situation as a problem at all. So I agree that the article is a bit provincial, but I also agree that a very in depth understanding on issues and their complexity is often required, and very difficult to achieve from the outside. Incidentally, this is why, at least in my experience, federal programs are so inefficient compared to state programs which are, in turn inefficient compared to local ones. This isn't to say that they don't all have their place, especially when it comes to enforcing consistent standards in a large geographical region, but it's definitely the people closest to an issue that have the biggest impact.
- Laaw 11y ago

xixi77 11y ago

Honestly, regardless of whether s/he stays home or goes somewhere, no one -- neither in Uganda nor in Indiana -- is going to consider a 22yo new employee as a source of expertise. She might stick to it and in the process learn something about what works, what doesn't, and what are the real issues, at which point she will be in a position to make better decisions; or she might go back home, having provided some much-needed, relatively cheap help to a charity, in exchange for experience and an opportunity to see more of the world. I don't see anyone losing here. And this experience is really a prerequisite for the commitment and analysis that he suggests the perspective worker does -- which again applies at home just as well. Now, the question of more vs less efficient charities and non-profits is a valid one; most of them are not headed by fresh college graduates though, so I don't see how the article helps there. I also suspect that overstating success while fundraising is not an experience unique to charity workers abroad :)

digler999 11y ago

Pretty insulting to call people's compassion a delusion. Fine. I'll never give a cent, nor even two blinks, to any African charity. I'll save my money and spend it on ME in my fat american consumerist culture, lest I become "delusional".

maxxxxx 11y ago
I think the article's point is to actually try to really understand the problem and not just jump in with a quick solution.

OrwellianChild 11y ago

For those who find this interesting and want to spend a bit more time on figuring out the most impactful ways to help in the developing world, I highly recommend you check out Doing Good Better [1] by Will MacAskill. He is part of the Effective Altruism movement and the book does a great job of breaking down the relative impact of different charities, whether to “earn to give” or participate directly through volunteerism, etc. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Difference/dp/1592409105/ http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Difference...

stillsut 11y ago

But it's not "Other People's Problems". No idealistic 22 year old is trying to solve the deflationary environment in Japan. The problems that are [potentially] open to solution are where post-scarcity economies don't exist. The problem is literally scarcity of resources; by getting more stuff you raise the standard of living. To complicate this basic proposition into a hand wringing essay on Medium is to itself go all non-profit hipster, just one meta level up from the humanitarian tinderiste. Here's a simple test to see if your able to focus on resource scarcity problems: Do you think gun reform in the US is a good analogy to your charity's mission?