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Another option is to give it directly to poor people, no strings attached as mentioned in a recent HN article as being an effective way to use funds to help peo
by quickthrower2 9y ago
Another option is to give it directly to poor people, no strings attached as mentioned in a recent HN article as being an effective way to use funds to help people get out of poverty.
- nostrademons 9y agoGiving directly works if the primary impediment to development is a lack of capital. That's been the case in places like rural Kenya or Bangladesh, which is why organizations like GiveDirectly.org or the Grameen Bank have seen success. This is not the case in many areas of the world, and particularly not in poor pockets within developed nations. There, the barriers to development often include things like: poor educational attainment; fucked-up incentive structures; lack of physical safety & security, unenforceable property rights (leading to fucked-up incentive structures); non-existent infrastructure. Throw money at a bunch of people who know what they need to do better their lives and have the skills to do so, and you get economic development. Throw money at a bunch of people who have either no idea or no incentive to spend the money wisely, and the money trickles right back out again. (This, BTW, mirrors the startup scene pretty well. Throw a few hundred million at Google, Slack, or GitHub and you get tools that help millions of people. Throw a few hundred million at Juicero, Klinkle, or Theranos and you get a clusterfuck.)