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I know this is an unpopular opinion, but in some areas I believe it is much better to invest the money in a sustainable business selling a product rather than g
by oDot 5y ago
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but in some areas I believe it is much better to invest the money in a sustainable business selling a product rather than giving that product away. That preserves profit and loss indicators and allows decision makers to judge the value their end users are receiving.
Education can be an example of that. Making a really cheap, high quality school is much better than funding tuition in existing schools. A school that manages to retain costumers indicates that they value the school so much there's nowhere better to spend the money. However if the school is "free" they might as well just go for it even if they don't get much out of it.
- mikepurvis 5y ago> Making a really cheap, high quality school is much better than funding tuition in existing schools. But there are a lot of people working on this, including many who are already employing a "disruption" mindset. I think it's refreshing that her approach isn't dripping with that classic tech-boy hubris of looking for two seconds and deciding you need to reinvent, but is rather rooted in affirming and uplifting good work that's already going on, regardless of whether that work is bootstrapping new and better systems, or may well just be passing on the cash— which in many cases could in fact be the most effective thing to do with it: https://epar.evans.uw.edu/blog/long-term-impacts-cash-transfer-programs-what-does-evidence-say https://epar.evans.uw.edu/blog/long-term-impacts-cash-transf...
- wavefunction 5y agoI agree with you. She seems to recognize that helping people to help themselves is a better use of the funds than trying to swoop in and "save them."
- mikepurvis 5y agoIt's tough because I think in some cases there really are new things that can be done, where the volume of money in question makes it logical to start over— thinking of the Gates foundation trying to tackle malaria, or address sanitation issues around toilets. But education? Inequality? These aren't ones where some random person who hasn't been thinking about it for decades is going to come up with a radically new approach.
- zozbot234 5y agoEven the Gates foundation itself wasted quite a bit of money in funding approaches to education (like "small schools") that just didn't yield good outcomes, and were sometimes harmful.
- mikepurvis 5y agoYeah, that was one of the ones I was thinking of, I just couldn't remember the details— here it is for anyone else out of the loop: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/the-small-schools-myth.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/th...
- munk-a 5y agoThis feeling is, I think, pointing at the comparative ability for the parties involved to efficiently spend money. There is certainly one really good reason to prefer how a billionaire distributes their money - because they were able to earn a billion dollars in the first place (assuming it's not inherited - if it's inherited then just sign a check). However, I think this belief breaks down when you have organizations pre-established and familiar with efficient ways to spend money in that market - if the nation has a public school system the runners of that system will be happy to distribute those extra funds in the places that have the most need - those next few budget items that got cut because of a shortfall. I personally believe that getting rich is a combination of 30/70 skill vs. luck - without the skill you're never going to get anywhere, but a lot more folks have skill than get the chance to get insanely lucky. Letting established market participants spend that money is almost certainly going to be more efficient than trying to start a new market entrant and hope it does well.
- jasonpeacock 5y agoHow are the people who need the product going to pay for it? End users can still report on the value of the product even if they received it for free, there are many ways to evaluate effectiveness beyond P&L. Capitalism is not the answer to everything.
- doggosphere 5y agoOne problem with this that now you need expertise in building a cheap, high quality school. And how do you know your product (education) will be better than competing products? And by what metric do you compare the effectiveness of your school vs competition? "Retaining customers", so does that mean we judge a school's quality by year over year revenue growth, since that indicates customer retention?
- xqyf 5y agoI know this is an unpopular opinion, but "I know this is an unpopular opinion" adds nothing to comments but a false sense of contrarianism.