> But when we are presented with data that $60 can save a child from a painful death through the purchase of Malaria nets, we say no. We come up with many reaso

> But when we are presented with data that $60 can save a child from a painful death through the purchase of Malaria nets, we say no. We come up with many reasons. One very good reason involved that you didn't mention is that action at a distance like this has significant drawbacks. Since you mention mosquito nets specifically: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/02/opinion/la-oe-shah-20100502 http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/02/opinion/la-oe-shah-2... "In Africa, anti-malaria mosquito nets go unused by recipients". There are several classes of problem you completely bypass when you're dealing with a drowning child a few tens of meters away. You can anticipate and reason about outcomes in a very tight feedback loop. You don't need to worry about intermediaries, the inscrutability of your impact or about the inherently different risk profiles of immediate interventions versus those that require significant ongoing commitments (to say nothing of corruption or fraud). To put it in less-human and more-economic terms, the market for immediate interventions better meets the preconditions for efficiency. If you'd like to make remote intervention more common, perhaps you could do something to reduce the costs associated with the transactions involved, including non-financial costs associated with the opacity of the process. Many charities are already researching new structures and applying lessons learned from various trends elsewhere, like crowdfunding.