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Development and emergency response are very different problems. $100 or even $6000 isn't useful if there's no way to get to the things you need to buy, or if lo

by nmrm2 11y ago

Development and emergency response are very different problems. $100 or even $6000 isn't useful if there's no way to get to the things you need to buy, or if local scarcity pushes prices for bare necessities obscenely high. Vaccinations, blankets and tents, food, etc. can be hard to find in a disaster-stricken area. Heck, even finding a way to get at the money can be difficult if the roads and electricity are out. (I'm not defending the Red Cross, but I would unsurprised if "just give them money" is less effective in the case of disaster relief than in the case of development.)

rosser 11y ago
I'm not defending the Red Cross... Probably a good thing, because AFAICT, they're pretty much indefensible at this point.
- pvaldes 11y ago
  I'm not having any problem and not feeling ashamed at all defending the Red Cross instead. If you just give poor people any money in Port au Prince after the earthquake, you simply atract predators that will beat and steal those people living in the streets easily, collecting all this money in the blink of an eye. Rich people in Haiti did not seem to care much for the bad luck of the poor people either.
- vijayr 11y ago
  Not sure how the non profits work, but aren't there laws to force them to publish all their fundraising data and expenses data? Last week there was an article on how a cancer nonprofit raised tens of millions of dollars, only to be swindled by the family running it. They were during it for a while before getting caught.
TylerE 11y ago
It's even worse as pumping lots of cash into a small area is only going to cause local hyper-inflation.
- rosser 11y ago
  ...only going to cause... I think this and other efforts are pretty clearly demonstrating that this doesn't necessarily happen. EDIT: Not to say it can't happen, but I'm pretty tired of this quasi-religious assertion that giving money to poor people will just inflate that money into meaninglessness, particularly when it has repeatedly not happened.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    But rapid price inflation for certain goods seems much more likely in the context of a natural disaster. Without a coordinated response, for a certain amount of time there will only be X tents reachable from the affected area, where # of people who need tents >> X. Ditto for vaccines and non-perishable food. Absent (enforced) price controls or incredibly nimble infrastructure repair, rampant price inflation for bare essentials seems more likely than not. (edit to avoid further confusion: The point of this post is simply to point out that local economies behave very differently after a disaster. In particular, if you need X of something in order for people to not die and you only have << X available (perhaps 0), then cash handouts aren't really helpful in the short-term.)
    - rosser 11y ago
      As the kids say, "pics or it didn't happen." Show me cases of price gouging for vaccines during an outbreak, or tents during a disaster or whatever. (And not just isolated assholes attempting to profiteer, either — because there's always going to be "that guy" — but systemic inflation.) Otherwise, all I'm hearing is a lot of "seems" and "shoulds", which sounds pretty belief-based to me, particularly when I keep seeing evidence to the contrary.
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        For example: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/aug/16/africa-famine-food-prices-world-bank http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/aug/16/africa-fa... Or: http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-pricing-update/ http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-pricing... (Note that inflation was systemic, because Uber basically became the entire market. Yellow cabs, which couldn't inflate their prices, just stayed home.) No matter how much economic denialism you want to engage in, you still can't magically make scarce things plentiful. Similarly, I can complain about how much my server monitoring sucks, but that doesn't mean my latency isn't high.

by nmrm2 11y ago

rosser 11y ago

I'm not defending the Red Cross... Probably a good thing, because AFAICT, they're pretty much indefensible at this point.

pvaldes 11y ago
I'm not having any problem and not feeling ashamed at all defending the Red Cross instead. If you just give poor people any money in Port au Prince after the earthquake, you simply atract predators that will beat and steal those people living in the streets easily, collecting all this money in the blink of an eye. Rich people in Haiti did not seem to care much for the bad luck of the poor people either.
vijayr 11y ago
Not sure how the non profits work, but aren't there laws to force them to publish all their fundraising data and expenses data? Last week there was an article on how a cancer nonprofit raised tens of millions of dollars, only to be swindled by the family running it. They were during it for a while before getting caught.

TylerE 11y ago

It's even worse as pumping lots of cash into a small area is only going to cause local hyper-inflation.

rosser 11y ago
...only going to cause... I think this and other efforts are pretty clearly demonstrating that this doesn't necessarily happen. EDIT: Not to say it can't happen, but I'm pretty tired of this quasi-religious assertion that giving money to poor people will just inflate that money into meaninglessness, particularly when it has repeatedly not happened.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  But rapid price inflation for certain goods seems much more likely in the context of a natural disaster. Without a coordinated response, for a certain amount of time there will only be X tents reachable from the affected area, where # of people who need tents >> X. Ditto for vaccines and non-perishable food. Absent (enforced) price controls or incredibly nimble infrastructure repair, rampant price inflation for bare essentials seems more likely than not. (edit to avoid further confusion: The point of this post is simply to point out that local economies behave very differently after a disaster. In particular, if you need X of something in order for people to not die and you only have << X available (perhaps 0), then cash handouts aren't really helpful in the short-term.)
  - rosser 11y ago
    As the kids say, "pics or it didn't happen." Show me cases of price gouging for vaccines during an outbreak, or tents during a disaster or whatever. (And not just isolated assholes attempting to profiteer, either — because there's always going to be "that guy" — but systemic inflation.) Otherwise, all I'm hearing is a lot of "seems" and "shoulds", which sounds pretty belief-based to me, particularly when I keep seeing evidence to the contrary.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      For example: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/aug/16/africa-famine-food-prices-world-bank http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/aug/16/africa-fa... Or: http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-pricing-update/ http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-pricing... (Note that inflation was systemic, because Uber basically became the entire market. Yellow cabs, which couldn't inflate their prices, just stayed home.) No matter how much economic denialism you want to engage in, you still can't magically make scarce things plentiful. Similarly, I can complain about how much my server monitoring sucks, but that doesn't mean my latency isn't high.