In all the discussion of Leif Wenar’s critique of Effective Altruism , I haven’t seen much mention of the central premise: that development aid is generally counterproductive (unless, perhaps, it’s delivered by wealthy surfers in their spare time). Wenar is quite clear that his argument applies just as much to official development aid and to the long-standing efforts of NGOs as to projects supported by EA. He quotes burned-out aid workers “hoping their projects were doing more good than harm.”
Wenar provides some examples of unintended consequences. For example, bednets provided to fight are sometimes diverted for use as fishing nets. And catching more fish might be bad because it could lead to overfishing (there is no actual evidence of this happening, AFAICT). This seems trivial in comparison to the lives saved by anti-malarial programs
Update Wenar’s claim about bednets, as presented by Marc Andreessen, was thoroughly refuted by Dylan Matthews in Vox earlier this year. (footnote 1 applies) End update
It’s worth pointing out that, on Wenar’s telling, a project that gave poor people proper fishing nets (exactly the kind of thing that might appeal to the coastal villagers befriended by his surfer friend) might be even worse for overfishing than the occasional diversion of bednets.
Wenar applies his critique to international aid programs. But exactly the same kind of arguments could be, and are made, against similar programs at the national level or subnational level. It’s not hard to find burned-out social workers, teachers and for that matter, university professors, who will say, after some particularly dispiriting experience, that their efforts have been worse than useless. And the political right is always eager to point out the unintended consequences of helping people. But we have plenty of evidence, most notably from the last decade of austerity, to show that not helping people is much worse.
Reading Wenar, I was particularly struck by this casual dismissal of the lifesaving effects of programs like the WHO campaign against malaria and the PEPFARs aid initiative, which I initially found quoted with approval by Brian Leiter [1]
“The claim that there is “not much to show for [aid]” is simply false. Even among the “bottom billion”—the population of countries that have experienced the weakest economic growth over the last few decades—quality of life has increased dramatically. In 1950, life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa was just 36.7 years. Now it’s 56 years, a gain of almost 50% … In reality, a tiny amount of aid has been spent, and there have been dramatic increases in the welfare of the world’s poorest people.”
Now this is pure hooey. Even aid’s biggest boosters would cringe at the implication that aid had caused a 50 percent increase in sub-Saharan life expectancies. And what follows this astonishing statement is a tangle of qualifications and irrelevancies trailing off into the footnotes. To anyone who knows even a little about aid, it’s like MacAskill has tattooed “Not Serious” on his forehead.
I’m not an expert on classical logic [2] but I can count at least three fallacies here: guilt by assocation, an argument from incredulity and a false dichotomy. First, the fact the claim being attacked is supported by someone silly like McAskill says nothing about its truth value. Second, apart from anecdotes about disgruntled aid workers, Wenar offers nothing more in rebuttal than ‘I don’t believe it’.
Third, and most importantly, even if it’s not true that all of the increase in life expectancy is due to aid, that doesn’t prove that there was no contribution. Suppose that all the aid provided since the end of colonial rule (approaching one trillion $US) had only increased African life expectancy by one year, and had achieved nothing else. That’s still at least a billion years of extra life. To achieve that same gain with medical interventions in the rich countries of the world, it would be necessary to spend at least $US50 trillion (at the margin, interventions have typically already been adopted unless they cost more than $50-100 000 per life year gained)
Why, apart from the unpopularity of people like McAskill and SBF, has this shoddy stuff been taken seriously? Attacks on aid programs have a clear appeal on the ideological extremes of right and left, and a more diffuse appeal based on sloppy reasoning. The rightwing view is that aid (whether foreign aid or domestic social welfare programs) promotes dependency among recipients, when what is needed is trade and free markets. The far-left mirror image is that aid is designed to pacify the recipients who would otherwise mobilise as a revolutionary force. The sloppy middle view, typically associated with terms like ‘band-aid’, starts from the correct premise that, in a better world, aid would not be necessary, and goes on to to the non sequitur that giving aid is inconsistent with hopes for that better world.
Finally coming to the capitalized version of Effective Altruism, it’s true that it provides a way for predatory rich people to salve their consciences. But rich predatory people have always sought such salves. It’s better to use the guilt money to give effective help to poor people than to endow elite colleges and opera companies for other rich people (see, most recently, the Sacklers). If you don’t like this conclusion, the right response is to change the system that rewards destructive behavior with massive piles of wealth, while leaving billions of people in poverty. [3]. Until that effort succeeds, aid is the least bad option (and there is no reason not to do both).
[1] I’m aware that Leiter is something of a polarising figure. So bringing him in might be seen as an ad hominem on my part. If so, turnabout is fair play, I say.
[2] Modal logic is much more useful in the theoretical work I do.
[3] Ingrid’s work on limitarianism is having some impact here.
{ 52 comments }
Sebastian H 04.18.24 at 2:00 am
This plays into my biggest critique of our current society: we seem incredibly resistant to talking about the magnitude of things and then having a sense of proportion about it. You can’t just talk about unintended consequences, you need to decide if they are WORSE than not acting (this example). You can’t just talk about ‘harm’ and fail to analyze whether or not the harm is big or tiny (see vaping). You can’t just talk about ‘safety’ as if minor increases in non-safety are worth big actions (many deplatformings function under this). You can’t just call microagressions ‘violence’ and then ignore actual violence. It’s ok to realize that some things are less a big deal than others.
Matt 04.18.24 at 3:24 am
Wenar also comes up with some rather far-fetched examples of unintended consequences. For example, bednets provided to fight malaria might be diverted for use as fishing nets. And catching more fish might be bad because it could lead to overfishing. This is Rube Goldberg stuff.
I’m not completely sure what your saying here, but it sounds like you’re suggesting this is just a hypothetical (and far-fetched) idea – but this isn’t something that Wernar has “come up with” – it’s a documented phenomena, and has been for a while. I can’t say how serious the issue is, but it doesn’t sound like “Rube Goldberg” stuff in the telling. See here for a journalistic account: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global-use-of-mosquito-nets-for-fishing-endangering-humans-and-wildlife and here for a more recent scientific discussion: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191111100910.htm
John Q 04.18.24 at 5:13 am
Matt @2 Thanks for this. I’ve edited to correct this point.
So, not an invention, but still a pretty weak reed to make a case against a program that has saved millions of lives.
John Q 04.18.24 at 5:56 am
Sebastian @1: I generally agree, but I’d like discussion to stick to Wenar for a while. I’ve deleted a second comment on a topic which is a reliable thread-derailer.
Chris Bertram 04.18.24 at 6:55 am
I’m pretty sure that there’s a line somewhere in GA Cohen’s If You’re an Egalitarian where he points out that the very sceptical attitude people adopt as a reason not to give to charity should also apply to much of their spending on themselves. If I had my copy with me I’d dig it out.
Chris Bertram 04.18.24 at 6:58 am
As I mentioned in the East Germany post, the East German programme to develop the Vietnamese coffee industry was an example of highly-effective development aid, albeit ineffective in its primary aim (to supply the DDR with coffee) and motivate more by that than altruism.
Chris Bertram 04.18.24 at 7:07 am
Worth remembering that Wenar’s own preferred policy intervention in his book Blood Oil is import tarrifs (and bans) against goods incorporating content originating in extractive dictatorships. Would this have the effects he claims or would there be unintended consequences?
Chris Armstrong 04.18.24 at 7:52 am
Chris @7, that’s a very fair question!
On John’s wider point – that Wenar draws overly pessimistic conclusions from the empirical literature on aid – I also agree. In fact I think there’s a broader trend here. The second half of a recent paper of mine shows that others (my main targets are Rawls, Risse and Nili) have been very bad readers of the empirical literature on aid, helping themselves to much stronger (pessimistic) conclusions than are warranted about the prospects for ameliorating deprivation. The sad thing is that there seems to be something like a first-mover advantage: since many political theorists don’t feel very confident engaging with empirical literature, these super-pessimistic claims don’t get called out enough.
The paper is here, if anyone’s interested -https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14748851211015328
Phil 04.18.24 at 8:43 am
“[1] I’m aware that Leiter is something of a polarising figure. So bringing him in might be seen as an ad hominem on my part. If so, turnabout is fair play, I say.”
Yes, it’s generally accepted that logical fallacies don’t count if the other guy started it.
TM 04.18.24 at 8:58 am
Chris 7: The free trade lobby is making that argument with gusto. Any effort at regulating supply chains is countered with the argument “but intended consequences”, e. g. “the small producers will suffer most because they can’t afford to comply with all the new regulations yada yada yada”. A typical example is the EU ban on importing palm oil from suppliers that contribute to deforestation.
The simple fact is that any kind of (government) action can have unintended consequences. Pointing them out is legitimate but it can be used to prevent any action at all. And not acting obviously has consequences too.
TM 04.18.24 at 8:58 am
Chris 7: The free trade lobby is making that argument with gusto. Any effort at regulating supply chains is countered with the argument “but unintended consequences”, e. g. “the small producers will suffer most because they can’t afford to comply with all the new regulations yada yada yada”. A typical example is the EU ban on importing palm oil from suppliers that contribute to deforestation.
The simple fact is that any kind of (government) action can have unintended consequences. Pointing them out is legitimate but it can be used to prevent any action at all. And not acting obviously has consequences too.
[had to correct a typo]
notGoodenough 04.18.24 at 9:39 am
@ John Q
I would say that people donating their wealth/time/etc. in an effective way to redress the inequalities they benefit from is probably better than them not doing that, but probably worse than addressing the system that leads to such inequalities in the first place. As you (correctly, I think) point out, promoting the former does not necessarily prevent the latter (though I think it is reasonable for the left to have a healthy degree of skepticism so we may criticise when it doesn’t).
Consequently, my objection to effective altruism (in practice) is that I think that even when operating well it tends to obscure that the latter is possible, and at its worst it doesn’t even achieve the former (I am less convinced that this is the case for state aid, as when it is effective it doesn’t play into the narrative that “the rich will save us all provided we just have the right sort of rich”). That isn’t to say I oppose the rich giving away their wealth to effectively improve well-being (in contrast to them not doing that), merely that I don’t think it is a systemic solution to be relied upon (and I can’t help but feel it receives undue attention for reasons I suspect have quite a lot more to do with class interests than with actual effectiveness).
In short, a band aid is better than nothing at all, but not really a substitute for a functioning healthcare system! (a small jest on my part). So, I support “picking the less bad option”, but only so long as it is on the understanding that it is still not the “good option” (towards which we still strive to make progress).
Basically, I don’t think I am really disagreeing with you (but possibly am with both Wenar and Effective Altruists)?
Alex SL 04.18.24 at 9:55 am
Maybe there are people who hold the views being criticised in this post, but as one of the readers commenting harshly on Effective Altruism under previous posts, I do not recognise myself in them. I have no doubt whatsoever that aid aids, and that more effective aid is preferable to ineffective aid.
The problems with EA are the cult-like behaviour of the movement, the myopic pseudo-rationalism (which gives rationalism, a stance that I value, a bad name), and the bizarre conclusions and priorities that many in the movement arrive at using their pseudo-rationalism, such as justifying socially destructive behaviour as earn-to-give and prioritising AI alignment research over addressing poverty. (Many, not all.)
John Q 04.18.24 at 10:09 am
Phil @9 ” it’s generally accepted that logical fallacies don’t count if the other guy started it.” Glad to have that confirmed. As I mentioned, classical logic is not my forte, but in the real world, there’s no general reason for rejecting ad hominem arguments.
John Q 04.18.24 at 10:14 am
Chris @8 Rawls is just as bad on domestic policy. The difference principle sounds radical but Rawls combines it with rightwing economic assumptions that put him pretty close to Margaret Thatcher. Both were opponents of progressive taxation and supporters of property-owning democracy
https://crookedtimber.org/2014/09/08/rawls-bentham-and-the-laffer-curve/
nastywoman 04.18.24 at 10:23 am
The argument against ‘aid’ or ‘why you shouldn’t try to help poor people’ is about –
das ‘Krankste Argument’ Rapture Capitalists EVER came up with.
(besides the Right Wing Theory that somebody who fights Fascism is a Fascist himself)
Richard Melvin 04.18.24 at 11:17 am
It is, indeed, difficult to get someone to understand a thing when some of their discretionary spending depends on not understanding it.
engels 04.18.24 at 11:59 am
I didn’t like Wenar’s Burkeish piece but I don’t he’s arguing against helping the poor but for a more personal and less rationalistic form of altruism (Slow Altruism?)
Tim H. 04.18.24 at 12:02 pm
TM @11, Trade treaties designed to maximize benefits for important players in the strongest economies looks like a powerful contributor to global suffering.
Derek Bowman 04.18.24 at 12:22 pm
@JohnQ,
Respectfully, you seem to be guilty of the same thing you elsewhere accuse Wenar of – having a reflexive ‘deontological’ feeling that he is wrong, followed by an attempt to provide a rationalization to justify that reaction. That’s why you don’t pay attention to the specifics of his analysis, as, e.g. in the case of the correction you made in response to Matt (at #2). And you completely ignore his explicitly stated aims and positions, e.g.:
“Effective Altruism” is the name of an actual political movement, promoted by actual individuals. It uses a philosophical framework “effective altruism” to orient and justify itself. Wenar is explicitly targeting the movement in this article, in part by showing the ways in which it uses the philosophical framework as mere ideological cover.
If you want some classical logic, I take it the inference looks something like this.
Any serious analysis of the costs and benefit of aid projects must include good, well-informed evidence about both the expected positive and negative consequences thereof.
The evidence for positive consequences provided by EA proponents is often speculative, and not based on good, well-informed evidence.
3. Proponents of EA often fail to acknowledge or show awareness or interest in any evidence of possible negative consequences.
Therefore, the proponents of EA are not typically engaged in a serious analysis of the costs and benefits of their proposed aid projects.
But if that’s true, then the movement is just pretense. Perhaps it is deluding others to fleece the rubes. Or perhaps it’s self-deluding to launder one’s conscience or make oneself feel more important than one really is.
steven t johnson 04.18.24 at 1:43 pm
John Q@14 declares that “in the real world there is no general reason for rejecting ad hominem arguments.” Well, somebody or other said I think that all informal fallacies can be valid arguments. The valid ad hominem argument is one that reasonably avers that someone or some institution cannot be trusted to relate correct facts.
Given that most serious propositions have not just values argued but a kind of armature composed of mundane facts that propel the whole, or at least hold it together underneath, then ad hominem is potentially very useful in general….except the charge of bad faith is a high bar. As near as I can make out, the practical use of ad hominem (aside from laughing at anyone who links to wikipedia?) is to say, they’re not nice, so they must be a liar. That may be a fairly general reason to be cautious about ad hominem, a point tacitly conceded by the similar “guilt by association,” which suggests a more stringent standard.
The genetic fallacy is also related. The valid genetic argument is I think essentially the argument that the evidence has not genuinely been critically examined, but the premises of a proposition are rather more an inheritance than a thought?
LFC 04.18.24 at 2:15 pm
John Q @15
Offhand I’m not aware of anyone except you who thinks that Rawls’s version of “property-owning democracy” is similar to Thatcher’s version. In general Rawls is better on domestic policy (see e.g. what he says about the ill effects of money in politics) than on matters such as aid or, more broadly, questions of cross-national or global justice.
Tm 04.18.24 at 2:28 pm
Tim 19: I have no idea why you are directing that comment at me.
Mr^2 04.18.24 at 3:35 pm
Derek @20: if Wenar’s only point was the one he makes in that paragraph, that although aid works, GiveWell has overstated benefits and understated risks, and so it should modify its calculations somewhat for the sake of truth in advertising—then that would be one thing! And completely copacetic for EAs, who, after all, internally debate how to do the calculations constantly. So long as the positives still clearly outweigh the negatives and the negatives are unsystematically distributed, it’s probably doesn’t matter that much, but it’s still a reasonable ask.
But that seems like it’s clearly not the entire point, otherwise we wouldn’t get the Mirror test, the surf anecdote, or any other number of features of the article. The intent seems to be a sweeping critique of the central orientation of EA through a critique of the very idea of cost-effective giving, not the details of which disclaimers go where. But for these much stronger claims to be correct, it seems important that the negatives aren’t clearly much smaller than the positives. So in response, John Q is correct to point out that bednet fishing is a rounding error against PEPFAR, and once this is admitted, it really looks like Wenar is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and also correct to observe that this point is itself sufficiently obvious that it calls into question why the article isn’t getting more pushback (with a natural answer being that many find hating on EAs fun).
Trader Joe 04.18.24 at 3:52 pm
I think there is a more subtle classification problem going on in this discussion.
Some years ago I served on the board of a foundation which classified its giving into three categories: advocacy, action and effect.
These categories could apply to any number of specific concerns – poverty, hunger, climate, minority rights etc. And could further be targeted locally, nationally or internationally.
By way of example, say the topic you chose to address was climate.
An advocacy gift might go to Greenpeace or Greta Thunberg or some such organization.
An action gift might be to the Nature Conservancy or specifically sponsoring solar panels for a school – basically a direct action related to the cause.
An effect gift might be to an organization researching better batteries or carbon scrubbing – basically a gift aimed at long-term improvement via some process.
Each of these types of gifts has various potential for success and various unintended consequences but even just within this somewhat narrow field of endeavor you can see how all of those categories ultimately work together to (hopefully) create a desirable outcome.
Going all in on advocacy doesn’t pay for technological advance. Going all in on direct action, doesn’t create the advocacy that changes the playing field over time.
Its easy to cherry pick particular things that didn’t work according to some criteria, what matters is that there is some degree of funded collective action which is making measurable progress towards an outcome. Naturally faster and greater are better than slower and lesser from an altruistic standpoint but most of the big problems these organizations are seeking to address are best measured on a rate of change rather than a point in time. Said different – just because we still have climate issues doesn’t mean its not better to transition to wind or solar (even if it kills some birds).
PatinIowa 04.18.24 at 5:33 pm
It seems to me that some of the critiques of development aid focus on an argument like this:
“Third, and most importantly, even if it’s not true that all of the increase in life expectancy is due to aid, that doesn’t prove that there was no contribution. Suppose that all the aid provided since the end of colonial rule (approaching one trillion $US) had only increased African life expectancy by one year, and had achieved nothing else. That’s still at least a billion years of extra life.”
The response might be something like, “If the countries that received aid hadn’t been forced to accept various Western demands in exchange for that aid, for example respecting patents on life-saving medications, and (more politically) cuts in government spending, especially social and medical services, they’d have increased life expectancy by far more than the amount cited. (Or perhaps some more accurate, smaller increase.)
There’s lots of room for empirical study. One crude sort of thing occurs to me: in 1950, The People’s Republic of China’s life expectancy was about 40 years. In 2020, it was 76.6.
I don’t know enough about Chinese economic history to say that China didn’t do this without developmental aid. It does seem unlikely that it did so without Western developmental aid. And it sure seems like, as loathsome as the government of China has been during that time, they got better results on this one metric.
I have no idea if this is a legitimate comparison. Can anyone comment?
PatinIowa 04.18.24 at 5:34 pm
Oops: “It does seem likely they did this without Western developmental aid.”
Apologies.
John Q 04.18.24 at 6:37 pm
“Respectfully, you seem to be guilty of the same thing you elsewhere accuse Wenar of – having a reflexive ‘deontological’ feeling that he is wrong, followed by an attempt to provide a rationalization to justify that reaction. ”
I’ve been making the same argument for decades. Here’s something from 2005 https://johnquiggin.com/2005/08/15/the-end-of-poverty/
I’ve also engaged more directly with critics of aid like William Easterly, for example in Economics in Two Lessons
John Q 04.18.24 at 6:59 pm
@PatInIowa You can turn the argument of the OP around to say that, even if aid was incredibly effective in saving lives, it’s been too limited (roughly $20 per person per year in Africa) to have a really big effect. Development/tech progress is always going to be the big determinant.
As regards the PRC, it’s important to remember that life expectancy is a calculation based on current mortality rates. So, the massive loss of life in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution isn’t counted.
Tm 04.18.24 at 7:20 pm
26: “countries that received aid hadn’t been forced to accept various Western demands in exchange for that aid, for example respecting patents on life-saving medications, and (more politically) cuts in government spending”
But then it wasn’t aid, it was a bribe to achieve certain political goals. Maybe with good intentions, often with cynical intentions, but not an argument against aid.
But you do point to an important consideration. Western development aid cannot be evaluated independent of other policies pursued by the same Western governments, including trade, economic, financial, tax policy. The policies pursued by the World Bank, IMF and GATT/WTO have been far more consequential overall for the development of the Global South than whatever genuine aid has been provided.
This observation is really an old hat. The unfairness of the international trade system, the debt trap that Southern countries were lured into, tax evasion, support for dictatorial regimes, and so on, all those are well-known and have been much criticized in development policy circles. I even remember a former German development aid minister (Entwicklungshilfeminister) put it this way: “what we built with our hands [meaning development aid], we destroyed with our asses [referring to economic policies damaging to Southern countries]”. He graciously assumed that the damage wasn’t done intentionally.
Derek Bowman 04.18.24 at 9:04 pm
@Mr^2
“And completely copacetic for EAs, who, after all, internally debate how to do the calculations constantly.
That they have internal debates about calculations is neither her nor there; the question is one of the quality of those debates and of the resulting calculations.
“So long as the positives still clearly outweigh the negatives…”
But that’s they question: Do they? Wenar argues that any serious consideration of the evidence will rule out any armchair version of “clearly” here. Is he wrong about that? If so, show your work. What we get in the OP, and in your comment, is exactly the sort of cavalier, evidence-free assumption that Wenar argues is representative of EA. Is it? I’m not sure, but I don’t find the mere incredulous insistence that it’s not very convincing.
You’re certainly right that there’s more to Wenar’s critique of EA, but I chose here to focus on the portion that the OP was misinterpreting as a fallacious ad hominem argument.
Mr^2 04.18.24 at 9:56 pm
Derek @31: You call me out for making “cavalier, evidence-free assumptions” in stating that the bed net story is a rounding error compared to PEPFAR. I don’t think it’s possible to be familiar with PEPFAR and not understand that this is so. PEPFAR has been in the news recently, given the acrimonious debate over its reauthorization, and there are many sources to consult.
Here is one of Bush’s advisors commenting on the situation when the program was conceived and launched: “I remember my first visits to sub-Saharan Africa as a policy adviser to President Bush soon after the announcement. Of about 30 million people with HIV, perhaps 50,000 were receiving treatment. The pandemic had already produced 14 million orphans. Child-headed households were common; child-headed villages were not unknown. Walking through South African shantytowns, you mainly met grandparents and their grandchildren. The intervening generation had been nearly erased. Millions were dying at the same time and yet in total isolation, surrounded by the barbed wire of stigma. In the worst affected countries, life expectancy had fallen by 20 years.”
PEPFAR is typically credited with saving over 25 million lives. HIV/AIDS prevalence and incidence were so high that many observers expected state collapse in the most affected countries, e.g. Botswana. In 1998, 1 in 3 pregnant women in Botswana were living with HIV. Per WHO, Botswana is now the first high-burden country on track to eliminate parent-to-child transmission. I think it is the critics of aid who operate in a cavalier, evidence-free zone when they pick out the bed net story and act like PEPFAR doesn’t exist.
PatinIowa 04.19.24 at 4:53 pm
John Q at 29
Thanks for the further info. As I said, I’m not conversant enough with how one counts these things to maintain anything with a high degree of confidence. How about things like the Rwandan genocide or the Congolese civil war(s)? (I should probably go read up on this on my own.)
Tm at 30
Again, thanks, and also, I could probably go read up on this on my own. I’m a cynical guy, so I’ll have to be convinced that there’s aid of any substantial size that doesn’t come with strings attached, some quite damaging.
Derek Bowman 04.19.24 at 5:08 pm
@Mr^2
Thanks for the clarification; I didn’t attend carefully enough to the specific comparison you were making between the positive effects of PEPFAR and the potential negative effects of bed net distribution.
But you must admit, it’s an odd comparison to make, given that, contrary to the OP, Wenar does not come out against PEPFAR, and explicitly rejects any general anti-aid thesis.
He does claim that no serious person would claim that aid is responsible for the 50% rise in life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa. Are your claims about the effectiveness of PEPFAR meant to show that it was in fact responsible for all or most of that rise in life expectancy? If not, I really don’t see what they have to do with Wenar’s piece.
I have no particular knowledge or expertise about the complexities of development aid. I’m just struck by how little connection there seems to be between the critiques offered and the actual arguments Wenar gave.
Eric Paul Jacobsen 04.19.24 at 5:30 pm
I notice that Leif Wenar indulges in the popular sport of cherry-picking data.
Sure, a lot of altruists achieve results contrary to their intentions. But how many altruists of this kind are there compared to the number of selfish people who, in accord with Michael Milken’s “greed is good” utopia, achieve charitable results contrary to their uncharitable intentions? How does the number of altruists who achieve counter-intentional results compare to the number of altruists who actually succeed in doing good, or to the number of selfish people who actually succeed in benefiting at everybody else’s expense?
engels 04.19.24 at 7:42 pm
I’m not aware of anyone except you who thinks that Rawls’s version of “property-owning democracy” is similar to Thatcher’s version.
Idk but I think Rawls’s version of trickledown is similar to Reagan’s.
LFC 04.19.24 at 8:01 pm
It’s perhaps worth underscoring that “aid” is not a monolithic category. Programs doubtless vary in effectiveness and success (PEPFAR is an example of a very successful program), and countries vary to some extent in how they give aid. For instance, unless things have changed in very recent years, the U.S. gives food aid mostly in kind, i.e., in the form of grain grown in the U.S., whereas other donor countries tend not to “tie” their food aid in this way and to rely more on e.g. cash transfers and/or procurement from local farmers (where feasible). Writing in 2013, Jennifer Clapp observed that the U.S. “has been very reluctant to adopt these new forms of food assistance, even in the face of growing recognition that they are much more efficient and effective than tied food aid.” (Clapp, “Fighting Hunger: The Cold War and U.S. Foreign Aid (review essay),” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 11, no. 2 (June 2013).
LFC 04.19.24 at 8:10 pm
P.s. Also there are differences in how aid is “delivered” — “official development assistance” v. NGOs etc. (I’m sure D. Muir can comment more knowledgeably about this than I can.)
John Q 04.20.24 at 12:17 am
LFC @27 Of course, it’s exactly this kind of calculation of effectiveness that Wenar is objecting to.
John Q 04.20.24 at 12:20 am
To clarify on property-owning democracy, Thatcherism produced “actually existing” property-owning democracy. My point @15 was that Rawls advocate property-owning democracy on the basis of wrong economic assumptions under which Thatcherist policies would deliver something much more appealing.
Also, I’m responding here to Rawls’ positions when he wrote Theory of Justice. It seems as if he moved a fair way to the left after observing the experience of the 1980s. But my opinion of him has never recovered from the shock I felt when I discovered he opposed progressive taxation.
Matt 04.20.24 at 2:25 am
My point @15 was that Rawls advocate property-owning democracy on the basis of wrong economic assumptions under which Thatcherist policies would deliver something much more appealing.
Also, I’m responding here to Rawls’ positions when he wrote Theory of Justice. It seems as if he moved a fair way to the left after observing the experience of the 1980s.
Another possibility is that you’d misunderstood his ideas early on. Given your earlier discussion linked above, I think that’s the more likely situation. And of course, Rawls wasn’t arguing at the level of specific policies, so if a particular policy wouldn’t fit with the normative goals, it’s consistent to change the policy.
John Q 04.20.24 at 2:53 am
Matt, the last sentence in my response @40 (which you omitted to quote) is crucial. How is preferring consumption taxes to income taxes not “arguing at the level of specific policies” ?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3359541
As an aside, it seems as if some things in Rawls (the difference principle, maximin welfare functions, tax policy) jump out at economists whereas other readers see these as less significant.
LFC 04.20.24 at 4:31 am
Rawls’s discussion of “the equal political liberties” (ToJ 1st ed., sec. 36) is important and sometimes overlooked. Even if certain inequalities pass muster under the difference principle, they are ruled out if they would undermine “the fair value for all of the equal political liberties,” i.e., roughly the right to have one’s voice and vote count in a substantive way in the formulation of public policy. If the wealthy are allowed to “control the course of public debate,” the “liberties protected by the principle of participation lose much of their value….” (p. 225)
To protect those liberties, “[a] variety of devices can be used. For example, in a society allowing private ownership of the means of production, property and wealth must be kept widely distributed and government monies provided on a regular basis to encourage free public discussion. In addition, political parties are to be made independent from private economic interests by allotting them sufficient tax revenues to play their part in the constitutional scheme.” (225-26)
“In a well-governed state only a small fraction of persons may devote much of their time to politics…. But this fraction, whatever its size, will most likely be drawn more or less equally from all sectors of society” (228) — which is hardly the case with, e.g., the U.S. Senate today or historically.
Matt 04.20.24 at 10:35 am
How is preferring consumption taxes to income taxes not “arguing at the level of specific policies” ?
Rawls does discuss certain policies he thinks will be useful in achieving the ends of meeting the two principles of justice. But those are just means, not ends. If they are not good means to acheiving then ends, then they would, and should, be changed. The idea of a consumption tax isn’t one of the basic conclusions at all, and if there’s good reason to think it wouldn’t help in achieving the goal of the difference princple, of course we should use different means. But not seeing this – treating it as if it were a more fundamental conclusion – is just a misunderstanding of the argument, and a pretty basic one.
roger gathmann 04.20.24 at 10:40 am
Wow, way to not read an article. Wenar’s point is that private philantrhopy aid – especially in its advertising mode – pulls “accounting shenanigans” to obscure social costs. Howard Schiff’s book, Financial Shenanigan’s, should include a chapter on philantrhopies in its next edition. Quiggins should be familiar with the literature on development by figures like William Easterly. I find Easterly much too conservative. So, actually, does Wenar, who has written that only intermediate aid institutions like USAID show any sign of developing an efficient accounting mechanism. I’ll just quote from the conclusion of Wenar’s Accountability in Development Aid. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1243/1/wenarl7_Account2-06corrected.pdf Of course, since it doesn’t have a surfer friend to sneer at, I don’t expect that to be read.
“Morally, the greatest need for accountability would be for the rich to be accountable to
the poor for effective and sufficient development aid. But significant accountability of that kind is non-existent and probably impossible. The second most important connection of accountability would be for intermediate institutions to become more accountable for the effectiveness of projects either to the rich individuals who fund them or to the poor individuals who are meant to benefit from them. However, the complexities of development work and the poor’s lack of power means that there is currently little significant accountability to either rich or poor individuals.
Where there is some degree of accountability it is between the intermediate institutions. In some cases like with USAID, the accountability mechanisms in place do not work to reduce poverty. In these cases, there is a strong case for institutional reform. In other cases, as with aid NGOs, accountability for effective poverty relief is almost entirely absent. This is not in itself an indictment of aid NGOs. Greater accountability is not always good, and when greater accountability in development agencies would be good its value is only instrumental, not intrinsic. The overriding value when considering reform of aid institutions is what works to
reduce poverty. There is a need to be more forthright about the current lack of accountability
among development agencies. This would help to shift the focus onto specific proposals for
increasing accountability that will lead to long-term improvements in the lives of the world’s
poor.
engels 04.20.24 at 11:40 am
Has anyone read Chandler’s Free and Equal? I was a bit put off by the centrist gushing but from flicking through it seems better than I thought. At any rate it seems like a serious attempt to turn Rawls’s cogitations into something politically relevant.
SusanC 04.20.24 at 1:58 pm
There is an argument (due to Amartya Sen, I think, but don’t have a reference to hand) that famines are usually caused by a lack of democracy rather than, strictly, a lack of food. In that democracies are less likely to let a big portion of their population starve. (One might also wonder if democracy -> greater prosperity -> less starvation)/
In any case, this argument suggests that merely supplying food aid is not the most effective long term solution.
[Actually, given current events, I’m tempted to make stronger argument than Sen and suggest that sometimes, famine is a deliberate genocide of minor groups, intentionally carried out by the government]
LFC 04.20.24 at 4:17 pm
@ Susan C.
Sen is likely right on famine’s connection to domestic political arrangements (though non-democratic China doesn’t seem esp. vulnerable to it), but there are reasons to give food aid that have to do not with averting famine or starvation but rather with alleviating less severe cases of food insecurity that can be caused by a variety of things, e.g. drought, civil conflict, ec. mismanagement, etc., which (come to think of it) can also cause famine. Long-term food aid is probably not an optimal thing, but once the programs are set up and have constituencies in donor countries it may be hard to end them.
engels 04.20.24 at 7:13 pm
I’ve sometimes wondered what role Rawls envisaged A Theory of Justice itself having in his ideal society, eg would all adult citizens be issued with a copy on graduating high school?
William Berry 04.20.24 at 7:27 pm
“Quiggins”
I think you folks might be running out of ways to misspell JQ’s last name!
Trivial thing to bring up, right (apart from the fact that JQ himself has mentioned it before)?!
Well, maybe it’s just me, but I think getting it wrong is an indication of casual disrespect*. Folks’ last names are generally considered to be important signifiers of one’s identity.
So far I’ve got “Quiggan”, “Quiggen”, and now “Quiggins”. That’s very creative but you’re running out of options!
*Unless it’s dyslexia; which seems unlikely given that most of these comments are otherwise literate.
John Q 04.21.24 at 5:33 am
RG @46 In making reference to rightwing opponents of aid, I had Easterly in mind, and my critique of Wenar echoed this on Easterly
https://crookedtimber.org/2007/12/21/a-lot-or-a-little/
As far as accountability goes, my reading of your quoted para from Wenar goes: “Making aid providers accountable to the poor is morally obligatory, but impossible. Most other forms of accountability are likely to be harmful. ” This raises the question: why is he going on about it?
Derek Bowman 04.21.24 at 6:00 pm
Snark deleted. Nothing more on this thread, please
Comments on this entry are closed.