The Effectiveness of Aid

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Effective Altruism

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Princeton University

Effective Altruism

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Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.

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Poverty and Affluence, Part 1

What obligations do the affluent have towards those who live in extreme poverty? In this week, we look at one distinct argument based on consequentialist ethics, and also begin the discussion of the effectiveness of aid programs. This week also includes a conversation with Raymond Offenheiser.

Global Poverty and the Pond Story5:54

The Affluent, the Poor and the Rule of Easy Rescue14:48

Objections to the Pond Analogy 15:18

The Effectiveness of Aid4:25

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Peter Singer
Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics
University Center for Human Values

Certainly this question about can we help?

And how do we know that our help will actually be effective?

Is one of the big issues that

gets in the way of people thinking that they do have an obligation to help.

And when I speak about this topic publicly, it's probably the most

common reaction I get is something that's a little bit cruder than what was said.

But it's a kind of challenge which often says well what's the point of giving

to these developing countries when we know that their politicians are all corrupt.

And they're just going to siphon off the money and use it to build

bigger palaces or to have more private planes or

to put a Swiss bank account or something along those lines.

And that's the crude statement but there are people who

genuinely skeptical about the effectiveness of aid.

There has been a what you might call a aide critique which has come from

economists.

Three in particular, one called William Easterly at New York University,

author of a book called The White Man's Burden.

One by a women called Dambisa Moyo who is from,

I'm not quite sure now which developing country, maybe it is Malawi actually,

which she is from originally.

But she has a Harvard PhD.

It's a book called Dead Aid.

And the most recent is not a whole book, but a chapter

from our own Angus Deayton in economics here, which I put on your reading list.

It's quite a long chapter, but it's also a critique of the effectiveness of aid.

Now these critiques very a little, both Easterly and

Moyo are really talking about government aid and

multilateral institutions like the World Bank.

And of course government aid, typically does go or

a lot of it goes to governments.

It has in the past and still to some extent does.

And if that's so then you may have a problem with corrupt governments.

The last Bush administration, George W.Bush's

administration did try to set up standards for good government and

make aid to some countries anyway- >> [COUGH]

>> Conditional on that.

But a lot of government aid, particularly U.S.

government aid is not even really directed towards reducing global poverty.

One of the problems with government aid is that it's got political targets as well.

So we give aid to countries that are significant to us and

that we want to keep on our side.

During the Cold War we gave huge amounts of aid to the Congo even we

knew that it's President Joseph Mobutu was highly corrupt.

But he wasn't a communist.

So that was enough reason to give him aid.

More recently of course, we've given aid to those countries that we've wanted to

enlist or to help avoid being problems in the global fight against terrorism.

So the largest amounts of U.S. aid have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan.

And we've given various substantial aid to Egypt,

to keep it on side in terms of the Middle East peace.

So a lot of our aid is not even directed to global poverty,

but it might also be true that where it is directed to global poverty,

it sometimes is not as effective as aid from NGO's.

But it's that we should be looking at because I think

if we're considering what we aught to be doing as a matter of

what's right for us to live an ethical life.

We're not going to send money to the U.S.

Treasury and say please use this for more government aid.

We're going to send it to one of a number of non-government organizations

in the aid field.

And the question that we need to answer, therefore is what are the effective

organizations that are going to make the best use of that money?

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