WEBVTT - The Effective Altruism Scam 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:14.840 Uh, it could happen. Here is the podcast that you're 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:19.680 listening to. I'm Robert Evans, the person that you're listening to, 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:23.360 and one of the people who does this podcast. Boy, 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:28.520 what a what a glorious introduction that was. Let me 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:31.880 also introduce some human beings who you might know. First, 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:35.800 we have Chris and and we have James. Are are 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:40.599 our correspondence in the field joining us today. Also is 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:46.680 James's Spanish Civil War era mosen degauant Yep, that's right. Yeah, 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:48.680 I'm very happy it's joining us. It's going to make 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:53.760 contribution throughout the episode, just gonna it's it's an antique 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:58.480 bolt action rifle served in three World wars, the current one. 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:00.720 That's right. Yeah, and it's about too. It's about to 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:05.000 kick off this one now, which it might be. It 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.440 might be two in the alcolumn for the most in 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:11.360 the gun. Yeah, it's it's it's it's had a it's 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:17.840 served a mixed bag. Um. Yeah. Anyway, we're recording this 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:22.479 the day of the elections, so everybody's having a horrible one. Um, 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:27.080 I'm having a firearm Yeah, yeah, I did. I'm still 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:31.280 hoping my my Tech nine comes in before Oregon votes 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:34.920 on its next ballot measure. Anyway, Um, today, I wanted 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:39.480 to talk a little bit about something that I've been 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:43.559 thinking about kind of constantly, which is, um, it's called 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:48.160 effective altruism. And it's the short end of this is 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:53.840 that like it is a style of thinking about charitable 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:58.080 giving that Elon Musk in particular has recently highlighted as 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.680 like how he thinks about things. It's very popular with 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:06.120 the billionaire set, who are who are deeply invested in 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.679 getting people to think that they're saving the world, right, Um, 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.760 the folks who want to be seen as like looking 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:16.559 ahead and and and set protecting the future of mankind 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.959 and saving the world, um, but not doing it through 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.880 things like paying you know, more taxes and supporting you 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.280 know less money, being in politics and and all that 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:29.520 kind of jazz. Like not not anything that would would 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:33.920 actually harm their their personal ability to exercise power. So 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.280 it's gotten kind of attacked recently because it's associated with 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.520 guys like Muskin, because he is markedly less popular now 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.200 than he was let's say, ten years ago. Um, but 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:48.880 I want, Yeah, I wanted to talk because effective altruism, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.280 which is an actual movement. There's like organizations that espouse this. 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:54.880 There's hundreds of millions of dollars in charitable giving that 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.760 gets handed out under the addresses of effective altruism, and 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.040 as it heads up, like most of it, it's fine, 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.680 like most of its charities to like get let out 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:06.799 of water and stuff like. It's not like effective altruism 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.320 is not comprehensively some sort of like scam by the wealthy. 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:15.280 It's more of a an honest theory about how charitable 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.720 giving ought to work that has been adopted by the 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.840 hyper wealthiest justification for fucked up ship and married to 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:24.000 something called long term is um, which we will be 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:25.880 talking about in a little bit. But I want to 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.000 talk about where the concept of effective altruism comes from. 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.079 If you read articles about this thing, most people who 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:34.960 study it will say that it kind of This got 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.880 started as a modern movement in nineteen seventy one with 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:42.160 an Australian philosopher named Peter Singer, and Singer wrote an 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.560 article titled Famine, Affluence and Morality UM. I think it 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:49.600 was actually published in nineteen seventy two. I don't know 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:51.800 one of the two seventy one or seventy two, and 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.640 and the essay basically argued that there's no difference morally 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.480 between your obligation to help a person dying on the 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:00.520 street in front of your house. Like dude gets hit 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:02.120 by a car in front of your house, you are 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.800 not more morally obligated to help him than you are 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:08.760 morally obligated to help people who are dying in Syria, 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:14.560 you know, um, And obviously, like there's a a version 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:16.919 of truth to that, which is that we're all responsible 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:19.680 for each other and internationalism is the only actual path 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:21.719 away from the nightmare. And when we do things like 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:26.440 ignore authoritarians massacring their people, it inevitably comes back to 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:30.200 affect us and like fuel the growth of an authoritarian 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:35.680 nightmare domestically. That is very true, um, But also there's 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:38.520 a fundamental silliness in it, because one reason why there 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:40.680 is a moral difference between helping a person dying in 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:42.520 the street in front of you and somebody who's in 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.680 danger in I don't know, southern China is that, like, 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.920 you can immediately help the person in front of your house, right, 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.160 Like if somebody gets hit, but you have the ability 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.400 to immediately render life saving eight, it's actually quite difficult 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:57.360 to help somebody who is for example, getting shot at 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:00.440 by the government uh in Tibet. Right, Like not that 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.280 you don't don't have a moral responsibility to that person, 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.800 but your moral responsibility to actually immediately take action when 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.279 somebody is bleeding out is higher than your responsibility to 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.440 try to figure out how to help people in distant 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:17.000 parts of the globe. Um, this is more nuanced than 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:21.560 I think a lot of especially like rich assholes like 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:24.880 to It's more nuanced than like the the I shouldn't 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.000 say rich assholes. What what's the problem with this is 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:30.520 that it's the this is the kind of revelation like 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.400 when you start talking this way that that feeds really 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:36.760 well into a fucking ted talk it it's a perfect 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.919 fix for that morality, whereas the reality is like a 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:42.520 lot more nuanced where and number one, it's also like, 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.240 well that the kind of help that you would render 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.000 to somebody who's been hit by a car in front 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.600 of your house is very different and requires really different 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.679 resources than the kind of help you would give people 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:55.120 in say, again like Syria, who are being murdered by 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:57.360 their government. Right, if somebody gets hit by a car 0:05:57.400 --> 0:05:58.760 in front of your house, you run out with a 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.280 fucking tourniquet and a kit and you call nine one 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.120 one right, those are the resources that you can immediately 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:08.760 use if butshar Al Assad is firing poison gas at 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:14.359 protesters in you know, Aleppo, well your your stop the 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:16.400 bleed kit is not going to help with that, one 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.479 way or the other. Right, A very different set of 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:23.160 resources are necessary. UM. So it's it's foolish to compare 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.919 them anyway. Singer did UM and his essay was a 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:29.560 big hit. It's often called like a sleeper hit for 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.320 for young people who were kind of getting into the 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.800 you know, the charity industrial complex UM, or at least 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.680 we're considering it now. I found an interview with one 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:42.400 named Julia Wise who currently works at the Center for 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:48.000 Effective Altruism UM, and she was a started out as 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:49.480 a social work, like to give you an idea of 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:50.880 the kind of people who got into this. When she 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.919 read Weiss's article UM, she was a social worker, she 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:57.520 kind of fell in love with the concept and when 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.960 it started becoming a thing, and like the monies and eighties, 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:04.520 it was, as she described, quote, a bunch of philosophers 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.719 and their friends and nobody had a bunch of money. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.680 So it was also more when Singer put it out 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.679 kind of a a wave, like a way of people 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.520 kind of debating how to think about charity, which is 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:19.520 is fine, people should always be like exploring stuff like that. 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:21.520 So it's not I don't want to be like going 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:25.200 after Singer too well, I do a little bit um 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:29.120 because Singer after kind of his movement has a couple 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.560 of decades to grow, winds up doing a Ted talk um, 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.880 and the Ted talk winds up kind of electrifying a 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:40.600 very specific chunk of the American techno set um. And 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:43.720 you can see kind of in in some of the 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:48.440 writing on this, like the way in which his talking 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:51.360 about sort of the morality of charity has gotten flattened 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.080 over the years. Quote which is the better thing to 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:56.560 do to provide a guide dog to one blind American 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:01.200 or cure two thousand people of blindness and developing countries? Um? 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:03.760 Which is like, I don't know both. There's resources to 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:07.800 do both. Um. We again, if you, for an example, 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.320 in the United States, were to attacks the billionaire class 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.320 and corporations a lot more, you could provide that blind 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:17.160 person in the United States, uh with with free healthcare 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.720 in a way that many countries do. Um. And we 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.240 could also continue or even expand charitable giving, maybe if 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:24.960 we were to do stuff like spend less money on 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.680 our military. Again, it's like a false choice, like it's 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.400 worth but but of course it's it's because the reason 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:33.280 this choice is there is because they're thinking about they're 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:36.320 thinking about helping people purely in the form of like 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:40.400 nobless obliged charity, right, They're they're thinking about periods like 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:43.520 rich like things that get improved when rich people put 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:47.040 money into them. Um. Yeah, so obviously we should help 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.280 you know, one of these groups before the other because 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:52.840 it's more effective and yeada, YadA YadA. Yeah. Yeah, well, 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:54.560 and I think I think that was one of the 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:57.040 things that like the there there's there's a second way 0:08:57.080 --> 0:08:59.160 you can look at the original sort of problem of 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.640 we have this same methical responsibility. Someone who could sit 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:02.800 by a car or somebody's on the other side of 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:04.640 the world. Is that like the other way you can 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:06.560 look at that is like I don't care about what's 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:07.840 happening is some one of the other side of the world, 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:08.920 so they don't have to care about this person. You 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:13.600 get hit by a car, and that seems like people 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.440 are doing it's like, well, I really have to care 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.760 about this person here because there's someone over there. Yeah, 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.280 I did, Like I can see like how this lines 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:24.400 up with some of these like like bigger like meta 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:28.360 ethical kind of perspectives on what equality is and what 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.760 like your ethical obligations are. But then yeah, it seems 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.640 to just kind of be like a very clear, like 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.360 very clear slippery slope to making kind of mouth usy 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.560 and excuses for doing funk. All right, that's that's where 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:55.120 the story is heading. So oh good. Early two thousands, 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.520 he does like a Ted talk. You know, the momentum 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.720 around this idea starts to build and it really gets 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:03.880 a shot in the arm in two thousand thirteen with 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.559 the work of an author named Eric Friedman. Friedman's new 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:09.719 book or Friedland's book at the time that was new 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:13.640 was called Reinventing Philanthropy A Framework for More Effective giving 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:16.480 um and he kind of he kind of extends the 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.040 arguments that Singers making. One of the things that he 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.319 does is he he contrasts what St. Jude's Children's Reach 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:26.920 their hospitals are doing to like research children's medical or 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.040 like like illnesses that that kids supper and treatments for 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:34.280 them um with the Malagi Provincial Hospital in Angola um 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:37.040 and he kind of contrasts to patients who are being 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:41.000 served at the different hospitals for life threatening conditions and concludes, quote, 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:43.640 I'd probably also be very angry at the donors who 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:47.080 are continually funding St. Jude and leaving Melangi Provincial woefully 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:49.720 under resource. Why are the patients of St. Jude's so 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:54.360 much more worthy of life? And like, yeah, what are 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:59.160 the ridiculous way to think about it? Children's fucking asinine 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:01.280 And the fact that many of the people who are 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:03.960 doing these fucking TED talks and contributing to this like 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.160 a global tech class at the same people who are 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.880 making fucking millions of dollars off the pharmaceutical industry, which 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.360 continues to neglect the diseases that people like in the 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.440 colonial periphery suffer from because there's no profit in selling 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.360 them drugs, and instead you're selling boldness cures to people 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.440 in America, right, Like, yes, we can, I mean, like 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.960 you you could if we just if if every single 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:28.439 person who had a who's gotten a TED talk had 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:31.200 all of their wealth appropriated tomorrow, we could fund both 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.880 of these hospitals exactly yes, yeah, would will be better. 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.280 It's fundamentally a kind of obscenity to look at pharmaceutical 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.680 company CEO is making hundreds of millions and billions of 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.040 dollars selling people often literal poison and jacking up the 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.280 price of things like insulin. To look at these tech 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:52.000 CEOs accumulating tens of billions of dollars, and to say, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.960 donations to this children's hospital are robbing an angolid hospital. Yes, 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.120 so I won't be paying my tax? Yeah, why don't 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:06.920 you go funk yourself? Yeah? And anyway, like but this 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:09.800 is like you can see who this appeals to, right 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.920 if you like the kind of people who love the 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:22.840 freakonomics books, which are bullshit regressive statistics. Can economic story please? Yeah? Okay, 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:25.959 So one of my professors at Chicago was a political 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.360 science guy, um or I guess the public policy and 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.040 there's there's a thing, there's a thing the freakonomics guy 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:34.120 wrote where he was trying to prove that money doesn't 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:40.960 actually influence, like doesn't actually influence left. Yeah, and you 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.599 know what my my, my, my professor wrote wrote a 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:45.680 paper about that, which is that you know and again 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:47.240 this is this is a perfect example of how done 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:49.360 this guy is that he doesn't This is how condis think, right, 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:51.280 Like they when they when they go into a field, 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:53.120 they go in thinking they already know everything and they 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:56.360 can prove whatever they want because okay, but the thing 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.760 this guy doesn't understand, right, is that, like and this 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:00.480 is the thing most people in the US do not 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.120 understand about how Congress works. Is that like all of 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.439 the ship that's happening on the floor of Congress, all 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.120 of those votes that is not that is not real congress, right, 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.920 that that is fate congress. Nothing nothing important to actually 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:13.720 happens there. All of the important stuff in Congress happens 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:16.840 in committees. And so you can't figure out whether money 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.360 is doing anything by measuring its effects on like votes 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.160 on the floor, because floor votes are bullshit. All of 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:23.760 the important stuff has already by the top, by the 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:25.880 tip of floor vote happens, all the important policing stuff 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.319 has already happened. And so he did this heard this 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:29.560 whole thing where he was you know, he had this 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.440 great I I. He had this great metric called like 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.439 uh oh God, and it was it's called like the 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.960 the dairy cow coefficients, which is like measuring like how 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.120 how someone should vote versus like how the dairy cows running. 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:45.640 It turns out, you know, if you look at what 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.160 these people do in committee. No, yeah, hey, look, it 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.760 turns out a lobby money is unbelievably effective. But because 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.680 this fucking guy had like and this is something that 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:57.240 like like this sort of distinction between between Congress like 0:13:57.400 --> 0:13:59.719 on the floor and Congress and committee. Like there's a 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:01.319 press in it whose name of forgetting who has this 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.480 famous line that like Congress and Committee is Congress at work, 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:06.679 Congress on the floors, Corgress at play or something like that. 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:09.720 Like it's it's like this is just like basic ship 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:13.400 that if you know literally anything about how a field works, 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.800 you cannot do if you wanna, if you wanna, if 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.520 you want to a good breakdown of why the freakonomics 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:25.040 guy is full of shit. Michael Hobbs and Peter sham 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.040 Shary I think is his last name, have a new 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.680 podcast called If Books Could Kill and they break down 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.880 with like citations and everything like why everything in that 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.520 book is horseship but like the reason why it's the 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:38.240 only thing I'll disagree with you one, Chris is I 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.000 don't think he's an idiot. I think he's very intelligent, 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:42.640 and I think the thing that he's smart to do 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:45.800 is he recognizes that there's a specific type of person 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.920 and engineers and programmers are very likely to be this 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:53.680 type of person who kind of fundamentally like their oppositional defiant. 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:56.600 If somebody if something, if people say like well this 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.680 is good or this is bad, um, they're going to 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:01.880 take They want to take the opposite stance. And if 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:03.880 you can provide them way to like feel like they're 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:06.360 enlightened and smart and actually looking at the data by 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.160 doing it, then they'll take the opposite stance on stuff 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:13.040 like it's bad to let people by elections or it's 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.840 good to fund children's hospitals just because somebody has made 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.040 them feel smart for being an asshole. Um, that's what 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:23.480 the freakonomics guy does. Malcolm Gladwell does a subtler version 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.200 of it as a general rule. Um, and that's what 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:30.080 that's what the fucking freedman is doing in this this book. 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:33.520 In two thousand thirteen, I found a good review of 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.760 it in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Um. That is uh, 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:42.720 pretty scathing, like surprisingly scathing considering it's it's written by 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:46.240 a bunch of like Stanford nerds. This approach amounts to 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.880 a little more than charitable imperialism, whereby my just causes 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:51.960 just in yours to one degree or another, is a 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.760 waste of precious resources. This approach is not informed giving 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:59.440 UM and I think that that does a pretty good 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:03.880 job of summarizing what I think is fucked up about it. 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:05.840 There's another thing that's really messed up, which is that 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:10.280 one of the conclusions that they gets come that they 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:13.120 come to here is that um, they don't recommend or 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:15.400 there's an organization called Guild well that kind of gets 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.840 gets formed as a result of the book Freedman Rights, 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:22.400 and they recommend not to deliver, like not to donate 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.440 money to disaster assistance in the wake of the Japanese tsunami. 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.760 Um And opposed disaster relief donations in general. Um because 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:32.680 quote and this is from Freedman, most of those killed 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.000 by disasters could not have been saved by donations, um, 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.440 which is number one, Like, that's the donations are about 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:43.160 like rebuilding communities generally, it's not like about the saving lives. 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.000 Usually it's about like, well, all of the infrastructure was 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:50.320 destroyed and it must be rebuilt. Um but okay, guy, 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:52.400 Well it's annoying to you because it's like it's it's 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.000 not like there's not good critiques of like pricipically always 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.720 like the Red Cross. Oh, it's all fucked up. Every 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.920 single yes, yeah, I critique is like the worst possible, 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:07.639 like the critiques. Yeah, every single large charitable organization is 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:09.600 fucked up. And if you go and talk to people 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:11.760 on the ground, they will bitch, Like if you go 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.439 to fucking war zones, people bitch more about NGOs than 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:18.880 the folks shooting at them half the time. Like, yeah, 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.960 they bitch about it being inefficient, about the stuff they're 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:26.200 given being like bad quality or like um like nonsense 0:17:26.320 --> 0:17:28.760 like just being handed out to be handed out, which 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:30.879 is a thing that happens sometimes, and a bitch about 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.000 well paid aid workers staying in hotels and showing up 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:38.040 for a couple of hours to like do a photo op. Um. 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.240 There's also more incisive like you know, that's not to 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:43.920 say none of it's useful, Like, for example, as many 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.440 complaints as people have, everyone I've known who has been 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:50.440 in a place where medicine sans frontier slash doctors without 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:54.240 borders has operated while they have complaints about doctors without borders, 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:56.439 are like, it's good that there's more doctors here. We 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.040 fucking need them. Um. And you know, it's like you 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.840 and h c R. Plenty of things to complain about 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.879 you and h c R. Every refugee camp I go to, Also, 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:08.439 people have fucking water filters, intins and ship because of 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:10.520 U N h c R, which isn't nothing. It's a 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:12.680 damn site more than nothing, and it's a damn site 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.800 more than any of these long term motherfucker's are doing 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.400 for people who are I don't know, displaced by war. Yeah, 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.080 And it's like some of the things that they're doing 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:25.320 is like, this is very strange kind of attempts to 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:29.000 calculate and create markets for human life and human suffering, right, 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.480 which you see a lot if you were like, I've 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.360 worked in nonprofit, I've worked in in disaster response. I've 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.520 seen some of these things on the ground and it 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.640 it you see these bizarre fucking decisions being made by 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.040 by someone in an office who is likely never been 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:47.959 on the ground of these situations, and it inevitably results 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:52.000 in it's within these big organizations at the Red Cross 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.639 and MSF but also on a governmental level, right with 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.520 people not having the autonomy to respond in a situation 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.200 to reduce human suffering. And it's dead to be told 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.560 to do something which is supposedly evidence based based on 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:05.800 someone who's looked at the wrong criteria and come to 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:09.800 the wrong conclusion hundreds of miles away. And it's us. 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:12.560 It's bureaucrats, right, And it's like we we've we've, we've 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.080 we've we've somehow managed to create like the absolute worst 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:17.800 possible night mirror system of you have a bunch of 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.399 government bureaucrats and then you also have a bunch of 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:22.959 sort of privates that we have. We have like different 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.320 we're watching a collision of different kinds of private sector 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:28.959 bureaucrats like you have, you have your sort of engeo 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:30.680 bureaucrats you have, and then you know, and then you 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.640 have these billionaires who are also just fucking bureaucrats, and 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:35.960 all of them are just doing box ticking, and we 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:41.280 get like just the absolute worst nightmare fusion of horrible 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:44.760 bureaucracy and capitalism, which is a great way to run 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.720 programs to have people not die, And like so much 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.399 of this comes from what that the whole like free economics. 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:53.000 Thing to me strikes me as like we didn't, like 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.399 you said, reading the Wikipedia active about subject and then 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:57.119 applying trying to find out why you can apply a 0:19:57.119 --> 0:19:59.600 market to it, and then posting that as a solution. 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.720 Stuff we have. The episodes were dropping on bastards well 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:05.320 the week before this episode will air, are about like 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:06.919 why the rent is so damn high? And one of 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.639 the complaints I have is that there's a specific class 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:12.120 of media people who the only answer they will accept 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:16.160 is because, uh, there's not enough multi family zoning, which 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:18.320 is just a part of why the rent is so 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.159 damn high. And reducing it to just that ignores um, 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:26.200 the price fixing software that tens of millions of Americans, Uh, 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:30.520 like landlords use um. It ignores shit like Airbnb. It 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:33.879 ignores like the fucking problems in the construction industry, the 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:37.560 lingering effects of the two thousand eight crash. It's very frustrating, 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:40.159 and it's the these kind of like freakonomics guys like 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.160 to do the same thing, like the fucking freakonomics student. 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:45.640 In particular, one of the things he got famous for 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.879 is being like, uh, you know, the dropping crime in 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.560 the nineties, this unprecedented fallen crime was due to abortion, 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.320 which zero I will say again zero people who are 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.960 experts on the topic of crime in America agree with. 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:00.119 What they will say is actually there's a ship out 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:02.399 of different things that contributed to the declining crime, and 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:05.320 there's a good chance that abortion had an impact. A 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.080 bigger impact was probably getting the lead out of like 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.720 reducing environmental let although that gets overstated too. There's all 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:14.520 sorts of different ship including like air conditioning, just the 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:17.160 fact that like, yeah, now more people have air conditioning. 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.280 And guess when violence is highest in the summer, when 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.320 people are stuck around each other outside and like all 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:26.159 sorts of computer games. People because something else to do. 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:28.080 But it's it you want to if you're gonna be 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:29.800 doing the kind of like if you're gonna be doing 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:36.200