Today, the New York Times-sponsored Bloggingheads.TV put up a 45 minute video discussion {video link: Peter Singer & William Easterly on Bloggingheads.tv}, where Peter and I discuss imposing tough love on the global poverty charities who take your Christmas gifts and donations. I had given a critical review of Peter’s latest book in the Wall Street Journal. Yet, Peter and I wound up agreeing that there is just as big a moral obligation on you to make sure your favorite charity gets the money to the poor, as much as there is for you to give the money in the first place. Let’s see, if I follow Peter’s logic correctly, I think that implies that you have a sacred moral & religous obligation, equivalent to rescuing a drowning child, to WATCH THIS VIDEO.
After a lot of criticism of NGO and offical aid lack of accountability and impressive fecklessness, including colorful insults and stories, we did get around eventually to making some positive recommendations on how you can give effectively, including specific charities (such as Women’s Trust in Ghana) and monitoring web sites (such as the site Good Intentions are Not Enough).
I hope this is not too much of a distraction, but I have to confess I really don’t like talking to a camera, as will probably be apparent in this video (ouch). I love talking to real people in person, even 600 at a time, but talking to a machine is something that is still a work in progress for me. Maybe I should take lessons from one of the celebrity actors who work on aid – now that is an area where they could use their skills productively!
Anyway, the message does come through loud and clear from both Peter and me: give, and, equally important, make sure your gifts reach the poor. Sounds so simple, and yet you have to work hard at the details to get it right.
6 Comments
It is an excellent video, and amazing to see that Peter agrees on almost everything raised, criticized, or suggested by William! Who won’t? hehe
Great video, thanks! Please also notify us when you give talks which are open to the public.
excellent video, and amazing to see
Today, the NYT put up a 6-minute excerpt from the video on their web site:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/12/24/opinion/1247466273296/bloggingheads-tough-love.html
Nice chat, but far too much agreement to be really interesting.
Bill, I think you are a little unfair with USAID. USAID doesn’t choose to use American grain and ships, they are compelled to do so by law. Congress makes those laws and I suspect that there is not enough popular support for changing them. This has certainly been known for many years, and no one is pushing to change these laws or (for that matter) change the cotton or sugar subsidies that hurt farmers from poor countries.
You seem to assume that if everyone understood about what form of charity works and what charity hurts, that giving would change. I would like to believe this, but I don’t think it is realistic. People do respond to simplistic slogans because they don’t want to burden themselves with complexities while they feel better about helping others. They certainly aren’t going to push for changes that will hurt their own economies.
I started watching the 6 minute video but I was so taken by the conversation that I went back and watched it all!
On food aid, I agree that it is a VERY inefficient use of resources. However, the counter-argument is that if you untie the food aid, you will see a HUGE drop in aid targeting hunger because you lose your in-built political support from farm-state senators/congressmen and US shippers. If we convert food aid into cash for local/regional purchase (the argument goes) there will be very little political will to support aid to address global hunger (especially if you are using US tax money to buy grain from competitor European / Australian companies that may be closer to the intended beneficiaries). So, given the political reality, most NGOs have decided that it is better to use an inefficient resource rather than no resource at all (fyi, average loss in value for tied food aid is ~30%).
So, the picture is a bit more complicated, as usual. I guess we need to be mobilizing political will to address hunger as we ALSO seek to end inefficient food aid practices. But do you think aid to address hunger has a strong in-built constituency in the US? It’s growing, but still marginal when compared to the UK, Sweden, etc – I think.
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[...] Singer and Easterly ended up agreeing quite a bit during their discussion, as you can read from Easterly’s summary of the conversation on the Aid Watch Blog. Easterly also plugged for the Good Intentions Are Not Enough [...]
[...] lämna en kommentar » Professorn i nationalekonomi William Easterly och professorn i filosofi Peter Singer möts i ett samtal om hur man kan förbättra för dem som har det sämst ställt i världen. Ta en titt! Deras budskap: [...]