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GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

givedirectly.org

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Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#81

Post by scottrogowski »

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and weaken the agricultural industry. Providing foreign aid tends to empower corrupt governments. These consequences only became clear after years of hindsight. Who knows what unintended side effects of UBI will be?

If we are going to try UBI, a fundamentally Western idea, it’s only right that it should be tried in the West. I’m not saying it won’t work - just that we don’t really know what will happen. East Africa has suffered enough from our neo-colonial experiments.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#82

Post by s_q_b »

LanguageGamer wrote: post #24
troycarlson wrote: post #4

Recently fascinated by the thought of piping donations directly to poor populations and allowing them to use it as they wish. I watched the documentary Poverty, Inc. [0] regarding the "poverty industry" and how endless foreign aid in these countries is killing the economy. If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business. Or if the U.S. pumps an end…

I agree, though it seems a distinction needs to be drawn between aid that's providing goods and services that could be produced locally, vs aid that's providing medical goods and services that couldn't emerge from the local economy fast enough to help those being helped (such as perhaps the Gates Foundation does).

I came here to say just that. Aid is good, but it should be either (1) very temporary acute relief goods (food, water, shelters, sanitation, clothing) (2) very high technology services, such as MSF (Doctors without Borders) provides, or (3) capital assets for the population at large, in the form of business microloans and direct cash grants.

In brief, unless the nation is in crisis, send fishing poles, not fish.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#83

Post by dragonwriter »

skybrian wrote: post #30
mathattack wrote: post #26

Seems like a great experiment. I think this will do wonders for both the people, and our knowledge of how to best provide aid. 2 things I'm interested in seeing: 1 - Does it make a difference if it's USD sent over, versus local currency? (Is it a cash shortage, or a foreign cash shortage?) 2 - How much inflation will occur?

1. The donations will likely be in local currency (via mobile phone payments), but the charity needs to exchange dollars for local currency. So it helps somewhat with the exchange rate if the country is short on foreign currency, but I'd guess the scale is not nearly enough to have any significant effect. 2. It doesn't increase the amount of currency in the country as a whole. Locally, if the economy is doing better,…

I don't understand your responses here: this is a western charity putting in 10 million USD and soliciting (and not exclusively soliciting in the target country, which hasn't even been identified) another 20 million USD for the effort. Where do you get the idea that the donations would "likely be in local currency"?

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#84

Post by oconnor663 »

scottrogowski wrote: post #81

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and wea…

This seems to be an argument against operating any charities at all in East Africa. That must be controversial?

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#85

Post by flatline »

oconnor663 wrote: post #84
scottrogowski wrote: post #81

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and wea…

This seems to be an argument against operating any charities at all in East Africa. That must be controversial?

It could certainly spell doom for future UBI proposals if the first prominent implementation goes badly, and it could be that it went badly due to factors that are simply not as prevalent in the West.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#86

Post by Apocryphon »

scottrogowski wrote: post #81

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and wea…

I don't know how much worse East Africa is compared to other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but Namibia has enacted basic income before with positive results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world#...

But then again, it was the country's own government, not some outside NGO.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#87

Post by hackuser »

troycarlson wrote: post #27
nicksellen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can extend this argument to banking though: If the U.S. pumps an endless supply of money into Haiti, how could Haitian banks hope to compete with their loan offers?

I'm not an economist so I'm sure there are variables I'm not accounting for, but here's my opinion. I think the difference is that an endless supply of money (we know it's not truly endless, but a large influx of cash) allows commerce to occur and people can buy/sell more than commodities. The mere existence of a bank doesn't improve the lives of citizens if said citizens have no money to purchase food/goods and no a…

> an endless supply of money (we know it's not truly endless, but a large influx of cash) allows commerce to occur and people can buy/sell more than commodities

I'm not an economist either, but I think the concepts you want to look up are 'money supply' and 'velocity of money'.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#88

Post by samstave »

scottrogowski wrote: post #81

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and wea…

>Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and weaken the agricultural industry.

What the fuck? Are you not aware of the MASSIVE subsidies that are given all throughout agriculture to give away basically billions of tons of food to animals?

Why not do the same for ensuring that the food is consumed by people...

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#89

Post by gshulegaard »

tryitnow wrote: post #76
gshulegaard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article you may be interested in from 2013: http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-... Basically UCT (Unconditional Cash Transfers) work well when lack of capital is the primary problem. But often times the cycle of poverty is self-reinforcing because of deeper issues and UCTs don't fix those (such as undervaluing education). Instead CCT (Conditional Cash Transfers) can often be more corrective t…

Makes sense. I like the UCT in principle, but I can't argue with the evidence that CCT does have positive effects. Of course, CCTs may eventually have the same problem as traditional welfare policies: self-perpetuating bureaucracies, contradictory incentives, resource misallocation, etc, etc.

I think the key difference is that UCTs and CCTs aren't (or at least don't have to be) doled out to "qualified" persons. They can just be given. I like UBI (Universal Basic Income) as it is a scaling UCT that disappears once you earn over a certain amount. So the traditional inefficiencies are no longer a concern.

CCTs could be issued in a universal sense as well, with an income threshold of some sort. But admittedly they are more complicated than UBI. But not necessarily as convoluted as current systems.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#90

Post by nickff »

tryitnow wrote: post #73
nickff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dumping" is a mercantilist theory; other schools of economics view the same phenomenon as a gift or subsidy (for the recipient). Bastiat wrote a famous criticism of proponents of "anti-dumping".[1] [1] http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html

Famous? Among whom? Other than libertarians who already agree with that point of view. I didn't read everything Bastiat wrote, but he appears to be describing either the absolute or the comparative advantage of trade (e.g. the first few sentences of the last paragraph). But trade is different than a gratuitous gift. Trade is part of the free market economy of mutually beneficial exchange. So trade is stimulating prod…

Bastiat's petition is well-enough known to be included in his (lengthy) Wikipedia entry.[1]

No, the parent is not "describing either the absolute or the comparative advantage of trade", because they said:

>"If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business."

and

>"[I]f the U.S. pumps an endless supply of rice into Haiti, how could Haitian rice farmers sell their inventory."

This is basic mercantilism, as described in the 'theory' section of the 'Mercantilism' Wikipedia entry, and more specifically the following points of the theory:

>"That every little bit of a country's soil be utilized for agriculture, mining or manufacturing. ...

That a large, working population be encouraged. ...

That all imports of foreign goods be discouraged as much as possible. ...

That no importation be allowed if such goods are sufficiently and suitably supplied at home."[2]

Cash is a better gift because you get to buy whatever you want, not because 'dumping' goods is bad.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat#Eco...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism#Theory

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