Question from a newbie. I am constantly seeing negative references to the gutting of US foreign aid. It seems pretty clear that global development-focused EAs generally view the change in policy to be a bad thing. But I do not think I have once seen any discussion at all about how to reverse this state of affairs. Building on a running theme as of recently, it seems like political giving may have an outsize effectiveness, due to the relatively sparse funding in the space. So, naively, it would seem like you probably could get a great rate of return on efforts to reinstate USAID. I understand that political coalition building and organizing is not easy, etc. I'm not someone with those skills, just a rando. But I'm a little surprised that I don't think I've ever seen it taken up here when it seems like the downstream effects are making our goals harder to achieve. Basically, not only is it at face value cost effective, but also, we are collectively burning a lot of human capital working around this problem. Why not confront it head on?
At the risk of undermining the strategy somewhat, Matt Yglesias said at a recent EA event that efforts to restore US foreign aid have been quietly going well and that it would not be helpful to raise the political salience of the issue.
Question from a newbie. I am constantly seeing negative references to the gutting of US foreign aid. It seems pretty clear that global development-focused EAs generally view the change in policy to be a bad thing. But I do not think I have once seen any discussion at all about how to reverse this state of affairs. Building on a running theme as of recently, it seems like political giving may have an outsize effectiveness, due to the relatively sparse funding in the space. So, naively, it would seem like you probably could get a great rate of return on efforts to reinstate USAID. I understand that political coalition building and organizing is not easy, etc. I'm not someone with those skills, just a rando. But I'm a little surprised that I don't think I've ever seen it taken up here when it seems like the downstream effects are making our goals harder to achieve. Basically, not only is it at face value cost effective, but also, we are collectively burning a lot of human capital working around this problem. Why not confront it head on?
At the risk of undermining the strategy somewhat, Matt Yglesias said at a recent EA event that efforts to restore US foreign aid have been quietly going well and that it would not be helpful to raise the political salience of the issue.