I think the idea of "Big Goal" projects can be useful for inspiring people to action, but I am struggling a bit with your examples. In particular, what would the counterfactual look like and how does this change the overall effectiveness?
What would have happened if Carnegie hadn't made this donation? Other countries seem to also have quite robust public library systems. A quick search found in the US $41 was spent per capita per annum on libraries (which does indeed seem quite impressive!) [1] But it seems this level of spending is matched or exceeded by Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc. [2].
Perhaps where one could argue the unique impact of the Carnegie approach is that other social metrics in the US are probably quite poor compared to Scandanavia, and in this area the US is keeping up with those countries, which might be loosely attributable to this initial funding. But I genuinely find it hard to analyze the cost effectiveness here, because at the end we should only attribute the differential between what would have happened in another world where Carnegie didn't make this investment, and I'm very certain it wouldn't mean no library funding in the US at all.
I think your example from CEPI/Gavi is a bit more robust to this critique, as my (limited) understanding of their work is that it directly made vaccine availabity in the global south happen at a faster scale than we could have reasonably expected otherwise.
I think the idea of "Big Goal" projects can be useful for inspiring people to action, but I am struggling a bit with your examples. In particular, what would the counterfactual look like and how does this change the overall effectiveness?
What would have happened if Carnegie hadn't made this donation? Other countries seem to also have quite robust public library systems. A quick search found in the US $41 was spent per capita per annum on libraries (which does indeed seem quite impressive!) [1] But it seems this level of spending is matched or exceeded by Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc. [2].
Perhaps where one could argue the unique impact of the Carnegie approach is that other social metrics in the US are probably quite poor compared to Scandanavia, and in this area the US is keeping up with those countries, which might be loosely attributable to this initial funding. But I genuinely find it hard to analyze the cost effectiveness here, because at the end we should only attribute the differential between what would have happened in another world where Carnegie didn't make this investment, and I'm very certain it wouldn't mean no library funding in the US at all.
I think your example from CEPI/Gavi is a bit more robust to this critique, as my (limited) understanding of their work is that it directly made vaccine availabity in the global south happen at a faster scale than we could have reasonably expected otherwise.
[1] https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/public-life/public-library-revenue-expenditures-and-funding-sources
[2] https://naple.eu/finland-spends-six-times-as-much-as-germany-on-public-libraries/