The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems | Hacker News Reader

The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems

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88 pointskelukelugames60 comments

Reminds me of when I came across an article about this charity last year: https://cleantheworld.org/

I'm sure they are good people with good intentions, but everything about it just annoyed me to no end. Aside from the unintentionally condescending aspect of literally giving the world's poor our half used personal cleaning products, how could this possibly be efficient from either a monetary cost or energy use point of view? Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility.

Then once they have the soap, there doesn't even appear to be an on the ground logistical operation for distributing it to people efficiently. Instead volunteers go on trips where they apparently just show up and hand out soap to random villages and towns, resulting in tons of unfortunate website and fundraising photo ops of smiling white volunteers handing bars of soap to poor black and brown kids. Also, sometimes they wear super hero capes: https://cleantheworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/medium-...

So like the article said, this all seems simple, straightforward, and helpful on paper. But issues like clean water, sewage treatment, personal hygiene and public health are complex engineer and policy problems even in rich countries, and doubly so in ones with very limited resources. Just air dropping a bunch of recycled soap probably doesn't achieve much beyond making you feel good.

> Instead of just buying a huge shipping container of new soap from a factory engineering by a huge soap company to be efficient as possible, they are spending thousands of man-hours collecting half used soap bars and re-manufacturing them in their own facility.

Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need. But this thing you linked seems especially bad, among the many awful "charities".

>Or just giving money, so that people can buy what they need.

And potentially sink that money into large, corrupt systems (such as some 3rd world governments) that at best use it inefficiently and at worst make the problem worse...

Which is, I suppose, the point. There is no single solution, a combination of outside groups and internal tools are needed to resolve systemic problems. The can't be fixed exclusively from the outside.

No, it is well known from the research that money _is_ the best solution, much better than any form of in-kind gifts. I don't have time to educate you now, but the research is widely available and easily googlable. I suggest you start with GiveWell and JPAL. Also Dylan Matthews from Vox writes about before mentioned orgs findings a lot.

Money is a necessary but not sufficient solution.

Well, the statement "give money so people can buy what they need" is very different than what you are supporting in this comment. Giving money to charities that have experience "on the ground" and at least some solutions is a good thing. What you appeared to be advocating for (at least how I read it) is dropping into a country and giving people money to buy cleaning supplies. This is very different. Dumping money onto people is rarely a good solution. Even targeted microlending has been met with some skepticism [1].

[1]: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/measuring-impact-...

> What you appeared to be advocating for (at least how I read it) is dropping into a country and giving people money to buy cleaning supplies.

C'mon, you really thought I was 'advocating' for each of us to buy a plane ticket and fly into some country, and hand people money to buy cleaning supplies.

Microlending is not giving people cash. It's giving people loans. That microlending has limited/negligible effect has also been well known for some time (as you know as well since you linked one of the studies, but the same organization has a new meta-study over multiple countries also worth looking into). The same organization has much better study results with giving people cash. Every study of cash grants (conditional or unconditional from Oportunidades onwards) I have ever seen is net positive, and most very positive.

The systemic problem is further usually linked to rich first world countries entrenching those systems so they can exploit the country for whatever reason. Or further their geopolitical interests. One aspect that gets overlooked is how much external forces affect internal politics and policies. At the end of the day third world countries need independent governments that are functional for providing for their own people. That is the interest of the elites are aligned with those of the people. Capitalism is one way to do that. But not external capitalism, internal Capitalism. But internal Capitalism does not just emerge, and we don't seem to want to actually spread it, because that's not the natural way capital moves. And that's not going to further anyone in the first world's interests/.

Instead, external Capitalists move in to exploit the people and resources while the country stays corrupt not benefiting from the profits, because profits are for the most part siphoned off by external investors. So there isn't much money left over to do actual work in the country. To build its systems and an internal Capitalist elite that will look after the country, its interests, and properly socializing and educating people.

So the countries continue to stay charity cases. Exception of this being countries which already have a class interested in Capitalism that is enabled by other foreign countries, rather than private interests. Like Japan and South Korea.

This is just pollution laundering, selling people smug self righteousness.

See also: every give one get one company that way overcharges and then dumps shit noone needs like cheap shoes and and thin socks.

I also wonder how much of this type of thing is rooted in the protestant evangelical cultural origins of much of our society, with its explicit missionary focus, and paradigm that the material problems of others can be solved with a message of intellectual/spiritual salvation.

I grew up in a small rural evangelical church in rural Canada. A parade of missionaries were always coming through to talk about their good works in exotic places around the world, and seeking donations and support in various ways.

In my mind what you say applies to catholicism just the same.

In "the west" it's been a well complementing way of lying to ourselves about our colonial schemes for a long time.

There is still enough "systemic complexity" in terms of how Native Americans / First Nations ("tar sands", etc.) get treated in North America today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine

This article is pessimistic at best, and downright wrong at worst.

Why can't a 22 yr. old college graduate from Uganda be the one to finally break the logjam in the US about gun control? Maybe different perspectives will find solutions to problems we haven't come up with. The Ugandan man/woman might get hired by one of those "nonprofit groups" and actually solve this problem once and for all. Who knows?

Why can't a 22 yr. old college graduate from the US be the one to finally figure out how to get cheap water to remote villages in Uganda? Why must it be someone from Uganda? A then-40 something "college dropout" (we all know how irrelevant that is) from the US (Bill Gates) went to Africa and started working on the malaria problem. Do you think he did it all by himself? A bunch of 22 yr. old college grads helped him, along with a lot of others.

Is this satire? It might be satire, because of how reductionist this article actually is, by claiming the problem is "simply" intractable.

Though I don't think it's well argued, I agree with the general principle: problems are generally much more complex than they seem from the outside. It's interesting that you mention gun control, because if I talk to my European relatives their answer is "make them illegal" as if Americans are too stupid to work this out on their own. The fact that you even say "solution" to something not everyone agrees is even a problem is an example of how difficult policy is to make in the US. I deal in my day job with a large homeless population and I can tell you the vast majority of policy discussions I have rotate around "what is the problem?" before we even begin to discuss solutions. And that's not bringing in the people themselves, who may not see the situation as a problem at all.

So I agree that the article is a bit provincial, but I also agree that a very in depth understanding on issues and their complexity is often required, and very difficult to achieve from the outside.

Incidentally, this is why, at least in my experience, federal programs are so inefficient compared to state programs which are, in turn inefficient compared to local ones. This isn't to say that they don't all have their place, especially when it comes to enforcing consistent standards in a large geographical region, but it's definitely the people closest to an issue that have the biggest impact.

I find this thought process (the one in the article) to not be very accepting of "failure". So what if the Ugandan kid comes over and thinks he can change the way the US thinks of guns? It's not like he's going to have an impact unless he's right, so bring him and everyone else on!

I agree that problems are way more complex, in general, then they tend to first appear, but that naivety is sometimes good, because it's insulating against the thinking that created the problem.

Maybe the Ugandan kid will learn a great deal about the US and its gun situation, but still maintain that "outsider looking in" viewpoint, and that's unique, in a good way.

Sure, in the case of gun control he can likely do no harm, so more power to him.

But this is not always the case. The list of problems caused by well meaning outsiders trying to solve a problem is too long to list. Pouring money into corrupt dictatorships who then use those funds to enrich themselves is a time honored solution (see: IMF). Or even better, there's a bad guy in this country? Let's give them some freedom, that should work out (see: Vietnam)! Or maybe we ought to limit ourselves to humanitarian aid? If that's the case we can set up camps that will then house and abet one side of a conflict (see: Rwandan genocide).

There is a place for outside groups to try and effect change, but that needs to be carefully balanced against understanding of complex problems. Lots of money and resources is not always a good thing and can even cause harm when not used in the right way.

Sure, but that's true as with anything else in the world. I don't think "Don't bother" is a message that this article should be conveying to the folks who might be inclined to try.

If this article were more about what you're saying, and less negative, I might not have made my comments.

"The solution for drought in Africa is to give them more water."

I can't remember where I first heard this, but it made the point very clearly.

The thesis is not "22yo's can't solve problems!"

The thesis is that when you look at someone else's problem - someone that you don't know, understand, know their culture, see the situation leading into it, or the ripples coming after - that it looks simpler and more obvious than it really is. It's a variation of the "grass is always greener" mindset.

All of those sticky, messy details are hidden away. Some of them because they're cultural things the participants take for granted while others are glossed over because they distract from the story being told.

If you want to solve problems, great! Do it!

But make sure you understand the problem before you offer your solution.

I didn't get that out of this article. I agree with what you've written, but I got an implication of "don't bother" from the article, which I think is wrong.

I don't believe that was the author's intention. Check out the sections on AIDWATCH's flowchart, the paragraph about Molly Melching, and the closing paragraph.

Those paragraphs seem to me to basically say, "Don't bother if you're not going to spend the rest of your life/a very long time here", which I think is effectively saying "don't bother at all" to most folks.

I want the Ugandan to come to the US and try to solve gun control before he's 30. He'll fail if his idea sucks, but I want him to come try.

What if the Ugandan makes things worse for people who are already in a difficult situation? What if lots of Ugandans turn up with lots of solutions that all make things a lot worse?

I think this is what the OP is suggesting is happening with young western idealists - their naive solutions are making the situation worse.

What if the worst possible scenario happens, you mean?

That's pessimistic thinking, and not supported by experience. Definitely possible, though, so let's not even bother.

Maybe that's the point. People who want to solve complex problems need to be committed. Not for a few months or a few years, but maybe lifetimes. Because that's what's required to properly solving something.

As far as I could tell the article was about "The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems" since that was its title i.e. how much easier a problem looks from the outside than from the inside and how it's naive and arrogant to think that you, after learning about something for a year can go somewhere and /quickly and easily/ fix problems that have escaped solutions for decades, even hundreds of years with your western civilization/education/spirituality/tech. It's a kind of hubris supported by the implicit assumption that the people in the other countries are wrong, stupid, barbaric, incompetent, etc. It's a trivial and simple point to make but not an incorrect one. Have you never heard someone read news about some violence in the third world and say "gee gosh, why don't they just stop killing each other"?

Its entire thesis is that the kid in the US thinks prison reform is hard because she understands the culture, the problem a little better. She thinks solving FGM in Africa is easy because "they should just stop mutilating each other". There's a tendency to run away from problems in our country because you don't realize that the problems in other countries are no easier once you get on the ground.

But that's my point; maybe prison reform isn't actually all that hard, and only appears that way from an insider's perspective.

I'm refuting the article's pessimism by explaining the concept that innovative ideas often come from the perspective of an outsider who isn't thinking like the folks who created the problem think.

It's a significant part of start-up culture, isn't it, the theory of disruption? This article resonates because of how easy it is to be pessimistic and critical of new ideas, and everyone here is an expert at it.

No, prison reform is that hard. Same with FGM in Africa. The key component of these issues is that they are cultural problems. Entire cultures of people do not see them as problems at all or want them to be fixed. To fix them quickly you need to restructure and redirect an entire culture in the blink of an eye. Which is something brilliant people have been trying and failing to do for thousands of years of human history.

You've highlighted quite well why startup culture has never successfully solved a sociopolitical problem; startups are a flash in the pan and real issues take longer than its shelf life to solve. I'm all for optimism but thinking you're going to solve a real social problem to, say, 'disrupt homelessness' by writing an iPhone app is the height of tech-infused naive narcissism. Using tools which are wholly unsuited to the job and expecting quick and easy solutions without years of hard work when the problems you are facing are genuinely difficult is not optimism.

Nothing about the article was pessimistic. Rather it is optimistic. It is a gentle suggestion to people who want to fix the world that as tempting as it is to look far away, where the issues are clear and crisp from a distance, you should consider starting closer to home, because you'll find the problems are equally as difficult but you don't have to learn an entirely new language and mode of existence before you begin.

I'm getting the sense we both understand each other, even if we disagree, which is really all I can hope for on the Internet, in the limited space and time we're given to talk about issues on HN (the "reply" button disappears for a reason).

If nothing else, I found the article particularly interesting, given it's anti-"flash in the pan" (as you call it) mantra, for this specific (startup oriented) audience.

The nuance you're getting at seems to be the statement:

"Doing X is not actually as hard as everybody thinks it is, which is why nobody else is trying, and there's an opportunity."

But that's different in important ways from:

"Why can't you just do X?"

Because in most cases you're not "just doing X", you're attempting X knowing that it'll be hard, but you're pretty sure that it's not doomed to fail like everyone else thinks it is.

The best way to work on hard problems is to live there. For a long time. If you're interested in solving the US prison problem, live in neighborhood where many people are sent to prison. If you're interested in solving rural poverty, live in a poor rural area.

Then the real issues will emerge.

I believe rather broadly that it is the community's duty to uphold the community, and that means every institution - the state, the church, the corporation, the family - has a part to play in creating a better place to live.

"All they need is X" is often a misleading ideal. The further you are from your own context and culture, the less you will pick up on cues that seem small but can make all the difference in how people's behavior and environment can be changed for the better. Do people drive or walk/bus to work? Do they eat frozen food or go to the farmer's market? If they hear a bump in their house at night, is their first reaction to get their gun or 911?

A wholly strong community benefits everybody. People are friendlier. Government is more trusted. Corporations can hire talent by touting their home as a pleasant alternative to the coastal city rat races. And if it works in one place, chances are people elsewhere will seek to emulate your model, instead of having it thrust upon them.

This assumes the community has a good deal of agency.

by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel.

both of the mentioned companies are totally disrupting entire industries and the world, solving people's problems in transportation and in hospitality in ways the world never saw at scale before.

I would venture to say that your advice would result in these solutions not coming into existence: with respect, I think your suggestion is not only not necessary, but doesn't work and may prevent certain solutions from coming into existence.

I think we ought to be very careful putting Uber and Airbnb in the same boat as, say, gun control and malaria. They are websites that make an existing market more efficient by directly connecting two parties, but they are basically EBay: a platform for two parties to exchange services all parties opted into and agree they need.

They are not developing policy solutions and they are certainly not trying to connect multiple parties who do not even agree that problems exist or may even be actively hostile to solutions because they stand to gain from said problems.

I bet on the whole if you compare malaria, a single disease wherein the interests of every human on earth are aligned with no competition toward any limited resource (0 people want any cases of malaria, 7 billion people are better off if the disease falls off the face of the planet by tomorrow) with something like housing where lots of people are competing for a limited resource, then housing is a lot more difficult to solve in a sustainable way than malaria is. There is some chance of eradicating malaria worldwide in the next 20 years, and then just forgetting about it, the way we have for smallpox (eradicated by vaccination - literally smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the planet through vaccination to such an extent that vaccines no longer even need to be given to anyone.)

There is no chance of "eradicating" and completely solving the issue of housing for every human worldwide in the next 20 years. (It's a ridiculous thought on its face). Because it's a limited resource people are competing for, with lots and lots of overlapping interests going back thousands of years and indeed perhaps responsible for much/most of history itself.

malaria is not even within an order of magnitude of difficulty. I mean we're talking about the difference between $100 billion and $100 trillion. (to completely solve the problem for everyone forever.)

so yeah, I would plot them in the same boat (as you put it).

But interests aren't aligned. Most people would rather have $3,000 in their pocket than have that $3,000 directed toward buying insecticide treated bednets.

Not just that. Remember that we're talking about companies that tend to benefit one subgroup of a community at the expense of another. This is a very bad approach if you want to do some good in this world.

this is a correct point, thanks, but you've discussed interests around a means, not interests around the end.

there's zero pressure in the opposite direction, for maintaining malaria, except the pressure from the natural world making it a somewhat tricky problem. if someone can solve it cheaply and easily they wouldn't face resistance from anyone.

Not resistance against solving malaria, but quite possibly resistance to solutions. That resistance can come in the form of "don't spray insecticides because that causes other harm" to "I'm going to profit off of all this money, but not really align my interests to that money's goal" (i.e. corruption, theft, etc.).

AirBnB did not solve housing, nor their proposed "solution" is in any way sustainable. It's completely based on pitting people against each other. While there are some places where AirBnB is a pure win, the most "value" seems to come from people deciding to ignore the rules and earn some quick buck at the expense of other people living in the area. Zoning laws were invented for a reason.

>by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world, and airbnb's founders should have opened a hotel.

Yeah. That's actually a really appealing idea. At one point, I wanted to write software to help individuals and small bookstores sell online. So what did I do? I bought a bunch of books and sold them online! I'm not saying that's why I failed... but I failed to come up with a product worth using before the market became crowded with much better products.

well, come on, you have to at least try - I mean if you literally come up with a business plan to sell books online "after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the business plan on the way", which is a quote I got from Jeff Bezos's wikipedia page on how he founded Amazon...oh.

Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing how wrong I proved myself to be about business.

But... on the other hand, one thing I am still certain of... 90% of business advice and business stories are bullshit from people who don't know what they are doing. the other 10% is lies from people who do.

no, what I'm saying is that contrary to the point I was disagreeing with, Jeff Bezos didn't know anything about bookstores. This is a direct refutation of "live in that world". the fact that you didn't personally succeed in online bookselling actually doesn't mean that to succeed in online bookselling, you first have to understand bookselling. You don't!

Right. I'm mostly in agreement. I did live in that world and still failed miserably, in part because I was spending a lot of the effort I should have been spending programming on, you know, selling books.

I just find this apparent truth to be deeply unsatisfying, that's all, and "live in that world" is a good example of business advice that sounds really good, really true, and really satisfying, but that doesn't seem to hold up when you subject it to the harsh tests of reality.

That, and I don't think I'd believe anything written by a successful businessman like Bezos. Who knows what he actually knew, who he talked to, who helped him or what his intent was at the time. now he's going to tell the best story he can, because that's what a competent businessperson would do. Because of this, I think reading advice or stories of success from proven masters is way less useful than it sounds.

Uber did not solve a serious problem. They built a very convenient and useful app that let you call a cab. Which you could do before, but you had to talk to a real person and take a minute to give your credit card info and now you don't.

And they did live in the world. The world of people who rely on cabs/transport. And found it wanting, the primary motivation for starting their company. Then they learned about the industry and tried to fix it and it took years of hard work.

Airbnb hosted a nicer-looking craigslist specialized to make it really easy for people worldwide to conspire with each other to violate the terms of their leases to make a couple extra dollars while breaking a law that is hard to enforce.

And I think you'll find the founders didn't just come up with this idea out of nothing. They solved a problem that came up in their real lives.

Either way, it's entirely predictable for someone in the tech community though gross to compare these silly cash grabs to solving real cultural, social, and political problems that actually effect people in a serious way like FGM, clean drinking water in the third world, mass incarceration.

by that token uber's founders should have gone and worked as taxi drivers so they would understand that world

The didn't change anything about taxis, they restricted the meter and administrative side of a taxi company into an app. From the town that restructures business processes into software.

Your point doesn't change mine, the parent said you have to know about the world you're disrupting, for example the taxi world (my example). But you don't have to know anything about the taxi world to make a taxi app (as you put it) and a ten billion dollar company around it. You don't need to "live in" the industry or sector you're disrupting.

They got drivers to agree to incentives for actually showing up and choosing reasonable routes, which taxi companies had been failing to do for decades.

If following GP's advice would prevent Ubers and AirBnBs of charity from happening, then we absolutely should heed this advice! The last thing the people in need would want would be initiatives designed to turn the local society against itself. Like Uber does with people vs. drivers vs. local governments, and like AirBnB does with tenants vs. landlords vs. community around them. Uber and AirBnB base their business model on taking the social trust and burning it to make dollars. That's exactly what we don't want charities to do.

I'm disappointed that this article excluded big groups making measurable improvements to "other people"'s lives, like The Gates Foundation and charities recommended by GiveWell (which include GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation, and more).

In fact, the author went one step further and calls out the harm caused by specific charitable missteps. This is unfair since missteps in charity can occur all the same at home: you need to follow economic and social research to avoid them, but once you do you'll be well set to be at worst neutral.

I get where the article is coming from--there are plenty of complex issues at home that we're far more in-tune to understand and solve--but the content is biased against supporting groups that we know how to help in huge ways, and that Americans actually neglect in favor of close-to-home charities anyway (donations don't tend to leave US borders).

I agree they could've mentioned them. The Gates Foundation, and GiveWell + their recommended charities are basically an exception to the rule.

I agree with the gist of the article though - you can do very good by donating to AMF or GiveDirectly, but if you want to go to help somewhere, consider a place where you'll have it easier to do something, as opposed to just looking good on Instagram. Doubly so if you want to be a social entrepreneur. Unless you take extra care with your idea and work to get to know the population, a much better way to help would be to start a normal business, and funnel excess profits to GiveWell's current favourites.

A bit ot, but I've found that you can tell a good engineer by whether, when you tell them about the design of something, their first response is a question or a suggestion or criticism. With good engineers it's almost always a question.

A question - like, "How the fuck is that supposed to work? Did you even do the math?".

Bringing the topic back to the article - a lot of technological non-solutions like those mentioned in the article are something that didn't make sense even on paper. My question is, how on Earth are such things getting funded? Even in humanitarian aid, is there no one with even a little background in engineering, science and sociology to tell them that "no, this shit won't work"?

Or is it just like the startup industry, where the actual utility of a product is one of the least important things, because what matters (and gets funded) is for it to a) be sexy - so it grows fast, and b) have a high lock-in factor, so that customers don't escape, at least not without spreading the love some more. If so, could we please get someone else to fund aid?

Also, maybe it's time for a service that would evaluate various aid-related products and business models and verify which ones make sense, and which don't. Like GiveWell, but instead of focusing on best charities, it would focus on calling out bullshit when they see it.

For those who find this interesting and want to spend a bit more time on figuring out the most impactful ways to help in the developing world, I highly recommend you check out Doing Good Better [1] by Will MacAskill.

He is part of the Effective Altruism movement and the book does a great job of breaking down the relative impact of different charities, whether to “earn to give” or participate directly through volunteerism, etc.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Difference...

Wow. This resonates at several levels for me (middle aged, middle class white male in the US). I wonder how much this is influenced by the comforts of living in a relatively affluent and secure environment.

Honestly, regardless of whether s/he stays home or goes somewhere, no one -- neither in Uganda nor in Indiana -- is going to consider a 22yo new employee as a source of expertise. She might stick to it and in the process learn something about what works, what doesn't, and what are the real issues, at which point she will be in a position to make better decisions; or she might go back home, having provided some much-needed, relatively cheap help to a charity, in exchange for experience and an opportunity to see more of the world. I don't see anyone losing here. And this experience is really a prerequisite for the commitment and analysis that he suggests the perspective worker does -- which again applies at home just as well.

Now, the question of more vs less efficient charities and non-profits is a valid one; most of them are not headed by fresh college graduates though, so I don't see how the article helps there.

I also suspect that overstating success while fundraising is not an experience unique to charity workers abroad :)

But it's not "Other People's Problems". No idealistic 22 year old is trying to solve the deflationary environment in Japan.

The problems that are [potentially] open to solution are where post-scarcity economies don't exist. The problem is literally scarcity of resources; by getting more stuff you raise the standard of living. To complicate this basic proposition into a hand wringing essay on Medium is to itself go all non-profit hipster, just one meta level up from the humanitarian tinderiste.

Here's a simple test to see if your able to focus on resource scarcity problems: Do you think gun reform in the US is a good analogy to your charity's mission?

Pretty insulting to call people's compassion a delusion. Fine. I'll never give a cent, nor even two blinks, to any African charity. I'll save my money and spend it on ME in my fat american consumerist culture, lest I become "delusional".

I think the article's point is to actually try to really understand the problem and not just jump in with a quick solution.

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