The Wages of North-Atlantic bias
The Wages of North-Atlantic bias
A community of extremely talented and well-meaning people intend to do good better. What might they learn if they lived where they want to have an impact?
This time, I’m cross-posting. And in the process introducing a movement that’s getting growing coverage - Effective Altruism. (One of the founders has a new book out.) This is a community of well-placed do-gooders who argue online about and channel funding to the most effective ways of solving humanity’s problems. From their introduction:
Effective altruism is a project that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice. It’s both a research field, which aims to identify the world’s most pressing problems and the best solutions to them, and a practical community that aims to use those findings to do good.
Some of their work involves assessing charity in the world’s poorer countries. Recently, they invited criticism of their beliefs and practices. I wrote a post on their forum. As it happens, it includes responses to two Times columns by famous economists and links to several others. As such, it well fits the brief of Elite Scotoma.
Note: it’s written as an exercise in 'Red Teaming'. The criticism of the global economy is less balanced than you will find in this newsletter. 😄You will see a graphic I had used here last month. In addition, there is commentary that ties in three others. Here are two of them below for a quick glance, so you get an idea:
For the full text, visit the post.
Regular Scotoma posts will resume shortly with Faith and Facts — Part 2.
Housekeeping
The newsletter now has two new features! A section added to older posts already published, called ‘Post date’ and something I call ‘forward links’. Read about them on the revised about page.