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MichaelZuotoday at 1:37 AM5 repliesview on HN

If the implication is true…

Shouldn’t people stop helping further entrench these shady practices?

If Ugandan decision makers know the people will effectively always be underwritten to receive some bread and water… no matter what happens…

Then what exactly is stopping them from piling on more and more nonsense?


Replies

jrumbuttoday at 2:21 AM

The boundary on this is kind of fuzzy. You obviously wouldn't donate if 100% of it was stolen, but also if you wait until the world is in a perfected state before helping anyone you'll never help anyone.

mikepurvistoday at 4:41 AM

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but what I've decided works for me personally is supporting a handful of hyper-focused charities that run very lean in terms of western staff and employ local skilled labour.

One example is the Canadian charity One4Another which performs surgeries to reverse some common birth defects in kids and babies in Uganda. They're not trying to feed the world, they're not interfering with the local economy; in fact they're employing doctors and nurses to perform a one-time intervention that changes the life of thousands of kids a year in the catchment area of their facility.

Obviously there are things that a group like this can't do but a massive NGO can, and that's great too, but for what I have to give, I feel very good about the impact per dollar of this.

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virgildotcodestoday at 3:06 AM

Better 20% of your money reaches a starving child than 0%.

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whiddershinstoday at 4:28 AM

You are right, the downvotes people gave this comment are wrong, the replies to you are wrong. Feeding evil in the hopes you will also feed a little good is not only bad morally, but bad practically, bad in a utilitarian calculus, and just dumb.