IJ in developing countries where they're needed the most probably have a full time job doing something else, and probably don't make more than $4k/year. In first world countries, sure, go for $50k/avg. Obviously when you focus on something you can bring down the price, but attacking corruption at such a big scale does bring up the cost. IJ aren't enough. Lawyers are needed, but they're all pro bono because they know this work needs to be done. We're talking billions of people affected. Yes the numbers can be completely different because you just can always say "Well there's still corruption in the government, so if the billions of $ of taxes that were being evaded are now funding corrupt policies & corrupt corporations wasting more resources etc...." It's exponential, and it just can't be attributed due to secondary affects.
Check out CongoHoldUp.com, there's bloomberg articles about it etc. How much corruption witholds funds that could have helped the people in extreme poverty in the world?
These global health interventions mean squat if you're trying to put a bandaid on an open wound. That's what corruption is, a cancer deep down, but if it's too deep for most here to comprehend, let's just call it an open wound. Mosquitos are flying out of this wound and causing malaria, call it a fever, just a symptom. You keep investing/donating and the problem will never be solved, but you clap yourselves on the back, you're saving more lives for less spent. The wound is still open. So how does that in the end affect your QALY IIUC? Saved a life, now the kid needs to survive living in poverty still, to hope he can get a good education and a good job someday, but then spend 30 of his adult years to finally buy a home because the price of housing in Nigeria increases 100% every year. (OK on average... over 9 years it's increased 700% in many areas)
You have France who exploited African countries for decades, here's one example:
Exposing this is just the first step to real change. How much is real change worth? To close the wound, to stop the cancer. Transparency to end corruption is the only real long-term effective solution.
We should push for a stop to even mentioning AI in these forums. There are exponentially more higher risk issues at stake for humanity... the world is a matchbox and you're all giving it to kids to play with. No matter what you do or say, someone will work on AI somewhere. All it takes is 1 villain, and they have an army of programmers under them, because it's just that easy to be bad today, and to make others be bad.
If you invested all your time on this subject, and somehow got 75% of the world to stop working on AI, 25% will still do it. And you know for sure more than half of them will be bad actors so what have you gained?
There is so much corruption in so many other ways imaginable, so much exploitation, where countries get away with it without the UN saying a word. There are still a billion of people living in poverty, tens of thousands dying every day, and you could have stopped it by stopping corruption but you are too busy thinking about AI.
So many ai trolls here. They just join because they want to fit in and feel superior over others. Do they really want to make the world better? Doubtful. They have their own agenda.
Should eliminate the ability to vote on this forum without commenting. Have people show face. Watch how many run away
Your answer to Haiti is spot on. I'm sure it's why everyone agrees with you more. Let's see how you behave when someone else takes away all your money because they freed you from slavery, and you and your great grandkids must live in poverty for hundreds of years paying them back forever in debt for being set free. Like puting 2 hungry dogs in a pit, I bet somewhere there's a small group of rich elites who actually bet on the gang fights in Haiti, have their own private app for it, and I bet some of them are also in an EA circle. It's like fighting over toilet paper, which happened in America so easily, but when it happens somewhere else, who cares? Who cares about Niger? Not your problem, plus it's religion, and Putin, we can't even mention it. Yemen, theyre arabs it's always their fault. Right? No need to talk about a proxy war, or that the UN members are funding it.
I don't see how you came to the conclusion that charter cities are neocolonialism. No one is doing that in Africa besides the charter city institute. They're the good guys out in that wild west...just like startups. Everyone else is either giving them loans for infrastructure w/ high interests, China, Japan, & russia, etc are jumping on the neocolonial band wagon, or outright mining the sh!t out of Africa and the governments/municipalities/police are decades already corrupted to let it trickle down to the rest of the population. Just look at Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zambia, the list will go on and on, because it's predatory, it's the definition of neocolonialistic: not using a military to gain control financially. Snakeoil loans. Which is not what CCI is doing at all. I also chatted w/ them about their work. You should check out their NXT 50 initiative. Still won't help if they're stuck using another currency.
There's nothing vague about the word. But you knew that, you're always right, you're just playing like a cat. Yes the average citizen in the average country who works an average job makes lets say $45k/year. Yes you're right, they're also being "neo-"exploited by the CEOs who make 10000x them. It's almost like modern-day slavery, maybe someday someone will escape the rat race if they 'hustle more!!!" "Or exploit others w/ an MLM scheme!" How many american citizens go so low and steal someone's amazon delivery? And by institutional investors who game the market. But sometimes the little guy wins, like w/ gamestop/BBB... fighting injustice. But you're wrong because most developing countries citizens' are making on average $5/week, because of hyperinflation, because of neocolonial tactics. the currency used in the francafrique is proof enough of this in action. And so is the outrageous loans by China. And this is where I draw the line w/ your wokeness.
People should feel ashamed to think that this is OK. To turn a blind eye to this is as bad as to be a normal innocent german citizen during WW2. Everywhere along the supply line (of the exploitation/extraction of natural resources), complicit. I didn't even mention how no one has really paid reparations for slavery. The king/queen of Britan briefly mentioned it, but no real apology. No $ for them. All seriousness aside, you're right, this issue's not as bad as buying almond milk in California, (it's super fine that saudi arabia has massive lands in Arizona growing alfalfa to ship back to them, while water gets turned off in some avg citizens homes) and doing nothing is definitely not as bad as eating meat.
You should read Winners Take All: The elite charade of changing the world, if you haven't. Or don't, you probably really don't care about anything besides your existential criss that AI will kill us all or wokeness, forget I mentioned the word 'neocolonialism' because you'll be just like every other woke white person here and take offense that I said something true, you can go spend more time debating gender. No need to really discuss about solving the root cause for issues today that are just repeating themselves over, because little kids like putting bandaids on things. But this time you can be happy to choose a unicorn or a spaceship bandaid, or both, and wear it to the next eaglobal.
That's fine of course, just additional thoughts. If you think you can achieve #1 without the others, by all means, is it then not a better option to do than spending over a decade investing in simple bandaids and hoping someone else solves this issue? Or that the big $ coming in from China/Japan/Russia/etc actually improves the QOL for everyone... and not just the logistics system that brings them more natural resources? I sincerely doubt we'll see another Rwanda in even 5 other countries in Africa in the next 5 years, but maybe 10.
I think solving real estate will solve the long-term welfare problem, which will improve education and bring to light the rest of effective altruism's movements.
This needs to be discussed much more, because it could be solved quite easily, and have an exponential affect on the rest of society.
I think it's kind of ridiculous, goes back to the emotional aspect of philanthropy in people will donate to something that makes them feel good instead of doing the biggest bang with their buck. Like Anand talks about..
Donating to distributing drugs in Africa is one such thing. You could impact invest in an application that sends people in Africa a reminder to take a TB shot, and save millions of lives... but Prevention is exponentially better. Stop donating money sending americans on trips to africa for 'aid', just build better homes and infrastructure there, you solve many problems at once.
But if we can solve poverty in developed countries, there is just so much more money available for them to also become donors as well. Not even discussing 'poverty', lets just imagine if the 80% of people in the US who are living paycheck to paycheck, could loosen the amount of debt they have (which is mostly due to real estate). They wouldn't then all of a sudden take on more debt by buying more assets, they would save up. They would not have to work multiple jobs. They would volunteer, and donate.
Of the 100 million 'near relative poverty' in the US, 43 million are yes below poverty lines.
Just imagine if we had 100 million people now who were making good money, didn't waste half their income on rent, could now also get a better education, learn about causes, and join us in donating (or impact investing) to the best cause around the world, for prevention.
It would be exponential. More so than half the causes here. And it's systematic change that doesn't require a massive shift in politics. There are already opportunity zones, but they are still in the same field of extracting money. They aren't creating wealth for low-medium income populations. This is systematic change that can be done by investing.
The problem with rent to own is the downpayment, and the locked in contract. Today's society simply doesn't allow the second to occur due to how often people switch jobs, remote working, etc, and too many scams have dissuaded people from doing the first.
The reason why the whole debate of is renting better than buying a home, is more so because of the added interest than the maintenance. Yes back in the day it was probably more of a fair trade, and of course I remember what happened back in 2008 (whole city blocks in Arizona were boarded up)..but there's so much money around now a days, and banks have so many other ways to make money, I think we can move past this stage in life...
It's a broken system, like a pyramid scheme, and I can't believe it's not talked about here. Especially considering 36% of the world is renting their housing. For example, a single parent bank teller makes $16.50/hr @ JP morgan chase, paying less than median rent for a 1 bedroom in a city in california ends up being almost half her income, doesn't even make enough money to support a child's lunch..let alone clothes... teachers, let's not go there...because it's not the wage that doesn't matter, it's that wages don't increase nearly as much as housing costs.
But then again it's not the banks fault for this, they give the opportunity to landlords to offer fair rents, and to not make as much profit, right? Just give out more mortgages, they'll just raise the rent higher to pay them off... And then you can just bail out the banks again...
What is the best way to seriously help the most amount of people living in poverty? Make more money and donate to 'more effective charities'? Seriously what is trump doing to America right now? Keeping people in poverty, keeping people stupid, so they worry more about their bank account not going below $0 this month or next, instead of policies, or climate change, or AI taking over, or the health of people in Africa, etc...
I feel as if most people here don't *really* care about this here, almost like what anand giridharadas talked about the biggest problem with the philanthropists is they don't really want to change the way the system works.. and just seeing how many negative votes I've been getting here on this post, about an idea to improve real estate, makes this all the more true. (but thank you denkenberger for hashing this out with me)
Back to my original post idea, and to use a venture capital analogy, real estate should be a way to provide some sort of equity share for all stakeholders[and please don't say new buildings being built increases land value which improves economic conditions, because we all know about gentrification]. Yes some startups don't give equity to employees until they've been there 2 years. SO why not do this with housing? The value of all stakeholders, simple ESG metrics... the same tragedy that happens to X (coffee, chocolate, cobalt, lithium, etc) still living in poverty in Africa, while the top of the production line are living life of luxury.. well what good is it to donate against malaria, if you would be more effective by paying the X resource harvesters in Africa enough income to begin with to support a clean home, clean water, clean infrastructure...?)
So my idea goes along the idea of the sharing economy, the wealth + some of the appreciation of the asset over time is distributed between money lender/aka investor, to asset manager/aka home owner, but what really matters most is the renter, which could be called an interim asset manager. Even giving them 60% equity... to be debated...
With this mindset, makes renters feel more inclusive in the community, perhaps they would take care of the buildings and neighbourhood more, care about the laws in the city, perhaps be inclined to take part in a circular economy for furniture/electronics..
I'm not talking about the landlord/property owner, I'm speaking for the side of the renter... the people at the bottom of the pyramid... 36% of people 'throw money away' renting someone else's apartment/home.
I'm talking reforming this thought process where we are taking money from people, instead of making money together. Not "for profit", but "with profit". Share the wealth in a non-socialist way
I'm not promoting either rent control or building new housing complexes.
I'm promoting a new type of community, a new type of banking, an option for landlords to create a win-win situation. Don't need to build new buildings, just purchase them, like WeWork, consumers still have the option of just taking their own mortgage, or just to rent, but in reality, there is no reason 'just to rent' with digital technologies available.
Foundations & impact investors can purchase apartment buildings, and still make money renting out the properties. I'm not saying they have to reduce the rent, and take a longer ROI (though feel they should based on a renter's income). I'm saying, rent-to-own should be the norm. And it should be credit transferable, not locked-in to a single property.
Consumers don't have this choice, because even thinking 10 years ahead is so daunting, almost impossible to do. Even today, to think you will be in the same job for 5 years, in the same place, is almost unfeasible. You have no faith for most corporations that you will keep your pension.. And most people aren't even offered rent-to-own to begin with. With a global rent-to-own market, it allows landlords to sell the property for current/future value of the property, without locking it at a given value, the number one reason they don't even consider rent-to-own in the first place.
IJ in developing countries where they're needed the most probably have a full time job doing something else, and probably don't make more than $4k/year. In first world countries, sure, go for $50k/avg.
Obviously when you focus on something you can bring down the price, but attacking corruption at such a big scale does bring up the cost. IJ aren't enough. Lawyers are needed, but they're all pro bono because they know this work needs to be done.
We're talking billions of people affected. Yes the numbers can be completely different because you just can always say "Well there's still corruption in the government, so if the billions of $ of taxes that were being evaded are now funding corrupt policies & corrupt corporations wasting more resources etc...." It's exponential, and it just can't be attributed due to secondary affects.
Check out CongoHoldUp.com, there's bloomberg articles about it etc.
How much corruption witholds funds that could have helped the people in extreme poverty in the world?
These global health interventions mean squat if you're trying to put a bandaid on an open wound. That's what corruption is, a cancer deep down, but if it's too deep for most here to comprehend, let's just call it an open wound. Mosquitos are flying out of this wound and causing malaria, call it a fever, just a symptom. You keep investing/donating and the problem will never be solved, but you clap yourselves on the back, you're saving more lives for less spent. The wound is still open.
So how does that in the end affect your QALY IIUC?
Saved a life, now the kid needs to survive living in poverty still, to hope he can get a good education and a good job someday, but then spend 30 of his adult years to finally buy a home because the price of housing in Nigeria increases 100% every year. (OK on average... over 9 years it's increased 700% in many areas)
You have France who exploited African countries for decades, here's one example:
Exposing this is just the first step to real change. How much is real change worth? To close the wound, to stop the cancer. Transparency to end corruption is the only real long-term effective solution.
We should push for a stop to even mentioning AI in these forums. There are exponentially more higher risk issues at stake for humanity... the world is a matchbox and you're all giving it to kids to play with. No matter what you do or say, someone will work on AI somewhere. All it takes is 1 villain, and they have an army of programmers under them, because it's just that easy to be bad today, and to make others be bad.
If you invested all your time on this subject, and somehow got 75% of the world to stop working on AI, 25% will still do it. And you know for sure more than half of them will be bad actors so what have you gained?
There is so much corruption in so many other ways imaginable, so much exploitation, where countries get away with it without the UN saying a word. There are still a billion of people living in poverty, tens of thousands dying every day, and you could have stopped it by stopping corruption but you are too busy thinking about AI.
So many ai trolls here. They just join because they want to fit in and feel superior over others. Do they really want to make the world better? Doubtful. They have their own agenda.
Should eliminate the ability to vote on this forum without commenting. Have people show face. Watch how many run away
Your answer to Haiti is spot on. I'm sure it's why everyone agrees with you more. Let's see how you behave when someone else takes away all your money because they freed you from slavery, and you and your great grandkids must live in poverty for hundreds of years paying them back forever in debt for being set free. Like puting 2 hungry dogs in a pit, I bet somewhere there's a small group of rich elites who actually bet on the gang fights in Haiti, have their own private app for it, and I bet some of them are also in an EA circle. It's like fighting over toilet paper, which happened in America so easily, but when it happens somewhere else, who cares? Who cares about Niger? Not your problem, plus it's religion, and Putin, we can't even mention it. Yemen, theyre arabs it's always their fault. Right? No need to talk about a proxy war, or that the UN members are funding it.
I don't see how you came to the conclusion that charter cities are neocolonialism. No one is doing that in Africa besides the charter city institute. They're the good guys out in that wild west...just like startups.
Everyone else is either giving them loans for infrastructure w/ high interests, China, Japan, & russia, etc are jumping on the neocolonial band wagon, or outright mining the sh!t out of Africa and the governments/municipalities/police are decades already corrupted to let it trickle down to the rest of the population. Just look at Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zambia, the list will go on and on, because it's predatory, it's the definition of neocolonialistic: not using a military to gain control financially. Snakeoil loans. Which is not what CCI is doing at all. I also chatted w/ them about their work. You should check out their NXT 50 initiative. Still won't help if they're stuck using another currency.
There's nothing vague about the word. But you knew that, you're always right, you're just playing like a cat. Yes the average citizen in the average country who works an average job makes lets say $45k/year. Yes you're right, they're also being "neo-"exploited by the CEOs who make 10000x them. It's almost like modern-day slavery, maybe someday someone will escape the rat race if they 'hustle more!!!" "Or exploit others w/ an MLM scheme!" How many american citizens go so low and steal someone's amazon delivery?
And by institutional investors who game the market. But sometimes the little guy wins, like w/ gamestop/BBB... fighting injustice.
But you're wrong because most developing countries citizens' are making on average $5/week, because of hyperinflation, because of neocolonial tactics. the currency used in the francafrique is proof enough of this in action. And so is the outrageous loans by China. And this is where I draw the line w/ your wokeness.
People should feel ashamed to think that this is OK. To turn a blind eye to this is as bad as to be a normal innocent german citizen during WW2. Everywhere along the supply line (of the exploitation/extraction of natural resources), complicit. I didn't even mention how no one has really paid reparations for slavery. The king/queen of Britan briefly mentioned it, but no real apology. No $ for them. All seriousness aside, you're right, this issue's not as bad as buying almond milk in California, (it's super fine that saudi arabia has massive lands in Arizona growing alfalfa to ship back to them, while water gets turned off in some avg citizens homes) and doing nothing is definitely not as bad as eating meat.
You should read Winners Take All: The elite charade of changing the world, if you haven't. Or don't, you probably really don't care about anything besides your existential criss that AI will kill us all or wokeness, forget I mentioned the word 'neocolonialism' because you'll be just like every other woke white person here and take offense that I said something true, you can go spend more time debating gender. No need to really discuss about solving the root cause for issues today that are just repeating themselves over, because little kids like putting bandaids on things. But this time you can be happy to choose a unicorn or a spaceship bandaid, or both, and wear it to the next eaglobal.
That's fine of course, just additional thoughts. If you think you can achieve #1 without the others, by all means, is it then not a better option to do than spending over a decade investing in simple bandaids and hoping someone else solves this issue? Or that the big $ coming in from China/Japan/Russia/etc actually improves the QOL for everyone... and not just the logistics system that brings them more natural resources? I sincerely doubt we'll see another Rwanda in even 5 other countries in Africa in the next 5 years, but maybe 10.
I think solving real estate will solve the long-term welfare problem, which will improve education and bring to light the rest of effective altruism's movements.
This needs to be discussed much more, because it could be solved quite easily, and have an exponential affect on the rest of society.
I think it's kind of ridiculous, goes back to the emotional aspect of philanthropy in people will donate to something that makes them feel good instead of doing the biggest bang with their buck. Like Anand talks about..
Donating to distributing drugs in Africa is one such thing. You could impact invest in an application that sends people in Africa a reminder to take a TB shot, and save millions of lives... but Prevention is exponentially better. Stop donating money sending americans on trips to africa for 'aid', just build better homes and infrastructure there, you solve many problems at once.
But if we can solve poverty in developed countries, there is just so much more money available for them to also become donors as well. Not even discussing 'poverty', lets just imagine if the 80% of people in the US who are living paycheck to paycheck, could loosen the amount of debt they have (which is mostly due to real estate). They wouldn't then all of a sudden take on more debt by buying more assets, they would save up. They would not have to work multiple jobs. They would volunteer, and donate.
Of the 100 million 'near relative poverty' in the US, 43 million are yes below poverty lines.
Just imagine if we had 100 million people now who were making good money, didn't waste half their income on rent, could now also get a better education, learn about causes, and join us in donating (or impact investing) to the best cause around the world, for prevention.
It would be exponential. More so than half the causes here. And it's systematic change that doesn't require a massive shift in politics. There are already opportunity zones, but they are still in the same field of extracting money. They aren't creating wealth for low-medium income populations. This is systematic change that can be done by investing.
The problem with rent to own is the downpayment, and the locked in contract. Today's society simply doesn't allow the second to occur due to how often people switch jobs, remote working, etc, and too many scams have dissuaded people from doing the first.
The reason why the whole debate of is renting better than buying a home, is more so because of the added interest than the maintenance. Yes back in the day it was probably more of a fair trade, and of course I remember what happened back in 2008 (whole city blocks in Arizona were boarded up)..but there's so much money around now a days, and banks have so many other ways to make money, I think we can move past this stage in life...
It's a broken system, like a pyramid scheme, and I can't believe it's not talked about here. Especially considering 36% of the world is renting their housing. For example, a single parent bank teller makes $16.50/hr @ JP morgan chase, paying less than median rent for a 1 bedroom in a city in california ends up being almost half her income, doesn't even make enough money to support a child's lunch..let alone clothes... teachers, let's not go there...because it's not the wage that doesn't matter, it's that wages don't increase nearly as much as housing costs.
But then again it's not the banks fault for this, they give the opportunity to landlords to offer fair rents, and to not make as much profit, right? Just give out more mortgages, they'll just raise the rent higher to pay them off... And then you can just bail out the banks again...
What is the best way to seriously help the most amount of people living in poverty? Make more money and donate to 'more effective charities'? Seriously what is trump doing to America right now? Keeping people in poverty, keeping people stupid, so they worry more about their bank account not going below $0 this month or next, instead of policies, or climate change, or AI taking over, or the health of people in Africa, etc...
I feel as if most people here don't *really* care about this here, almost like what anand giridharadas talked about the biggest problem with the philanthropists is they don't really want to change the way the system works.. and just seeing how many negative votes I've been getting here on this post, about an idea to improve real estate, makes this all the more true. (but thank you denkenberger for hashing this out with me)
Back to my original post idea, and to use a venture capital analogy, real estate should be a way to provide some sort of equity share for all stakeholders[and please don't say new buildings being built increases land value which improves economic conditions, because we all know about gentrification]. Yes some startups don't give equity to employees until they've been there 2 years. SO why not do this with housing? The value of all stakeholders, simple ESG metrics... the same tragedy that happens to X (coffee, chocolate, cobalt, lithium, etc) still living in poverty in Africa, while the top of the production line are living life of luxury.. well what good is it to donate against malaria, if you would be more effective by paying the X resource harvesters in Africa enough income to begin with to support a clean home, clean water, clean infrastructure...?)
So my idea goes along the idea of the sharing economy, the wealth + some of the appreciation of the asset over time is distributed between money lender/aka investor, to asset manager/aka home owner, but what really matters most is the renter, which could be called an interim asset manager. Even giving them 60% equity... to be debated...
With this mindset, makes renters feel more inclusive in the community, perhaps they would take care of the buildings and neighbourhood more, care about the laws in the city, perhaps be inclined to take part in a circular economy for furniture/electronics..
I'm not talking about the landlord/property owner, I'm speaking for the side of the renter... the people at the bottom of the pyramid... 36% of people 'throw money away' renting someone else's apartment/home.
I'm talking reforming this thought process where we are taking money from people, instead of making money together. Not "for profit", but "with profit". Share the wealth in a non-socialist way
I'm not promoting either rent control or building new housing complexes.
I'm promoting a new type of community, a new type of banking, an option for landlords to create a win-win situation. Don't need to build new buildings, just purchase them, like WeWork, consumers still have the option of just taking their own mortgage, or just to rent, but in reality, there is no reason 'just to rent' with digital technologies available.
Foundations & impact investors can purchase apartment buildings, and still make money renting out the properties. I'm not saying they have to reduce the rent, and take a longer ROI (though feel they should based on a renter's income). I'm saying, rent-to-own should be the norm. And it should be credit transferable, not locked-in to a single property.
Consumers don't have this choice, because even thinking 10 years ahead is so daunting, almost impossible to do. Even today, to think you will be in the same job for 5 years, in the same place, is almost unfeasible. You have no faith for most corporations that you will keep your pension.. And most people aren't even offered rent-to-own to begin with. With a global rent-to-own market, it allows landlords to sell the property for current/future value of the property, without locking it at a given value, the number one reason they don't even consider rent-to-own in the first place.