This raises a question: why do we hold global development to a standard of strict localism, when wealthier societies themselves achieved prosperity by leveraging expertise wherever it was found? The principles that drive progress in developed nations, identifying and scaling the best solutions, are directly relevant to tackling global poverty.
Because global development itself created all of these problems in the first place. From an abstract organizational point of view, yes, you could argue that at some point everyday people don’t want to be considering technically detailed problems that are essential to their lives. But in the context of history I find it to be hard to use this as an argument in order to justify why the same epistemology of efficiency that nourished the capitalist drive for the last 500 years should now be used in order to undo its consequences.
But many EA-funded interventions—like reducing worm infestations, malaria, or lead exposure—are a lot like the water from my tap: technocratic precisely because they avoid contentious political questions. These are large-scale problems that individuals cannot realistically address alone, yet they have minimal local opposition when implemented effectively.
Again, here we are focusing on solving the problem, without really understanding how it came about in the first place. This article goes into much depth about the decolonization of the global health system and addresses how the current condition-setting for Malaria has been a creation of our very own. Similarly lead exposure is a direct consequence of the extensive mining the continent has endured for the last 200 years.
The point is not to say: "EA has created these problems and now it wants to solve them". But if we use these interventions as the poster boy example for EA's cause, we should be rather laying the focus on how we can effectively inhibit our Western governments, companies and NGOs to reproduce the same logic nowadays, rather than cushioning the current systemic reality of the Global South that in large parts is still a creation of the companies headquartered close to our conference gatherings.
Because global development itself created all of these problems in the first place. From an abstract organizational point of view, yes, you could argue that at some point everyday people don’t want to be considering technically detailed problems that are essential to their lives. But in the context of history I find it to be hard to use this as an argument in order to justify why the same epistemology of efficiency that nourished the capitalist drive for the last 500 years should now be used in order to undo its consequences.
Again, here we are focusing on solving the problem, without really understanding how it came about in the first place. This article goes into much depth about the decolonization of the global health system and addresses how the current condition-setting for Malaria has been a creation of our very own. Similarly lead exposure is a direct consequence of the extensive mining the continent has endured for the last 200 years.
The point is not to say: "EA has created these problems and now it wants to solve them". But if we use these interventions as the poster boy example for EA's cause, we should be rather laying the focus on how we can effectively inhibit our Western governments, companies and NGOs to reproduce the same logic nowadays, rather than cushioning the current systemic reality of the Global South that in large parts is still a creation of the companies headquartered close to our conference gatherings.