
How Postcards Solved the Problem of Disappearing Rice - sogen
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/07/10/627355954/how-postcards-solved-the-problem-of-disappearing-rice
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_Microft
In Uganda, only 20% of the money allocated to schools (the amount differed
depending on the number of pupils they have) was actually ending up at the
school. Over a few years, the problem was fixed by publicizing the amount for
each school in newspapers, so parents could check with the school what they
got and what the schools did with it. A few years later, 80% of the money
actually reached the schools.

(An example taken from _Trial and Error_ by Tim Hardford)

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manicdee
Should do the same thing for immigrants on various work visas, to make sure
they are aware of what salaries and conditions they are entitled to.

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Cthulhu_
There's some charities operating here in Europe that do just that, making sure
the employees know their rights - which includes minimum wage, and not to have
their passports taken from them.

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nieve
Unfortunately some groups (and governments) in Europe are now trying to
criminalize providing information to immigrants.

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mistermann
Do you have a citation for this claim?

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snaily
I believe the GP refers to Hungary's "Soros Law":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/world/europe/hungary-
stop...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/world/europe/hungary-stop-soros-
law.html)

"Under the terms of a new law, helping migrants legalize their status in
Hungary by distributing information about the asylum process or providing them
with financial assistance could result in a 12-month jail term."

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fjsolwmv
It's the "Stop Soros Law", not the "Soros Law".

Also you (accidentally?) Glossed over the part that it's targeting _illegal_
immigrants.

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macintux
Laws like that tend to spill over into the legal migrant community. When
someone asks for help, it now becomes your onus to verify their legal status
lest you break the law, making people less likely to help out at all.

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mistermann
> Laws like that tend to spill over into the legal migrant community.

 _If_ / when that happens, OP would then be correct in his claim. Until then,
he is incorrect.

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mistermann
Downvoting based on differences of opinion is fine, and in accordance with HN
guidelines. Downvoting on matters of fact is something else entirely. I'd love
to know how people justify this intellectual dishonesty in their minds, "the
ends justify the means"?

Be careful of the precedent you are setting, normalizing fact-free judgement
in society might someday turn on you.

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hrktb
Dealing with corruption and misuse of public resources is hard in any country.

Finding an elegant yet financialy viable and low trade-off solution is not
trivial and the article seems to be underselling the thoughts that went into
that for comedic effect.

The sad part is it only improves the situation by 26%.

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rtkwe
> The sad part is it only improves the situation by 26%.

That's pretty good though going from 50% to 63% with just a simple postcard is
a huge reward for a tiny investment. That's before they did any other efforts
like the common knowledge campaign talked about later in the article.

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pvaldes
Is an interesting history but the best part is the web having a plain text
option as alternative to the "I agree on you taking my info" button. Saying
readers that other options are possible is a very good example of the "common
knowledge" referred in the article.

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fifnir
It would be great if it worked, but it forgets the link to the article and
redirects you to the home page in plain text instead which is completely
useless...

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teddyh
Here is the article on the text-only site:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=627355954](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=627355954)

~~~
_carl_jung
I just realised how absolutely fine I would be to read articles in that
manner.

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PakG1
This is interesting. By making things more transparent, you have obvious and
measurable positive effects. Here's my question. What happens when someone
moves up a social class such that they're no longer in poverty? I suppose then
that they're no longer eligible for the program. How do you administrate the
program so that those people are no longer given rice?

I suppose then that the lists held by the distribution centers need to be
regularly updated. But then when someone is on the margin (or perhaps for
everyone above the poverty line), they can have incentive to say, "Look,
here's my card, I'm eligible!" Then the distribution center says, "Nope, says
here that you're not poor anymore." Those disputes would need to get resolved,
and I can imagine that they can get bogged down in bureaucracy. Worse still,
for cases on the margin, distribution centers may have ability to let
corruption decide that recipients should be ineligible when they're eligible.

I think that the idea and results are great. I'm just curious how they deal
with the cases on the margin. Or does resolution just wait until the next
year's income taxes get filed and everyone gets reprocessed accordingly to
check for status changes?

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dmd
A much cheaper way is to _not care_. If someone wants their Us$0.50 of rice
allotment just give it to them.

Universal basic rice.

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AceJohnny2
No. "Free" has an odd effect on people.

For example they may think the item has less or no value ("Why are they just
giving this to us? Are they trying to poison us?"), or think the item is
unlimited.

The point isn't to recoup costs, but to make the recipients value the item.

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Proziam
If you are struggling enough to go through the effort to try and scam the
government for a small portion of free rice then I think it's obvious they
value the item. Not caring about the edge cases is almost certainly the
correct choice here.

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washadjeffmad
This is the same Banerjee of "Poor Economics"[1] fame. Really fascinating
work.

[1] [https://www.pooreconomics.com/](https://www.pooreconomics.com/)

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digi_owl
An informed citizenry is the bedrock of democracy?

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khazhou
Interesting solution.

Also interesting: there are people for whom a kilo of rice is meaningful. Holy
f'ing hell, this world is imbalanced.

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bluedino
Without reading, I first thought the postcards would be in the bags of rice,
and then by going on which postcards were (or weren't) returned, they could
see the areas where corruption was preventing people from getting their rice.

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kd0amg
That was my initial guess as well, but I was a bit confused -- unless bags of
rice were getting destroyed without being opened, it would be pretty easy for
corrupt distributors to send back the ACK postcards anyway. This out-of-band
checksum should be harder to compromise.

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code_duck
Essentially, they started mailing a statement to recipients of public
benefits, whereas previously they assumed that recipients knew what they were
entitled to and duly received it.

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pmontra
Text only no tracking version
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=627355954](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=627355954)

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ta76567656
"Sigh. I guess now we have to cut the local Post Office in on the graft."

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lurquer
Instead of mailing postcards, mail rice.

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kbart
Logistics of such scale is not trivial and sending kilo of discounted rice can
easily cost more than the rice themselves. I'm quite sure that the end-mile
delivery was delegated to the village heads just for this reason.

