
Want to Help People? Just Give Them Money - iProject
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/want_to_help_people_just_give.html
======
tolmasky
Milton Friedman was a proponent (an originator?) of the idea of a negative
income tax (as opposed to services). The idea of course, is that the problem
of being poor is _money_ , not services. Rather than explain it here, you can
see him summing it up: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM>

~~~
batgaijin
Huh... that's actually a pretty awesome capitalist solution.

I just really hate how the poor are treated today... the level of desperation
you see in a majority of America is incredibly depressing and seems like it
could so easily be rectified by such a small tax increase.

~~~
netcan
What's capitalist about it?

~~~
Ankaios
Allowing the recipients to allocate the resources in the manner which they
believe best benefits them.

~~~
netcan
"Market Oriented" is part of capitalism but I don't think that qualifies this
as capitalist, at least not under a definition that works within the
capitalist-socialist paradigm.

European socialist politicians could get behind this as readily as capitalist
ones. This is really a 'welfare state' solution. Welfare state being the
capitalist-socialist compromise that most wealthy countries currently have.
IE: (a) Grant citizens rights. (b) Do redistribution while trying to keep the
free market as intact as possible. (c) Provide some services directly.
(education, health) (d) Support the poorest segments directly.

I agree that a negative tax system would be cleaner (especially on paper) and
probably have fewer side effects. But, it's not outside the paradigm of or
current system. If you seriously proposed you wouldn't find that socialists
object and capitalists support it. You'll find that capitalists and socialists
will object or support it based on how progressive it is. IE how much
redistribution it does. If it increases redistribution, the right in most
countries would object.

Actually, any such radical change would piss off a huge matrix of embedded
interests so all politicians would either object or try to manipulate it to
suit their (friends') agendas... but that's a function of politics rather than
ideology.

------
tow21
I'm astonished by some of the reactions here.

Giving money to the people who need it, means that the power to use that
resource is directly in the hands of the people who have the most interest in
using it well.

Frankly, their incentives are much more aligned with their long-term
wellbeing, than are the incentives of a faceless charity committee in a
Washington office somewhere. Plus, you don't have to pay for the endless
decision-making - and the unavoidable inefficiencies in decision-making far
removed from the action.

It's one of the reasons free markets win out over statist command economies -
making much better use of information local to the decision.

~~~
wfunction
The problem is that it's a lot easier to misuse/abuse money than abuse, say,
water or food.

For example, a nonnegligible number of poor people end up using the little
money they make on drinking or gambling as soon as they possibly can, while
staying just as poor as before afterward. You could say it's OK if it's money
they earned themselves, but I think it makes sense for everyone to think twice
about letting charities donate money directly when those in need end up
misusing/abusing it.

Giving food/water/other necessities instead of money prevents this, while at
the same time giving poor people a chance to worry about finding a job, etc.
without having to constantly worry about where to find water, etc.

~~~
minikites
>The data fights conventional wisdom: Money spent on alcohol and cigarettes
either decreases, stays constant or increases in the same proportion as total
other expenses (approximately 2% to 3%).

The article contradicts your assumption.

~~~
pc86
The article is also referring to the poor in third world countries living on
less per day than either of us would spend on a pack - or a _stick_ \- of gum.

Raise someone's income from $237 a year to $500 a year and I'm not surprised
there isn't a marked increase in "sin" consumption, because they're still
living on peanuts even by those standards.. Raising someone's income from
$15,000 to $20,000 is not the same thing and it's a much bigger assumption.

~~~
minikites
That's true, but I think it's just as dangerous of an assumption to assume
that poorer people would waste money given to them. It portrays poorer people
as seperate from society and it makes it easier to mistreat them. When Florida
proposed drug testing welfare recipients, it was noted that welfare recipients
actually had a lower rate of drug use than the general public. Part of the
rhetoric used to deny social services to people feeds into the easy assumption
that poor people are not like us and that they are poor because they deserve
it.

~~~
pc86
Edit: Anyone who wants to have a real discussion is welcome to respond instead
of just downvoting because I said something you don't like. Grow up.

I don't think anything I said could be construed to mean that poor people are
"lesser," "other," or anything else. It's probably a safe bet that regardless
of socioeconomic status, the more money you have, the more likely you are to
spend money on "dumb stuff," whether that means a pack of cigarettes, a 40 or
at the casino.

Using the Florida example, is it relevant what the proportion of drug users
was compared to the general public? The argument was whether or not welfare
funds were being used to purchase drugs. If memory serves it wasn't even about
saving money (because it cost more to administer the program than it saved),
it was about making sure those who society is holding up aren't simultaneously
breaking that society's laws.

~~~
minikites
But everyone benefits in some way from different parts of society, that's what
a society is. Should we drug test people who drive their kids to a public
school in a subsidized hybrid car on public roads? Why the focus on welfare
recipients?

------
davidvaughan
The London homeless charity Broadway tried giving out money for a while. After
a year, it was reported (independently) to have been a success, and in 2010
the Economist ran a feature on it.

The idea was that you ask people what would most change their lives. One
wanted a caravan to live in. Another wanted a pair of new trainers and a
television.

I'm unable to detect from Broadway's website whether or not they're still
running this scheme.

The idea has merit. Poverty is a trap, and you need a chunk of money just to
get normal life running. You can't type a CV and check your email responses
from a doorway. Let alone think clearly.

The Fabians floated the idea way back. E M Forster: "Give them a chance. Give
them money. Don't dole them out poetry-books and railway-tickets like babies.
Give them the wherewithal to buy these things. When your socialism comes it
may be different, and we may think in terms of commodities instead of cash.
Till it comes give people cash, for it is the warp of civilisation, whatever
the woof may be. The imagination ought to play upon money and realise it
vividly, for it's the -- the second most important thing in the world. It is
so sluffed over and hushed up, there is so little clear thinking -- oh
political economy, of course, but so few of us think clearly about our own
private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of
ten the result of independent means. Money: give Mr Bast money, and don't
bother about his ideals. He'll pick those up for himself".

------
digitalengineer
I don't know about this. Didn't the aid from the '50/'60's work like this? How
will you prevent an entire generation from growing up and expecting to receive
money for nothing? Where is the pride in that? What kind of bahavior are you
cultivating? I always assumed people were better of with a fishing pole than
just fish, but maybe I'm wrong... Love to hear the opinions here.

~~~
jkn
I don't think this is about giving poor people a regular income, more like a
one-time cash transfer. The idea is that money is a good "fishing pole".

~~~
vidarh
There's been at least one experiment that involved giving an income for an
extended period of time as well, unfortunately I can't remember where I read
about it. Their results were at least in the short term similar: Some "abuse"
(to the extent you can call it that when the money were given with no
strings), but also a number of people who leveraged their "free income" into
building businesses.

~~~
jkn
Maybe you're thinking of one of the experiments implementing the basic income
guarantee idea [1]. The Wikipedia page mentions successful but limited
experiments in Canada and India among others. It's also an interesting
approach, but I think more as a way to redefine the meaning of work in
developed countries. The burden of having to make a living becomes the freedom
of contributing what you want and enjoy doing (or getting a high salary for
doing what you don't enjoy, as you choose), a great philosophical shift...

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee>

~~~
vidarh
It was actually the experiement in Omitara, Namibia mentioned on the wikipedia
page you linked (thanks) I remembered.

------
bane
When I was in my early 20s I found myself married to a wife who was a full-
time student who couldn't work (due to brain dead immigration law), a $900 a
month apartment, a car, an almost full-time job and a full-time class load
doing my undergrad. I made, in my best year during that time, $16000. To say
that we were poor was an understatement. An extravagant meal for us might be
ordering the deluxe tacos at taco bell, or for an anniversary splitting an all
you can eat pasta dinner at Olive Garden.

But we managed to just squeak by every month with about $5-10 in the bank at
the end of the month.

We arrived at a point where we had to make a choice, have health insurance
(the cheap one through the school) or pay rent and buy groceries. We chose
food and shelter.

It was the wrong choice.

I came down with a mystery pain in my abdomen after recovering from a bad bout
with the flu (which I had to work through or we couldn't eat). A night in the
ER and a $10k bill later, it was looking like both my wife and I were going to
have to drop out of school, we were going to have to break the lease on our
apartment and move in with relatives, sell one of our cars and I was going to
have to take on a second job sanding decks for $7 an hour.

It was too much to bear, my marriage went on the rocks, the relationship with
my family and friends went to shit, I mentally shut down. All those years of
effort, of dragging myself up the socioeconomic ladder. I became severely
depressed.

Aggressive negotiation with the hospital saw the bills lowered to a still
bankrupting but better $5k and a payment plan. It was the difference between
dropping out of school entirely or dropping out for a semester.

Then the stars aligned. The bill finally showed up right before the summer
break, meaning I could ramp up my work hours and work weekends and nights on a
second job. My wife got her work permit which let her take on a part-time job.
I got a dollar an hour raise.

We crunched the numbers and with aggressive belt tightening we were going to
be able to pay off the bill and not drop out of school or leave our apartment.
We worked like crazy, fevered, insane people. And then it happened.

We didn't know at the time, but the ER bill was not the final bill, some of
the specialists also charged their own bill, and they wouldn't negotiate. Two
10 minute consultations with a surgeon turned into $500. An x-ray here and a
couple lab tests and we were still out $1000.

We were broken people when those bills came. It was the last straw.

Then the next day, out of nowhere, a check from my uncle showed up in the mail
for $1000. No strings attached. Pure charity. He had passed the collection
plate at his church and asked for help, and those kind people each pitched in
a few dollars to help people they'd never met before. And it was that church
check that popped out of that envelope.

 _Everything_ turned around after that. Freed of the crushing medical bills,
but now with two people working and one less car payment, we finished off our
last year of school at a sprint, both got full-time jobs and never looked
back. A year out of college we were making enough to buy a house and a second
car again. Two years after that we moved up to a nicer house and a better
neighborhood and have had amazing careers since then.

That $1000 kept my marriage together, got me a degree, kept me from possible
suicide, it meant no turning back or crushing dreams, it was the difference
between weathering the storm or being blown away by it.

Another job wouldn't have helped, I was working over a hundred hours a week. A
loan just meant more debt I couldn't pay off. It was pure charity that saved
the day and I'll never forget that life lesson.

~~~
stfu
I am very sorry for the medical situation. This is very bad and insurance is
indeed an issue. But: _I found myself married to a wife who was a full-time
student who couldn't work (due to brain dead immigration law), a $900 a month
apartment, a car, an almost full-time job and a full-time class load doing my
undergrad._

In my opinion each of these factors are your very own choice. There is not a
single accidental factor involved in in this and you had the choice to change
each of these factors. I just don't think that society owns you the ability to
study full time while at the same time financing a dependable adult (incl
tuition?), a $900/m apartment and a car. But fortunately things turned out
great for you. Congrats to your successes!

~~~
bane
_In my opinion each of these factors are your very own choice._

I agree and disagree. If you want to follow that logic to its conclusion,
everybody incurs costs from simply living. They choose to stay alive when
suicide would simply free them from that burden.

Getting married, trying to improve oneself and not leading an itinerant life
_should_ be among the basic affordances society can guarantee to any person.

But I also will concede that I could have dropped out of school and lived a
marginally better life in perpetuity until I was too old to continue to do
heavy manual labor, then died in poverty.

~~~
stfu
You are painting here a picture between extremes.

There a millions of students who live on campus at a cheap dorm room, have no
car and get around on a budget where $900/m sounds like a life of luxury. If
you decided to life in one of the very few inner-city metro areas where this
is the norm nothing forced you to stay there. This is your lifestyle choice,
not a poverty choice.

~~~
bane
Okay smart guy, here's your challenge, using only resources available to a
young person with no college degree, and no friends or family resources, and
only what was available in 2001 and around $150 in starting cash. Put together
a proposal of what I should have done.

Include in it a location: It must be on or near an accredited university. Find
housing that is magically "super cheap" or not a "luxury". Specify the costs.
The housing must allow for no deposit (don't have the money) and nonexistent
credit and allow for a married couple to stay there - dorms obviously won't
work. Scans of local newspaper clippings from around the country will suffice
since Apartments.com didn't exist back then.

A money ($) budget: Include all relevant transport costs, food, clothes,
tuition, etc. Every single thing that costs money. These have to be real costs
and not a WAG. If you pick a school, include tuition for two and all relevant
fees exactly.

A time budget: Map out what my day-to-day life should have been according to
your omniscience. Include every minute from wake-up to sleep. Include all
travel times to and from work, home and school (I'll allow shopping time to be
ignored). This probably implies that work, home and school are within walking
distance, large isolated land grant universities won't work since available
jobs centers are obviously too far.

A job or two: They must pay in isolation or in combination enough to cover the
budget above, while allowing time to go to school, and they must be able to be
done at different times. No time travel! Remember no college degree or other
relevant qualifications. Jobs must be both available and plentiful. Just
putting out "work at Costco" won't cut it, one _actually_ has to get hired. I
can tell you that my hit rate on job applications was less than 10% (I
received 1 job based on over 100 applications).

Add in a $10,000 medical bill due in 45 days.

Describe a way to relocate two cars and an apartment full of stuff at zero
cost to this magical valley of freedom (as in beer) and plenty.

~~~
delluminatus
I don't think stfu is trying to deny the difficulty of attending college
without family support. Indeed, in absence of family funds, lots of loans, or
excellent scholarships, it's almost impossible to "pay your way" through
college. All he's saying is that you had a lot of expenses that most college
students simply don't need.

Having said that, as a college student myself I have much fewer expenses than
you. I live in a room about a hundred square feet in size, I walk or ride my
bike anywhere I need to go, and I buy cheap food to prepare at home to save on
food costs (I eat for under $5 a day). If a college textbook cost over $100, I
simply don't buy it.

My non-tuition expenditures total under $700 a month including food and rent.
For two of my three years in college, I did not have a job.

I happen to be very lucky in that I received excellent scholarships (well,
that wasn't luck, but not everyone goes through high school thinking about
college) and help from my family. If I had medical expenses, I would have had
to take out loans to pay them. I think, if I were in a situation with no help
from family, I would have still been able to attend college, but I would have
graduated with over $50,000 in student loans. Your situation sounds very
difficult, but you should seriously consider how many of your expenses
were/are necessary.

~~~
bane
I reserve opinion about stfu for stfu.

But let's break your situation down with some questions.

 _I walk or ride my bike anywhere I need to go_

Do you walk or bike on the freeway, or rather do you happen to live in an area
with accessible walking and biking lanes? My area does not.

 _My non-tuition expenditures total under $700 a month including food and
rent. For two of my three years in college, I did not have a job._

I checked, non-tuition rates at all of the schools in my state cost ~$800/mo
for dorms. The dorms appear to be single occupancy with no affordance for a
married couple, they do not allow year round occupancy, that means we'd be out
$1600 a month for worse living conditions and still have to figure out what to
do during summer break.

That being said, we did have an opportunity to rent a room in somebody's house
and saved $100 a month (sublet rooms in my area run between $600-700/mo), the
tradeoff was around 2 more hours a day in transport time by car + fuel costs.
Doing the math and the money worked out about the same, but then we'd have to
spend more time on the road instead of working or studying, and we'd have less
privacy. We seriously considered the local homeless shelter, but they charge
$20 a night per person, or $1200 a month for the both of us to be itinerant.

I did a breakdown somewhere else in this thread on what our costs were, it was
only because of some grants and a few student loans that we could even pay for
school at all.

One thing we didn't expect was that it would take two years for my wife to get
her work permit. But 9/11 happened and fucked up immigration royally for a
long while. It meant she couldn't work at all during that time. Once she
started working things eased up quite a bit.

 _but you should seriously consider how many of your expenses were/are
necessary._

So what was unnecessary?

At the time we had no car payments to make (the vehicles were owned outright),
food was the cheapest garbage we could find in the "discontinued" bin at the
dollar store (literally), clothes were what we started with (I didn't purchase
a single article of clothing for 2 years), our #1 expense was housing, which
short of couch hoping for years on end there simply wasn't anything we could
do about. We had no furniture, at all. We didn't even have dishes for most of
the first year! We both ate on around $5-7/day. There literally was no other
expense that was possible to cut by our reckoning.

 _Nothing_ makes you think about what every...single...thing...costs than
being poor. We even knew, down to the item, and sometimes to the ounce (since
different packaging formats make direct comparisons hard), what we could buy
for cheaper at the grocery store vs. the dollar store. We reused cooking oil
in an old coffee can I took from my work when it was empty. A package of
instant noodles and 20 ketchup packages made 4 servings. We used to go to our
local grocery and argue with the manager when the sell-by date on canned goods
got too close so we could get case of canned green beans for a dollar, then
eat only green beans for a week. I can tell you that a package of one day
expired hotdogs and 20 more ketchup packages can make an extravagant stir fry
that lasts for four meals. Add half a chopped onion and it becomes 4 star.
It's not possible to eat cheaper than that without going completely free.

We didn't have cable, a land-line or cell phones (I used AOL and other free
internet CDs and a long phone wire to one of my neighbor's land-lines if I
needed to get online at home, or just used the school's computer lab when it
was open).

We actually sold one of our cars during the second February because there
weren't enough work hours in the short month to both pay rent and buy
groceries.

What where was the extravagant and unnecessary thing that we could have cut?

 _For two of my three years in college, I did not have a job._

And yet tuition, rent and food materialized?

------
jorleif
It's not entirely clear to me how givedirectly.org operates, but it seems they
give in an unpredictable fashion, rather than continuously. That might make a
big difference, since fixed amounts of money every week or so can lead to the
receiver becoming dependent on the aid. But if receiving is not ongoing or
predictable, this cannot really happen, while it might of course lead to
stupid buying decisions when the money is received, that's not nearly as
damaging, and might even stimulate the local economy.

------
mjs
There's an intriguing exercise in Paul Heyne's "The Economic Way of Thinking"
that asks, as a thought experiment, what would happen if a helicopter simply
dropped cash on groups of people that needed it--the thinking being that if
people have money, someone will figure out some way to get them the goods and
services they need.

(There's obvious security and fairness problems with this method of
distributing aid, but if these could be solved somehow, this approach "fixes"
some of the problems that afflict traditional approaches, such as the way in
which they disrupt existing businesses, and make it difficult for new
businesses to sustain themselves.)

~~~
ptaipale
As in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Financial_Fable>

A great macroeconomic work by Barks.

------
RobinL
I think in general this is a fantastic idea. Often, charity is too
presumptuous: the giver purports to know what the receiver 'really needs', so
rather than giving money they give something else.

I think this is shortsighted as it's very difficult for relatively wealthy
people to put themselves in the mindset of somebody who is living in extreme
poverty, especially in a different country. This makes it even less plausible
that the giver can make a better decision than the receiver as to what to do
with additional resources.

Put it this way: if you were really poor, would you rather be given money to
help your sort your own life out, or for some charity to use the money for
'what's best for you'. I know what I'd want.

I also think from the point of view of the giver, it might be nice to be less
judgemental about how the money is used. Even if a very poor person 'wastes'
the additional money on a little luxury for once (say, cosmetics), then I hope
at least the giver has brought a little happiness into their lives, if only
for a moment. That's enough for me, and is why around a year ago I switched
all my charitable donations away from Kiva (which I still think is a good
cause) to GiveDirectly.

However, the idea is not without problems (as idenfied by Givedirectly). The
biggest problem I think is that if some members of a poor community get help
and others don't, it seems unjust and may lead to hostility.

~~~
vidarh
> I think this is shortsighted as it's very difficult for relatively wealthy
> people to put themselves in the mindset of somebody who is living in extreme
> poverty, especially in a different country.

I think the perfect example of this is the reaction whenever someone want to
do something "techy" in Africa, where there's almost always a stream of "but
they're all living in mud huts with dirty water and no food and haven't got
electricity" type replies. Meanwhile Africa is expected to pass 80% mobile
penetration this year - they might possibly have passed it already... Waste?
Of course for some, but in many countries, SMS is _the_ way for people to
banking, for example.

------
galvanist
This is the study they seem to rely on most:
[http://www.givedirectly.org/pdf/DFID%20cash-transfers-
eviden...](http://www.givedirectly.org/pdf/DFID%20cash-transfers-evidence-
paper.pdf)

------
shanelja
While I agree that these countries need helping, it always annoys me how so
much is spent on foreign aid when people in our countries are still living on
the streets and in relative poverty - we need to solve our own problems before
we start giving money away willynilly.

I've been homeless and unable to find a shelter because there were only 15
places in my town, I've known people who have been hospitalized because they
couldn't afford food, how can we consider giving money to a foreign country
when the people around us are struggling just to live?

~~~
Joeboy
It's potentially far better value to help people in poorer countries. When
you're talking about people with an income of $0.65 a day you probably don't
have to give them much to help them out significantly. There's undoubtedly
genuine need in your country but I doubt you can provide nearly as much
assistance per thousand dollars.

On the other hand it's much easier to audit the good / harm your charity is
doing closer to home and you don't really have the whole neocolonialism
concern, so there are arguments for and against both.

------
logn
That's an interesting take. I think Americans are probably biased against
directly giving money because of experiences with homeless beggars here. Often
the money does go directly toward alcohol and cigarettes or is otherwise spent
foolishly. But in the US I'd argue that people living on the street usually
have some sort of disability or personality problem whereas in a poor country,
all the normal people who could do well with extra cash are extremely poor.

------
ctdonath
Define "poor".

The more I read discussions about poverty, the more I realize people are
conflating wildly different definitions of "poor". The article is referring to
$0.65/day, people who in no way can afford to squander a generous influx of
cash. World median income is $2/day; if you're making more than half the
people on the planet, I contend you're not "poor". The USA official "poverty
line" is 20x world median income, and welfare ensures anyone under that line
will be given enough to get there; special cases aside, that's enough that
"poor" is more a matter of poor choices than poor cash flow, a life where a
burst of cash can easily be spent on pleasure instead of leveraging already-
neglected advancement opportunities.

------
pratagarwal
Most cash transfer research is based upon conditional cash transfers. Which
are small monthly payments based upon education, health or nutrition goals.

I actually like an organization called New Incentives that is able to uses the
merits of cash transfers in a Watsi-like way...basically making it a
conditional cash transfer. <http://newincentives.org/transfers>

(fyi, this is not self-promotional but I connected with the founder because I
like their concept).

------
wfunction
The scary part is that the poor aren't necessarily uneducated -- read this
article, for example, on PhDs who can only get by with food stamps:

<http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/>

~~~
twoodfin
The people given as examples in that article appear to have made astonishingly
bad career decisions. Medieval history and film studies? Yes, there are a few
people who do quite well in those disciplines, but surely not enough to
justify pinning your future earnings on the odds you'll be one of them.

------
mozboz
Reframing required: give people money only when that is the most efficient
option for helping them, given the risks of a no-strings cash donation.

Otherwise, help them in a way that directly affects their wellbeing, causing a
direct, measurable change in circumstance with decreased risk.

------
DanielBMarkham
"Recipients, who are often living on less than 65 cents a day..."

People living in Kenya on 65 cents a day is a completely different situation
than, say, a homeless person in San Francisco.

I applaud the emphasis on data, but I'd be really careful with painting this
issue with a broad brush. If anything, the roadways are littered with the
corpses of programs that tried applying simplistic ideas too broadly. You also
want to make sure you are measuring something that actually means something
and not just something that's easy to measure.

~~~
cjbprime
> People living in Kenya on 65 cents a day is a completely different situation
> than, say, a homeless person in San Francisco.

That's true, this is why we usually mention the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
converted number -- for example, a billion people live on less than the PPP-
converted equivalent of USD $2/day. That means they can afford to buy what we
can afford to buy in the US for less than $2/day, which is to say almost
nothing.

It's easy to look up the PPP ratio for Kenya, which is 0.5 -- i.e. $0.65/day
in Kenya buys roughly the same as $1.30/day would in the US.

<http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF>

~~~
schraeds
Data trumps speculation.

------
rimantas
I sometimes have a very cynical thought that some places should be given
condoms, not food or money :(

~~~
Jach
The problem is many people won't use them even if they're free, or they think
it's a conspiracy to give them HIV...

When I consider all the benefits of well-managed genetic engineering and
population control at just the level we could implement right now (i.e. no
sci-fi tech), I sometimes wish RISUG[0] was mandatory for all males that have
gone through puberty, with 5-7 year followups to redo the treatment unless the
male both wants to have a child, and passes the thresholds of various
requirements (maturity, responsibility, financial security, whether they have
or should have partners or not, good genetics, etc.) to be allowed to have a
child. (Though if they want a child and only fail because their genes (or the
genes of their chosen mother) suck, there are others who don't want a child
but have good genes that can be used as donors, and initially there's still
all the currently unwanted babies, and there will inevitably be people who
illegally slip through or reverse the enforced treatment.)

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance)

~~~
precisioncoder
I used to subscribe to this belief until I had my eyes opened by a wise
friend. Systems are always gamed by the powerful and a system like this could
(and quite probably would) be gamed in order to suppress or even wipe out
minorities. It's often best to favor the solution that requires the minimum
reliance on an external authority. Currently the best proved solution for
overpopulation seems to be increasing education, wealth, and life expectancy.

~~~
Jach
Some minorities should be eliminated. That's kind of the whole point of
genetic engineering. Personally I'd be happy if the surface differences
between humans were really just nothing more than cosmetics, rather than a
non-negligible statistical correlate to other quite desirable/undesirable
traits. I think the real danger of genetic engineering is humans creating an
existential risk for themselves by doing it wrong, because maybe we're not
smart enough right now to do the really cool stuff that goes well beyond
simple, long-term projects like controlling who breeds with whom that we're
already pretty good at with other lifeforms. Furthermore, having "minimum
reliance on an external authority" would increase this risk, so long as humans
as a species remain at the same general intelligence on the cross-species
intelligence scale. It is a good thing that things such as nukes or highly
contagious, highly deadly research viruses are entirely, maximally dependent
on an authoritative process within each country that has them that you nor I
have any influence over. It is a good thing high-energy physics experiments
are restricted to the elite. Authority, and maximal reliance on it, aren't
necessarily always bad. When humans become transhumans I'll likely think the
average person should have far greater power--and therefore responsibility.

By population control, I'm not so much concerned about overpopulation being a
problem as I am of people in general giving birth when they probably
shouldn't. All things equal more life is better than no life--an example of
unequal being no life better than a life filled with 30 seconds of torture
then extinguished--so nested in that I prefer "better" life over "worse" life,
which I'm purposefully leaving undefined in the specifics (partly because I'm
not certain myself about whether certain traits are better, worse, or
insignificant, and whether and how much that value changes depending on the
number of people with such traits). The earth can support many more humans,
it's a shame highly intelligent people aren't having more/any kids. And when
the earth does reach its limit, neighboring planets and beyond will be able to
solve that problem.

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temphn
Terrible idea. Charity runs out and therefore does not scale. Want to help
people? Invest in them, as then they need to create wealth to provide a
positive sum return. China did not become rich through communism or through
charity, but through capitalism.

~~~
netcan
Who says they can't invest in themselves with the money they get?

~~~
Jach
There are a lot of poor people, and a lot of them aren't distinguishable in
terms of initial skills, and self-investing in learning new things is harder
and riskier than self-investing in local farming when there aren't too many
farmers. Only so many people can invest in land and livestock and farming and
know-how before you reach local saturation, only so many people can invest in
fishing equipment and know-how before they overfish the local areas, only so
many people can invest in starting a business and that know-how and hire other
poor people to do something that builds the economy, and so on. Once the low-
hanging fruit of personal investment is taken, what then? Or as the economy
improves slightly and the average person can more easily afford more vices,
will they spiral down in that direction? Or is there a good argument that the
low-hanging fruit won't disappear? Or will it not matter because through this
type of aid the people will gain the skills necessary to compete in a global
market, and that in a decade or two the average person can have a lifestyle
approaching the average, say, Eastern European, without direct subsidization?
I expect the 130 page report someone linked here addresses my concerns, and
I'll add it to my reading queue, but it's not immediately obvious to me that
this alone is a sustainable strategy in the sense that eventually no one will
need a direct no-strings-attached cash transfer to survive. I think it will
just create a dependency that will be perpetually (and increasingly in terms
of dollar amount) funded by the richest individuals, corporations, and
governments. Maybe that's not such a bad outcome if it's not too expensive
relative to the total wealth of these funders and if many people's lifespans
generally improve and contain more fun in them.

------
rikacomet
Direct Cash Transfer scheme in India has been touted as the biggest 2014 poll
based factor by the educated class in India, with a subsidy system bigger than
any other country in the world, India, has a lot of shortcomings in terms of
how the subsidy reaches the poor. Subsidy is given for kerosene (household
cooking needs for the extreme poor), rice/wheat as staple food, education (as
weekly incentive to extreme risked kids), vaccines, salt, fertilizers, etc.

This system is way different the way this article makes it look like, that
just give money to those who need it. But in fact, the real factor for a
subsidy system to work is, that people overtime accept, that they need help,
for ex: like they accept over time, that they will spend their own money on
other things, while use the medical subsidy on vaccines.

This is fundamentally supported by the fact of efficiency, if they use that
subsidy in any other way then it is meant, they would not get maximum
efficiency.

Corruption in this system is a given, whether it is India or US, it is a very
hard "on the thin thread" system to maintain.

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goggles99
Sure - This would be of great help to people in other countries, because they
are not filled with lazy free-loaders like the western world. Westerners will
blow the money and hold out their hand for more all they will promise in
return is a vote to whoever promises to keep that free money coming...

~~~
psionski
Funny you should say that, I'm from a former communist country (so nothing
Western here) and we always thought _WE_ were filled with free-loaders, while
the Western world was hard-working and disciplined... Guess the grass is
always greener on the other side ;)

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camus
want to help people ? give them a job that can help them live.

------
someri
Give it the fishing rod to the wrong guy, he will pawn it, use the money to
buy a fishing app.

------
krzyk
There is such saying in Poland (although the origin of it is India): give a
man a fish and you will feed him for a day, give a man a fishing rod and you
will feed him for a lifetime

Yes, I know it's not scientific proof, but it comes to mind right away.

