I would even add that on top of the fact that lawyer in question is almost certainly more expensive then they would have hired otherwise they'd probably get more value from the cheaper because they'd be more picky about where & when. A similar example is aid tourism. People visit a country for 3 weeks & help to build a school at a cost of a couple of $k in countries where unskilled labour goes from $3 a day. The organizers generally end up with a small margin for helping with the project (building materials, salaries for the actual workers, etc.) & some tourist money gets spread around.
It's terribly inefficient. A tourist spends 3 weeks and (say) $3k. The organisation gets $500 cash, $200 worth of labour & the area has about $500 dropped on food, souvenirs & billets.
They'd be at least 2X -3X better off with just the cash. but...
But they wouldn't get the cash. The time & money would be spent on ordinary holidays, local charities, social activities or the likes. The lawyer might get a scheduled day off, 20% time or procrastinate. (I admit, it works worse when it's institutionalised)
The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it, continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his children, etc.
I'm not a programmer (though I might fall in the bacon cooker category), so I feel funny about taking a position here. But I think that the combination of free software, access to the web & the free web have a powerful equalising affect in this world. Connecting the right people with the right organizations, could have a profound effect. When I was in primary school, a substantial donation would be old (10, 20 years) encyclopaedias for developing countries. If you don't have access to much, an encyclopedia is an important learning/teaching resource. Practically no longer necessary if you have access to the web. Information is available free. Access to it still costs though.
Once we get to a point where online teaching materials are allow a person to achieve an education on par with Universities, we (as pg just discussed) get past credentials or find new ones & enough of the labour market is internationalised (it is happening pretty fast), the key out of poverty becomes web access, computer literacy, English literacy & above average intelligence (maybe). These are manageable hurdles. Far more manageable the current keys: competent government & lack of major conflict for prolonged periods.
The potential return is huge. Really huge. Any way you look at it. Economic growth. Utility. Health. Worrying about efficiencies at this end is like fretting about the price of servers when building a Google. Have a look at what East Timor's National University lists as it's needs:http://www.untl.labor.net.au/need/it.html
To give you an idea of potential ROI: an additional 10k graduates contributing 10k per annum to GDP would represent a 20% increase.
"The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it, continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his children, etc."
Good point for the feedaneed.org project as well. I anticipate that at least for some volunteers there will be meaningful side-effects (they donate $, continue to volunteer their service, tell others about non-profit x, etc.) I think that for most people, there's a stronger connection when you spend time on a project, than when you just donate $.
I would even add that on top of the fact that lawyer in question is almost certainly more expensive then they would have hired otherwise they'd probably get more value from the cheaper because they'd be more picky about where & when. A similar example is aid tourism. People visit a country for 3 weeks & help to build a school at a cost of a couple of $k in countries where unskilled labour goes from $3 a day. The organizers generally end up with a small margin for helping with the project (building materials, salaries for the actual workers, etc.) & some tourist money gets spread around.
It's terribly inefficient. A tourist spends 3 weeks and (say) $3k. The organisation gets $500 cash, $200 worth of labour & the area has about $500 dropped on food, souvenirs & billets.
They'd be at least 2X -3X better off with just the cash. but...
But they wouldn't get the cash. The time & money would be spent on ordinary holidays, local charities, social activities or the likes. The lawyer might get a scheduled day off, 20% time or procrastinate. (I admit, it works worse when it's institutionalised)
The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it, continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his children, etc.
I'm not a programmer (though I might fall in the bacon cooker category), so I feel funny about taking a position here. But I think that the combination of free software, access to the web & the free web have a powerful equalising affect in this world. Connecting the right people with the right organizations, could have a profound effect. When I was in primary school, a substantial donation would be old (10, 20 years) encyclopaedias for developing countries. If you don't have access to much, an encyclopedia is an important learning/teaching resource. Practically no longer necessary if you have access to the web. Information is available free. Access to it still costs though.
Once we get to a point where online teaching materials are allow a person to achieve an education on par with Universities, we (as pg just discussed) get past credentials or find new ones & enough of the labour market is internationalised (it is happening pretty fast), the key out of poverty becomes web access, computer literacy, English literacy & above average intelligence (maybe). These are manageable hurdles. Far more manageable the current keys: competent government & lack of major conflict for prolonged periods.
The potential return is huge. Really huge. Any way you look at it. Economic growth. Utility. Health. Worrying about efficiencies at this end is like fretting about the price of servers when building a Google. Have a look at what East Timor's National University lists as it's needs:http://www.untl.labor.net.au/need/it.html
To give you an idea of potential ROI: an additional 10k graduates contributing 10k per annum to GDP would represent a 20% increase.