Big Bag of Ethical Endorsements

Tabarrok endorses GiveWell's endorsement of the Against Malaria Foundation as a good charity to give money to. This sparked a debate in the comments about whether you should really give money to just one charity or to many and why we give in the first place. One argument (Landsburg's) says that if your contribution is small relative to the size of their total budget and if you are primarily seeking to do the most good with your money, you should only invest in one charity. Your small donation won't run into diminishing marginal returns, so there's no reason to diversify. On  the other hand, if you are concerned about other things, you may want to do something else:

• if I receive increasing marginal utility to the number of organizations I give to (up to a point), then I'd rather give a small amount to several organizations than a larger amount to only one; [translation: I feel like I'm a better human being because I give to 10 organizations than if I only donated to one]
• if I am uncertain which problem is the worst, it makes sense to donate to several organizations working on different problems (say, measles, climate change, and gender discrimination); [Note: if this is your difficulty, you might want to check out the Copenhagen Consensus, whose Nobel Laureate panel agreed child hunger was global problem #1)

Boudreaux meanwhile endorses Caplan on the perceived moral difference between nepotism and nationalism:

Despite its mighty evolutionary basis, almost everyone recognizes moral strictures against familial favoritism.  Almost everyone knows that “It would help my son” is not a good reason to commit murder, break someone’s arm, or steal. ...
Nationalism, in contrast, is widely seen as an acceptable excuse for horrific crimes against outgroups.  Do you plan to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians?  Just say, “It will save American [German/Japanese/Russian/whatever] lives” – and other members of your tribe will nod their heads.  Do you want to deprive millions of foreigners of the basic human rights to sell their labor to willing buyers, rent apartments from willing landlords, and buy groceries from willing merchants?  Just say, “It’s necessary to protect American jobs” in a self-righteous tone, then bask in the admiration of your fellow citizens.

Yglesias endorses cash donations, even as a way to teach children about the value of giving well:

Food drives do teach a lot of valuable lessons to kids. Until, that is, you learn that giving $10 will buy twenty times as much food for poor people aswould donating $10 worth of canned goods. Once you actually know the facts, then all it seems like you're doing is teaching kids to be too lazy to scrutinize the world. ... We shouldn't be teaching kids that it's okay to be indifferent between helping one family and helping twenty families. It's a huge difference!

Cook endorses de Tocqueville:

The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire … principles. There is no religion which does not place the object of man’s desires above and beyond the treasure of earth, and which does not naturally raise his soul to regions far above those of the senses.

Because in part that is my tradition as well, I wondered at Wronging Rights  perceiving religion solely as being in conflict with human rights. I pointed out in my comments that this in part stems from a confusion about what is meant by "religion". I wrote in part:

The price of seeds (and everything else) in Africa

Good news: the prices of cereals, edible oils, sugar, and dairy products were down sharply in October, bringing FAO's food price index down to its lowest point for the year. Not that it's all that low, but it's something. However, peanut butter prices are up 40% in the US, but not abroad (so American expat families everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief). Since the US government shields peanut growers from the world market, the weather in Georgia and Alabama matters for the US price, but not the international price.

Swaziland's government has retracted its usual agricultural input subsidies: no more discount or free seeds, no more discount tractors (government was charging $17.30/hr rental; private cost is $26.60). The article also discusses how the feudal land tenure system makes things more difficult. One farmer laments:

“I live on the banks of a river [the Nkomati]. My maize crops could easily thrive if I had a simple pump and piping. What I harvest would pay for the loan, but I have no collateral because there is nothing to offer the bank" [because he does not own the land and so can't put that up as collateral.]

Roving Bandit notices the South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics report: annual inflation in South Sudan is up to 60% from September 2010 to September 2011. For the year, the biggest contributor is food prices that went up 64%. The price of furniture and furnishings went up far more (108%) as did alcohol (95%), but food carries a much larger weight (71/100) in the basket of goods than anything else. Food price increases have been very small this month, thankfully.

Big Bag of Food Policies: Farm Bill, Seeds, and Antibiotics

Elliott calls on budget cutters to not only cut the direct farm payments from the next Farm Bill – intended as a bridge away from trade-distorting policies that never got off the ground – but also from the trade-distorting subsidies that still exist. And shocking as it is for me to agree with my former Sentaor Feinstein, do so I must:

Oh, and Congress could save another $3 billion this year and $6 billion in future years by voting to eliminate the subsidy for ethanol as proposed by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) rightly calls it “bad economic policy, bad energy policy and bad environmental policy.”

FAO and the African Union have teamed up to create a Forum for Africa Seed Testing to speed up seed policy harmonization and promote seed markets. Guei, an FAO senior officer, indicates that “Inadequate supply of quality seeds for both food and cash crops is one of the biggest bottlenecks to food production on the continent..."

Loglisci (HT: Wilde) reminds us that Denmark has been using antibiotics in livestock only when needed by illness – rather than keeping all animals constantly under a mild dose of antibiotics as we do in the States – for a number of years. As a result, they use a lot fewer antibiotics and they have had less trouble than we have from the growth of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. This hasn’t prevented increasing use of antibiotics as hog population has grown (see chart), but it is far lower today than it was at peak and lower still than it would have been without the law.

Big Bag of Agriculture, Health, and Development

At a Cornell presentation (I'm at it now and have been tweeting its notes), Duxbury argued that we are leaving a LOT of crop productivity on the table by not following pretty basic techniques and that there are still some pretty gaping holes in our knowledge. He called into question the notion of "unproductive soils" in Africa, calling the notion "fantasy." It just means we haven't figured out what the real constraints are. In several trials on the effects of adding phosphorous, there was a modest improvement on the expeirmental plot, but there was a hugely productive section in the middle of the field straddling the experimental and control plots. In more difficult solutions, he encouraged eliminating flood irrigation, improving education, better small scale machinery (where are the agricultural engineers?), more effort on grain and multipurpose legumes, more attention to year-round supply of fruits and vegetables. Farmers know what they do and why; they lack knowledge about change.

Haddad's presentation at the IFPRI Conference on "Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health" focused on how to get there. His major points were that

• we have very few impact evaluations to guide us (out of 307 studies, only one tenth even attempted an impact study);
• increasing women's participation in the process will improve the connections between ag policies and nutrition (half of studies find no difference between men and women, the other half find more male access);
• "To intertwine nutrition and agriculture, it will help to have professionals who have an appreciation for both, even if they only have expertise in one or the other. ... what we have shows some demand for nutritionists (in Norway at least) who can think outside of the nutrition box and that agriculture students in the US will not learn about international agriculture unless it forms part of their core curriculum." 

I think that first sentence is one of the best descriptions of my ideal for multi-disciplinarity: appreciating what another profession can bring to the table while grounded in a firm set of tools you can bring. Duxbury noted how the tenure process discourages inter-disciplinarity that would improve crop diversity. "I'm not in favor of multidisciplinary specialists: you don't know enough of any one."

Haddad also lists the six men being considered for the new head of FAO:

Alternate estimates of the hungry

While Easterly expresses his concerns over the FAO's pronouncements on the number of hungry people in the world, Gallup polling broadly supports the FAO's estimates. Telephone interviews asked 1,000 or more households in 113 countries if they had had difficulty purchasing food in 2009. In the median country, 26% of respondents answered in the affirmative. Gallup does the math and estimates approximately 1 billion people suffered from food insecurity at some point in 2008/2009. They also report the change in a number of high-hunger countries (right). The largest improvements have been in Uganda, Burundi, and Zimbabwe; the worst changes in Ecuador, the Philippines, and Cameroon.

In other hunger news, Nucifora at the World Bank shows that while Mozambique's reinstated food subsidies may quell the food riots there, most of the benefits are being captured by the wealthiest quintile. Apparently, monetary policy has had a huge effect here as well, with food prices following appreciations and depreciations in the last few years.

An FAO subcommittee has released a new aquaculture certification program:

Unique UN jobs and response

From The Corner

When aliens darken our daytime sky with ships, Mazlan Othman will be on the case:

THE United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth’s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), ... that ... the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”....

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

I'm not sure I understand that bit. Does this mean Othman will be presented as the leader of planet earth or will he ask the aliens if he can be taken to their leader?
Update: From my kind of reader:

Forgive a comment from your Constitutional Separation of Powers Guy:

What is up with the blithe (If not arrogant)  assumption  by UN pinheads that they have authority to speak for us to any space aliens who might arrive?  ...

The UN is in no way, under international law or the Constitution of the US, empowered and authorized to speak on behalf of any sovereign state especially the United States.  ...

More broadly, both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence espouse and rely upon the classically liberal concept of government powers justly based on the consent of the governed (as even now we have repeated in principle in GOP Pledge to America): this is the overarching reason why the UN cannot deign to speak on our behalf or to enact any enforceable decisions or proclamations as far as people of the US are concerned.  As the lady in the “Lord of the Castle” scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail said, “Well,  I didn’t vote for him.’

All the best,

Jonah Goldberg

Five Second ... Age of Declining Turbulence

I discovered a book in my mailbox a few months ago: The Age of Declining Turbulence: Are Alan Greenspan's Projections Wrong? by Douglas N. Thompson. There was no explanatory note attached, no information, just a thin, blue book. At the time, there was precious little information about it online, though now it has an Amazon page. One Amazon reviewer tells me why I find so little: "This 92-year old retired Professor of Economics from University of Utah..." aha. I just got around to it and since I can only assume I'm being asked for a review, here it is:

The main purpose of the book is to refute Alan Greenspan's prediction that we are entering an Age of Turbulence. I haven't read Mr. Greenspan's book, so I'm unable to judge whether Thompson addresses specific points from Greenspan's arguments. I came away agreeing that lower turbulence (economically and militarily) is one possible outcome, but far from convinced it must be so. It was an interesting read; I'm glad I read it; but it's not one I'm going to return to again.

An odd thing stood out to me from the close to chapter 1. He claimed to "demonstrate that Greenspan's two main worries will not likely be realized." The book is not about proving or demonstrating anything. It's an argument for an alternative version of what will happen, based largely on the optimistic assumptions that 1) the US government has learned from the recessions and macroeconomic shocks of the past how to deal with problems in the future; and 2) the lure of capitalism's abundance will continue inexorably to pull other countries into market or state-market institutions. He then follows these assumptions to show how a better long-term future is ahead of us. His arguments are plausible and his scenario holds together well. I like a good portion of what he says, but he does far more sketching out how events will eventually play out than defending why they will more probably follow his assumptions than Greenspan's.

While this is clearly a love poem to capitalism, his argument is not ideologically against governments: he argues for fiscal and monetary (mostly fiscal) response to the current recession, for some form of carbon tax, and for government programs of various levels to promote "the basic social service": full employment, with "nanny state" welfare and prison programs also having an important role to fill for those who cannot or choose not to be responsible citizens. These programs (promoting full employment on down) will be part of preventing the social tensions Greenspan foresees causing increasing strife because of economic inequality.

There is little discussion of the validity of his assumptions and he is sometimes not as careful as he claims to be. For instance, while he is usually content to say that the long-run trends are in his favor even if individuals or groups running governments sometimes make mistakes, he actually claims that "stock, credit, foreign exchange, and other markets will likely force Mr. Putin back onto the path toward capitalism and peace fairly soon." Like much of the book, it's a bald assertion (no slight to Mr. Putin's hair) with no facts brought forward to support it.

Some of his other interesting arguments (many of which I debate, but that's what makes them interesting to me. The stuff I already agree with was less interesting!) are below the fold:

New Human Right Announced

Water has now been officially declared as a human right according to the United Nations. Last week, the UN General Assembly passed the resolution to call on governments to provide water to their people. The UN has not recognized water as a human right until now as it was not in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed in 1948.

Given a right to life and water as a necessity for life, it does seem (at a rhetorical level) a small step. The devil, as always, is in the details. Overall, and given the topic of discussion, I would say my response is tepid.

In the jargon, the right to life is generally deemed a "negative" right: no other person or government can take away my life. A "positive" right to life requires the "duty-bearer" to actually promote my longevity. The implications are vastly different.

Canada and other English-speaking countries tended to fight against the new right, including trying unsuccessfully to amend the language of the right to access to water and sanitation rather than a right to water and sanitation themselves. As Easterly (one and two), and others have pointed out, though, for a right to have meaning there has to be a duty-bearer: someone responsible for providing the right and accountable for failure. Jacob Mchangama, head of legal affairs for the Danish think tank CEPOS, says this is a problem with the new right:

this declaration will not help those whose health and quality of life are threatened by the lack of clean water and sanitation. For rights to have meaning, it must be clear what they are and who is responsible for upholding them.... The right to clean water and sanitation is far less definable and depends on economic development, technology and infrastructure.

Behind the scenes, this is as much a debate over whether to privatize water markets or not and to what extent governments should be involved in providing them. Oddly enough, both the pro and con side are complaining about inappropriate government action in this regard, with the con side worried about authoritarian governments using the right to water as a shield to provide water only to their supporters ... which doesn't make a lot of sense to me:

Above all, if people have a right to water and sanitation, other people must provide it – in practice, governments using public money. ... So this is really a call for state intervention, at the expense of other priorities and freedoms – and water is no more a practically enforceable human right than other essential commodities, such as food, clothing or shelter. ... Giving governments ultimate control over the supply of water may even be dangerous, because authoritarian regimes can use their power to punish the recalcitrant and reward their supporters.

The new right does not delimit how the right to water must be fulfilled. There is nothing preventing a society making use of private water markets to provide most people water and sanitation, or people in a particularly hard-to-reach area, or only as an augment to public efforts. The creation of this right does not empower bad governments to be worse. Saying "your people have a right to water" does not open any possibility for misusing water that didn't already exist. Quite the opposite, it is a way to make bad governments more accountable, potentially to their own citizens, at least through international pressure. The likelihood at the moment, though, given the UN's record on defending the negative rights, is close to zero.

Which brings up one other question. assume for sake of argument that the declaration is utterly without teeth. Should we not still declare our principles for the sake of declaring them?

Hat tip: PNB

WIDER Panel: Summing Up

Richard Jolly of City University of New York
Margaret Kakande of Uganda Finance Ministry
Per Pinstrup-Andersen of Cornell
Gita Sen of Indian Institute of Management

WIDER Panel: Global Governance and the Triple Crisis

Charles Gore of UNCTAD: Global Governance - Development Finance for LDCs
Gerry Helleiner of U Toronto - "Some Elements of Improved Global Financial Governance"
Vladimir Popov on devaluation as successful industrial policy to promote growth - very interesting. I propose a question he answers.

Congolese on Peace

In November, Gallup interviewed 1000 citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo about the possibility of peace. For security reasons, none were in the eastern part where most of the actual conflict takes place.

63% believed that peace was possible within 12 months (not from now, but from Nov). A slim majority (51%) believe their government is the primary agent responsible for creating that peace, one-third focus on the president himself, and only 14% think the UN will make peace happen. Congolese views of Rwanda are ... not positive.

Haiti: Sovereignty

Tyler Cowen is in a speculative mood (full post here):

From the reports I have seen, my tentative conclusion is that the country as a whole is currently below the subsistence level and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, the U.N. Mission has collapsed, the government is not working (was it ever?), and hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people are living in the streets without reliable food or water supplies. The hospitals and schools have collapsed. The airport is shut down. The port is very badly damaged. ... There is no viable police force or army.
In other words, it's not just a matter of offering extra food aid for two or three years.
Very rapidly, President Obama needs to come to terms with the idea that the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.
In what sense does Haiti still have a government? How bad will it have to get before the U.N. or U.S. moves in and simply governs the place? How long will this governance last? What will happen to Haiti as a route for the drug trade, the dominant development in the country's economy over the last fifteen years? What does the new structure of interest groups look like, say five years from now?

My favorite of the comments:

with all due respects, one of the first places I'd send aid (military and otherwise) is the DomRep. A country of millions in easy walking distance just completely collapsed. RD is set to be awash with refugees of all kinds. As well, although the RD is comparably richer, it certainly can't handle a 2x increase in size, esp with utterly ruined people.

Posted by: farmer at Jan 14, 2010 9:15:22 AM

Given the lack of political will in the US to do anything major right now being a given, here a few comments about Haitian sovereignty:

I wonder ... whether annexation by The Dominican Republic is more practical, and more likely. In such a circumstance, the dollar cost of an infusion of aid to the consolidated "Nation of Hispaniola" would be a small hiccup in our US budget, would probably be greeted with enthusiasm by both our political parties, would be widely hailed by our people as "nation building the right way," and would surely be in our best interest geopolitically.

Posted by: Ken Rhodes at Jan 14, 2010 8:51:21 AM

Canada, not the U.S., should take the lead here. It has French speaking troops aplenty and a perfect opportunity (and worthy) to test its foreign-policy-as-charity beliefs. The U.S. is already busy and multinational forces (without one clear leader) don't work. This is a major humanitarian crisis and Canada is ideally suited to help. ...

Posted by: Scoop at Jan 14, 2010 9:56:41 AM

Haiti is a sovereign country founded in a revolution against imperialist slaveowners. Many of its problems have come from the refusal of nations ruled by slaveowners and their descendants to accept that Haitians are autonomous human beings with the capacity to govern themselves. Unfortunately that same refusal to accept is running rampant in this comment thread.
That at times Haitians have governed very badly does not denude them of that right, any more than the occasional election of an idiot-in-chief surrenders Americans' right to self-government. There should be no repetition of the U.S. 1915-1934 invasion and occupation. The commenter who suggested that the Dominican Republic should govern Haiti should read about the history between the two nations, which includes the genocide of Haitian migrant workers during the 1930s....

Posted by: Ed B. at Jan 14, 2010 10:29:02 AM

I don't see how re-colonisation helps Haitians to achieve a better quality of life, as if the rule of law is a guaranteed transfer through the unerringly benevolent force of foreign rule. I see this rationale as saying, "Well, they had a natural disaster that killed lots of people, so obviously the best solution is for white people to take over."
Should we have given New Orleans to the Mexicans?

Posted by: Millian at Jan 14, 2010 11:53:10 AM

UPDATE: Jeff Sachs says, "President Obama should recognize that the U.S. government alone lacks the means, attention span and true regard for Haiti that is needed to see this through past the most urgent phase."

The leaders

Platon, the New Yorker photographer, did a pretty major photo shoot with a lot of top world leaders at the UN general meeting in September. Africa is a Country very kindly posts the pictures of a handful of African leaders with a bit of their descriptions. Particularly the Mugabe story is fascinating: another leader saw Mugabe get up and waited to sit down; when asked what was wrong, he answered, "There's blood on that chair." (hat tip Texas in Africa):

You can see the entire collection here but most of the stories Platon tells aren't worth it. "Beautiful" is his favorite word. A few of his comments, however, are quite interesting, so let's make a game of it, shall we?

Can you match the world leader with his description by New Yorker photographer Platon?

A. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Iran
B. Silvio Burlisconi - Italy
C. Yukio Hatoyama - Japan
D. Andry Rayjoelina - Madagascar
E. Jacob Zuma - South Africa
F. Ban Ki-moon - UN Secretary General

1) "said, 'You have to separate yourself from your job. I wouldn't be criticized if I didn't have this responsibility.'"

2) "had a warmth and exuberance, it wasn't natural, perhaps," "perhaps no photographer has ever shouted at him 'You look wicked' before, but that tickles him"

3) is "incredible, so cheeky," "he gave me that cheeky, naughty kind of smile," he was "loving every second of it"

4) "looks like he's 15," "I thought this guy was an intern"

5) is "totally Fred Astaire"

6) is "a very childlike man," "he giggles like a little boy," "this irony that there's this innocence about his eyes."