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- [00:05]
A
Hello, and welcome to Money Talks with Felix Salmon.
- [00:11]
B
Is that it? That's amazing.
- [00:12]
A
Thank you.
- [00:13]
B
I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg. I'm talking to the one and only Mary Childs, friend of the pardon general queen of all media. Mary, I think at this point, with any luck, the audience knows who you are. But who are you?
- [00:27]
A
Hi, Slate Money audience. My friends, I am a host of Planet Money, the podcast about economics at npr. And I am also the author of the book the Bond How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire and Lost It All. And I'm a Sunday painter.
- [00:40]
B
You're a very good artist.
- [00:42]
A
Oh, thank you.
- [00:42]
B
And we are going to talk about.
- [00:45]
A
GiveWell and Aleema, philanthropy and charity and.
- [00:48]
B
Effective altruism and all that kind of goodness today because. And this is where you plug your episode.
- [00:55]
A
I just did an episode for Planet Money, the podcast from npr, about how when USAID got cut so suddenly earlier in the year, it left all of these programs around the world without any funding. And private philanthropy cannot fill that gap. It's too large. But a lot of them were sort of scrambling, panicking, trying to figure out how they could help in such a basically humanitarian crisis. And so we got to ride along with one such philanthropy.
- [01:19]
B
So this is what we're going to talk about. It is nerdy philanthropy conversation, but it is also, with any luck, something that will encourage all of you lovely listeners to give a whole bunch of money to either GiveWell or Alima, both of which are worthy CAUs, both of which I have personally given money to. So, yeah, that's all coming up on Money Talks.
- [01:45]
A
With Venmo.
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Stash. A taco on one hand and ordering.
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A
A ride in the other means you're.
- [01:49]
B
Stacking cash back with Venmo Stash. Get up to 5% cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply.
- [01:57]
A
Max $100 cash back per month.
- [01:59]
B
See Terms at Venmo Me stash terms.
- [02:03]
A
Ford BlueCruise Hands Free highway driving takes the work out of being behind the wheel, allowing you to relax and reconnect while also staying in control. Enjoy the drive in Bluecruise enabled vehicles like the F150 Explorer and Mustang Mach E available feature on equipped vehicles. Terms apply. Does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com BlueCruise for more details.
- [02:31]
B
Okay, so let's set the scene here. Elon Musk comes into the government with a chainsaw and does way more damage to one part of the government than to basically any other part of the government. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but it turns out that the part of government that he just obliterated was usaid. The part of the government that spends or used to spend what, $40 billion a year making the world a better place. And the foreign aid and the soft power and all of that of arm of the State Department. And before Marco Rubio could even find his desk, basically, bless his heart, Elon had killed the entire program, put it.
- [03:10]
A
In a wood chipper.
- [03:12]
B
And this has caused by various calculations, hundreds of thousands of deaths already. It's a humanitarian disaster. And of course a lot of that money was going to various NGOs who were spending it in ways that would save lives. So the NGOs lost money. And one of those NGOs is this charity called Alima, which works in war torn areas and various other areas to provide healthcare. But then also a part of it is that money just went for sort of basic infrastructure so that NGOs could do what they do.
- [03:49]
A
So system strengthening stuff. Yeah.
- [03:51]
B
So like GiveWell, which is one of these kind of metaphilanthropies, wrote a whole blog post about this and they were like, you know, let's say that I want to buy malaria drugs and give them to Africans. That's all well and good, I can write a check and buy the malaria drugs and then I get them to Africa. But at that point I am relying on a whole sort of cold storage chain and trucks and you know, that kind of stuff to exist. A certain amount of infrastructure which will get the malaria drugs to the clinics. And if that chain goes away, then buying the drugs doesn't help. Even supporting the clinics doesn't help because you can't get anything from A to B.
- [04:27]
A
Giving money directly to the people doesn't help because there's nothing like if they have malaria and there's no medicine to buy, it's not great. Yeah, there are like a thousand ways that they chain can fail.
- [04:35]
B
So even the, to use the technical term, ucts, the unconditional cash transfers can be really hurt by departure of the usaid. That sort of sets the stage for this situation where Aleema, which is one of these charities that was receiving money from usaid, was like, shit, what the fuck do we do?
- [04:56]
A
I think that's a quote. Yeah.
- [04:57]
B
And they started scrambling for like any kind of donations they could find to make up the gap even before they could really demonstrate that they were just as capable or even more capable of spending money than they were before USAID had imploded.
- [05:14]
A
Yeah.
- [05:15]
B
And this is where GiveWell comes in.
- [05:17]
A
Yeah. There was an interesting thing that happened. There were some USAID workers who were inspired and bored and mad and a few things. I probably shouldn't speak for them, but these USAID workers suddenly had some free time and took the list of projects that they knew had just been unfunded, that had already been vetted, that had been approved. Money was being spent actively to, you know, causes that had been deemed worthy. And they make this list, it's called Project Resource Optimization, and they send it to various parties around the philanthropy world being like, hey, these things just lost funding. For example, GiveWell, here are some that we know that you might have an affinity for. You love malaria treatments. You love nets that prevent malaria because they block the mosquitoes. Those are super cheap, super effective. That's like the canonical example. Here are some things. You can just pick these off the list. It's like low hanging fruit. And so at that moment, GiveWell had sort of been internally, like, obviously aware of what was going on, you know, not only from reading the news, but also talking to their contacts who were hearing like, we just lost our grant. We maybe don't have the grant. We have part of the grant. We can't tell. So, like, word was kind of chaotically spreading among all of these different NGOs as to what was happening. So they had created multiple teams within GiveWell to kind of triage to try to tackle the situation. Because, I mean, the reason I called them in the first place is even just where I was sitting as a person in the world, you know, that this is about to affect people in like, the most fundamental way. The stakes absolutely could not be higher. And for someone who works at GiveWell, this was actually a sort of misunderstanding that I had. I thought that they approached their work like an ER doctor, you know, like emotionless cold triage. I thought they did their calculations and they were like, let us save these people, not those people. It is not like that there. I made people cry in multiple interviews because I asked basically that question, like, how do you choose who to save? Someone's gonna die. And they. I just made people cry left and right. It felt kind of. But I was just envisioning, like, I know that they make these horrifying calculations on a good day and this is a horrible day. So I connected with PR person in March and they agreed to start recording all of their deliberations as they tried to figure out to what degree or how or where they could jump into the void and fund things that had just gotten unfunded.
- [07:28]
B
And you wound up focusing on this one project in Cameroon.
- [07:32]
A
Yeah.
- [07:32]
B
Which was run by Alima. What project is that?
- [07:35]
A
So it's a few health clinics, mobile health clinics and hospitals in different parts of Cameroon, far north region, where they provide basic health care and do a lot of, like, maternal and fetal medicine and like, newborn. It's the only substantially, the only, like, newborn medicine in the area. And just hearing about that was incredibly gutting. Just the basic work that they do, the number of C sections that they do, that will not get done without them there, they have these facilities and they do a lot, a lot of work within the community to convince people to come in. So there's. Not only is there a complicated logistics chain, there's also the complication of, like, this is a very unstable area. The people are refugees. They're displaced people. They're not home. They don't drive in. There's no road. You might get attacked on the way. It's expensive to go to the hospital. So if they go to a health center or hospital and it's closed, they will give up and they don't come back. They don't try again, and they just don't get the care that they need, or they just don't try at all. And so a substantial amount of the work that Aleema does is what's called community sensitization. This is an NGO term that I learned. I was like, surely that doesn't mean anything. But it does. Basically, it's just like working within the community, not taking sides in this, like, horrible armed conflict, staying neutral, and being able to convince whatever community leaders are necessary to please come in, like, this is free. You can have this healthcare, this support. And just that's kind of my understanding of the scope of it.
- [08:53]
B
And so the big sort of dramatic tension in your piece is that GiveWell is examining a Lima, and I think Slate Money listeners are familiar with this. But in case you're not, GiveWell is basically this very quantitative place that judges interventions and tries to work out how cost effective they are. And if they're so many times more cost effective than cash transfer, then that's like the bar they're setting. And then they'll make a grant. They have lots of spreadsheets.
- [09:22]
A
So many spreadsheets.
- [09:22]
B
So many spreadsheets. And so the way you've set up your podcast episode is, can a Lima find the kind of data that GiveWell is going to need in order to be able to write a check. Even though they're in the middle of nowhere in Cameroon and then there's not a lot of data.
- [09:40]
A
Yeah.
- [09:40]
B
Lying around.
- [09:41]
A
It was such an. Interesting to watch these two groups who just are different shapes. They're just different shapes. It's like square peg, round hole. They just can't quite come to the same place because of the way that they work and the things that they do, which are both very valid and good things to do. But the Cameroon project is like we can't systematically count the population that we treat, which is super confusing. If you work in a hospital in the US you're like, what's your pro? Just count the person. But in Cameroon, they don't come back for fun follow ups. Like, do you know what the outcome was? You can't actually measure in the normal way that you're used to. If you're working in, you know, a hospital in the Upper west side, like it's just.
- [10:16]
B
Or even in Nairobi.
- [10:17]
A
Yeah, exactly. You're just not going to get good data in a conflict area. And Everybody in the NGO space knows that. GiveWell knows that they don't do work as much in humanitarian context for kind of for this reason because it's so hard for them to get the look through that they need to get the data and the information that they need. They have functionally promised. I mean, it's their whole value proposition to their donors. They're like, we will make sure that this cause, this grant, whatever program we're evaluating is gonna save the most lives possible per dollar or improve. And that is their promise. And if they stray from that, then like, what are they doing? Like they cannot stray. So there's this incompatibility at the root of it.
- [10:54]
B
It's a tension that they're very conscious about, that they have written about in many blog posts over like over a decade. There is this feeling that if you do a very narrow targeted intervention, something like bed nets, then that makes it easier for GiveWell to fund you than if you're in, especially in the healthcare or like cash transfers, where the range of positive outcomes is much broader. So it's much harder to count them all up and add them all up and this kind of thing. And this is a known issue within GiveWell and this is something that GiveWell has been trying to account for some time. And it turns out, I did not know this, but it turns out that GiveWell had actually funded the Lima, various Olema projects in the past before this whole catastrophe happened. So they were, they had a Little bit of prior understanding of what a Lima does and that it can work out well.
- [11:43]
A
Yes. And those were, I think, somewhat narrower in scope and somewhat more, like, digestible for GiveWell purposes. And I mean, some of them were like a reach for GiveWell. And one of the things that they had discussed a lot within the scope of this project, this program that they were evaluating, and all of the ones that they were evaluating that had fallen off of USAID's list, I guess they were thinking a lot about, like, if this is a space that we don't do a whole lot and we don't have the expertise here, we're gonna learn a lot. We're definitely, no matter what, gonna learn a lot. And that's sort of an extra overlay. We're like, okay, maybe it doesn't clear our normal hurdle of whatever times better than cash transfers, but if you add the benefit of us learning and the yield of all that future good work that we can do, that will save lives because of that learning. It's sort of a cheat code. That's what they told me, that it was like, okay, we can stretch a little bit outside of our comfort zone here if we understand that we're gonna make mistakes and this might fall a little bit short of our normal rigorous process in some way. And, like, we are intentionally saying right now that we're okay with that because we want to learn.
- [12:42]
B
It's interesting to me that they feel that the way of learning is by, like, writing a check and that if they don't write the check, they won't learn. It's.
- [12:51]
A
Well, you know, but that is it, right? Let's try it and, like, see what you come back with. For example, in the Cameroon project, a point of anxiety was like, what if we reached the end of the year, we funded this project, we felt okay about it. We're like, let's just see, let's learn. And then we reach another project and there's no better data. Like, what happens then? Did we just wait, waste our time? Did that cheat code fail? So I think that that was one of the things that they were really trying to get comfortable with and, like, just understand that maybe it'll be better and we'll get that data that we want or something close to it, and maybe we won't.
- [13:21]
B
And the thing that you don't really go into a lot of detail about, I think, because it's just incredibly heart rending and there's a limit to how much you can think about it is this impossible question of what's the opportunity cost of giving a Lima $2 million.
- [13:38]
A
Right.
- [13:39]
B
That's $2 million that would otherwise have gone to some other project.
- [13:44]
A
You think, I didn't do this in the show. I made. I put someone crying on the show talking about exactly that.
- [13:50]
B
They didn't do this.
- [13:52]
A
Yeah.
- [13:52]
B
So the way you do it in the show is interesting, right. Because the way you do it in the show, or correct me if I'm wrong here, is that you flip it, right? And you're like, if a lema doesn't get the money, then that means these people will suffer and possibly die and all these terrible outcomes. Whereas you don't concentrate so much on the flip side of that. Where philima does get the money, then there's some other unfunded project somewhere.
- [14:18]
A
Well, the example in the show was that when I was talking to Taryn, the director of research, she was talking about an example when she joined at first at GiveWell in 2019, where she was evaluating these two projects that seemed really similar, but one turned out to be way more effective and like life saving and improving. And so the one that they didn't end up funding was maternal mortality stuff. And I was just like, well, what about the moms who die?
- [14:38]
B
Right?
- [14:39]
A
And then no, seconds later, she's crying and I was like, oh, my. This is a choice she has to make every day. I did not know it would be so close to the surface. I was like, very surprised. How do you live? That's so stressful. That's so hard.
- [14:54]
B
This is why, you know, I don't do war reporting.
- [14:57]
A
Yeah.
- [14:57]
B
Just fund like the opera or something.
- [15:00]
A
I'm like, I like it. It makes me feel good. Yeah.
- [15:03]
B
But it is hard to do reporting around this kind of area and then do that thing that most like, statistically speaking, 99% of charitable donations in by Americans just stay within America in one way or another, where, objectively speaking, the need is not the greatest. We're at the end of the year and Mackenzie Scott has just released her list of $7.1 billion that she's given away over the past year, which is nice to be able to give away $7.1 billion in a single year. And there's definitely some development stuff in there, but there's a huge amount of gifts that aren't, and it feels quite American. And there's a lot of that money stays in America. And you do have to, at some point, you do start wondering, does she ever have those conversations about every million dollars you're giving to some arts organization in Alabama is money that could be like saving mothers lives in Cameroon.
- [16:01]
A
I mean, a lot of the philosophy of effective altruism goes back to Peter Singer and the very famous child in a lake scenario where okay, you're walking, you're minding your own business and you look over and there's a child drowning in a lake. Do you save them? Okay, you would say yes, like any rational person with if any humanity would say yes, so what if the lake's a little bit further away? And that's the whole thought experiment. It's like, okay, at every moment there's a child drowning in a lake and you can save them. It takes $4. Not really. It's not like a bed net is literally like $3 depending and then the logistics of arrival, whatever. But it's incredibly inexpensive to save lives around the world.
- [16:37]
B
Well, I mean, this is also something which I feel is worth. Mentioned this on the pod before. GiveWell has done incredibly valuable work over the years about really calculating how much it costs to save a life. And it turns out to be somewhere in the region of $5,000, which is incredibly cheap in one way, but is also not $5. And I think a lot of the marketing that we have seen from UNICEF and a lot of the big oh yeah, it's like a$99 for like a dollar a month you can save a kid's life. Actually you can't. You know, it does actually cost like 5,000. Do the reason bed nets are effective. Yes, the bed nets are cheap, but you need to buy like $5,000 worth of bed nets to save one life, which is totally worth it. And we should all do that. And that's a really good intervention. But yeah, the Peter Singer thought experiment is basically what if you're wearing an expensive suit, would you jump into the lake anyway to save the child in the knowledge that you would ruin your expensive suit. And everyone's like, well, yes, of course I would. Well, in that case, he says, wouldn't you?
- [17:44]
A
So that's $10,000.
- [17:46]
B
Wouldn't you pay the cost of a suit to save a life of a child somewhere else? And at some point the moral intuition just kind of attenuates. And if it's not me personally with my physical hands saving the child, then it becomes a very different thing.
- [18:02]
A
I did an article a few years ago for Town and Country about effective altruism and I happen to have a philosopher friend who's super into it, like very intellectually into it. And so we talk a lot about it and I mean, you can get really tangled up. There's a famous story of one woman who's in the, you know, broader movement at some organization, and she, like, was trying to buy like an apple at the grocery and started crying because what would it mean for her to buy this apple versus, like, you can really paralyze yourself with these thoughts and get kind of tangled up in the moral intuition and the logic chains and all of that. The thing that Taryn said to me, it's a calming instrument. It's a way to discipline compassion, is how she put it. To put it in this kind of brutal framework that makes numbers out of human lives and can feel very uncomfortable and sociopathic. But if you have wrapped yourself up in those logic chains and, and you're upset and like thinking about this, which is like an appropriate human response to suffering around the world, this can provide a way to not get stuck and not get paralyzed by that.
- [18:57]
B
I'm super interested in how the Aleema folks reacted to all of this because one of the things, I mean, one of the things we definitely see and feel in your episode is the Alima folks just constantly getting on fucking zoom calls with these fucking people and trying to scrape up a bunch of fucking data. And they're like, look, we're in fucking Cameroon. People are gonna die. Can we have some money here? And they're like, well, actually, can you send me a spreadsheet? And that takes a huge amount of time and effort that they need to divert from doing life saving work to talk to a bunch of management consultant types with spreadsheets. And like, again, this is something that GiveWell is very conscious of, right? Absolutely. They don't want to make too many demands on the time of the people who should be out saving lives. Yes, but they kind of have to.
- [19:49]
A
They kind of have to because again, they've made those promises like this is who they are and how they think about the world. They have this framework that disciplines their compassion and like, they cannot deviate from that. Both, like, morally, because they made a promise, but also I think this is very intentional. So, yeah, it is. That incompatibility and it's one of the moments that really I found so staggering was when Madeleine in Cameroon, she's one of the people who like, manages the grant programs, tries to raise money for the organization for Lima, and she's kind of like, hey, it's been a couple weeks, months. Can you tell, are we gonna. What's the likelihood that we're gonna get this money, give us kind of a deadline or like, any kind of sense from your side. Like, it would be really helpful for us. And the GiveWell side is like, oh, well, do you have any pressing deadlines? There are laws in Cameroon. If you fire people. You have to, like, do such and such severance type things. Like, there are logistics that Madeleine will have to manage to shut the whole thing down. And she's always keeping that in mind, no matter what. Cause, like, it's grant funded. She's always got an exit plan. Eventually she's like, tell me the probability of us getting this money. Which is like such GiveWell language, which I, like, love that they're like, let me just translate for you. And the GiveWell side, they're like 55% so unhelpful. Oh, my God, it's devastating. And I Talked to the GiveWell person later. Her name's Rosie and she's super thoughtful and careful. And she was like, yeah, that was kind of uncomfortable to have to say. First of all, I'm saying that kind of thing all the time. But, like, what if I wasn't brutal with them? What if I just didn't tell her honestly where we were? Like, I'm wasting our time. People are dying. No one can afford for me to do that. The brutality is like a kindness in this context.
- [21:20]
B
I'm sure I didn't.
- [21:21]
A
You didn't feel that way, I don't think. Well, Madeleine also, like, it's so funny how all of my assumptions about the emotions of this are just wrong. Madeleine was like, that was really helpful. I did not mind all the requests for data because that shows that they're interested. And so I remain hopeful. We wanted them to want to help us and they did. We got there. It's great. We are so appreciative. And my natural like, oh, I'd be so frustrated was like, well, grow up.
- [21:42]
B
I spent a little bit of time working with aid workers, or watching aid workers. I wouldn't say working with them. And it's amazing how very quickly if you're in that line of work, you get into the mode of just doing as much as you can and knowing that you're doing as much as you can. Because if you start looking at outcomes, especially in conflict areas and like, you know, things can get a lot worse. And you're like, well, why the fuck did I come here if things are just going to get a lot worse? But you're like, I still saved lives compared to if I hadn't come here. When you're in that world, I think you do become a little bit more.
- [22:16]
A
Sort of inured to it.
- [22:18]
B
Inured, yeah.
- [22:19]
A
Whereas the GiveWell side, isn't that so interesting? Like theirs is right on the surface and Aleema's like, nah, this is just part of it. It's not what I expected.
- [22:29]
B
We need to have a quick ad break, but when we're back, we're gonna talk a bit more about the global context of what happens when when $40 billion just disappears from the world.
- [22:48]
C
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B
Slate Money is sponsored this week by GiveWell. When you give to a nonprofit, how do you measure the actual impact impact that you are making on people's lives? Well, frankly, you can't. But GiveWell can. GiveWell focuses on that impact. It does enormous amounts of research, making sure that it can be as certain as possible about what that impact is. In fact, it has spent more than 70,000 hours on research to help donors fund highly cost effective programs that save or improve lives the most per dollar. You are not paying for that research. To be clear, that research is already paid for. It is subsidized by other people. Your money goes straight to the charities that GiveWell has determined have the most bang for the buck. GiveWell has spent 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation and only directs funding to the highest impact opportunities. They've found over 150,000 donors who've already trusted GiveWell to direct more than two and a half billion dollars. Rigorous evidence suggests these donations will save over 300,000 lives and improve improve the lives of millions more. You can find all of their research and recommendations on their site for free and thanks to the donors who choose to sponsor their research. GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax deductible donation to their recommended funds. To make a tax deductible donation Today, go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter Money Talks at checkout. Make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from Money Talks. Again, that's givewell.org to donate or find out more.
- [24:51]
C
More Slate money is brought to you by Charles Schwab Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for Legislative and Regulatory affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement, savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com Washingtonwide or wherever you listen.
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B
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- [26:23]
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In Walmart Zuluville, time was ticking away. Only a few nights left till the big holiday, but last minute gifters had no need to worry. Walmart Express Delivery got their gifts in a hurry. From Nintendo to Nespresso and Lego flowers, they could check off their lists in as fast as an hour. All of who Newville, East, west, south and north could order gifts up until 5pm on December 24th. So this holiday just do as the who's do with gift delivery this fast. They all gassed from Walmart. Who knew subject to availability terms and fees applied. The thing that really struck me more than anything else was when Givewell put this blog post up saying this is what's happened in the wake of the USAID cuts. There are two possible things that could have happened. One is that the USAID cuts basically degrade the philanthropic infrastructure in Sub Saharan Africa so much and various bits of the Caribbean and other places that it actually has become much much harder to get aid to the people who need it and more expensive to get aid to the people who need it and therefore your dollar is not as effective as it was. Conversely, the other possibility is the USAID cuts, like USAID was actually funding a bunch of incredibly cost effective self contained interventions and all you need to do is pick one off a list and give money to that. And that is amazing. And usaid, they had some smart people there, and you can replace that money. And in fact, when the amount of total money goes down, then every extra dollar that goes in is that much more effective.
- [28:00]
A
That's a silver lining in a way.
- [28:02]
B
And they were like, which one is it?
- [28:03]
A
I think it's both, isn't it?
- [28:04]
B
And they were like, you know, if you're. The metaphor I used when I was talking to someone on a Lima was like, if you're the tip of the spear, then what happens if the entire, like, shaft of the spear falls away?
- [28:14]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:15]
B
But the answer that GiveWell came to after a lot of empirical, you know, spreadsheeting was actually our effectiveness bar is being raised. If you give $1 to GiveWell now, it will have more positive effect than if you gave a dollar to GiveWell a year ago before USAID had imploded.
- [28:34]
A
Yeah.
- [28:35]
B
And that was. For me, it was just like a very validating thing. I was like, don't worry too much about the bigger effects of, like, everything has fallen apart. Because in a weird way, if everything has fallen apart, that is where philanthropy can do the most good.
- [28:49]
A
That's so sad, because that means that things are so dire that the better that it can be is more. That's awful. But I also think the other way is true, too. Like, the other bad outcome of degradation of these systems is absolutely true. Like, GiveWell stepped in with what, $39 million so far this year as of the publishing of this Planet Money episode. And, I mean, the hole that USAID left is tens of billions of dollars. Private philanthropy cannot cover all of that. That we can accept that maybe USAID was doing too much. Maybe they were doing too much according to people, or too much random, not accretive stuff, things that don't save lives, things that, I don't know, whatever. You can have valid conversations about the efficacy or utility of USAID's contributions and what they were doing. To me, it's sort of less disputable how the ending of all those programs were handled. Like, you could have tapered it. But I think Taryn said this. This in one of the GiveWell podcasts, actually, that GiveWell and a lot of these sort of effective altruism types of organizations operate on the margins on purpose, as you put it. It's a meta philanthropy. There's this assumption that the larger systems are there doing the basic stuff, and they're not. I mean, they are. They're providing basic healthcare in a lot of these cases. But that's because the governments aren't able to at that time. And, like, we're hoping that the armed conflict will ever stop and things will get better and, like. But in the intervening, you know, years, there's just this assumption their delivery mechanisms work and their ability to save lives is to some degree predicated on some of these systems functioning. And if you do not have those systems functioning and like, it's not just the US Cutting back, it's France, Germany, like, they're. It's all around the world.
- [30:26]
B
That was definitely a very depressing. Part of the conversations I was having with Lima was just like, we have grants from Norway and France and the uk but like, when the USAID cuts back, what do they do? They also cut back everyone else because the US is telling Europe that it's basically pulling out of NATO. And so Europe needs to spend all the money on defense and they take out our money anyway. I do think that, to use this sort of investing metaphor, really high roi.
- [30:53]
A
I know.
- [30:54]
B
You know, it's a good idea to sort of buy low when things are.
- [30:58]
A
You're saying human life is on fire sale right now. Yes, that's right.
- [31:01]
B
Right. And you can save lives for like, less money. If the going rate a year ago is $5,000, maybe it's like $4,000. It's like cheaper to save lives.
- [31:09]
A
But I do, I will just say I do worry about the long term because as these things degrade more and more, like, there's more instability in countries that were already unstable. There's more like that makes it harder.
- [31:18]
B
And harder and maybe it will come down to like $3,000 or $2,000. But, like, the point is, in a weird way, you're right about the institutions. But the message I took from the GiveWell blog post is that there always is an intervention that you can do and the effective of your dollar, it just becomes more effective even if the institution is falling apart. I think you're right. There's a limit to that. And one of the things we're seeing in places like Cameroon is that it is harder, it is more difficult, it is more expensive to save lives in conflict zones than it is if you're in a peaceful neighborhood. But the opportunities are presenting themselves. And one of the things I think about a of lot, probably more than most people, because I'm weird in philanthropy, is that the most effective time to spend money and save lives was probably some point in the 19th century. Like, the world is so much richer and healthier now.
- [32:16]
A
That's funny.
- [32:16]
B
And the need is so Much lower now. Is there need? Yes. But if you just look at what happened with the Millennium Development Goals and the number of, of people who are living in extreme poverty on planet Earth has gone from like 2 billion to 400 million over the past 20 years or something like that. There was so much opportunity 20 years ago and people weren't really addressing it. And eventually it got addressed. And that's great. But if you have a pool of philanthropic money and a bunch of great tools to intervene, what you want to do is you want to front load.
- [32:49]
A
That as much as you have already intervened. Yeah.
- [32:51]
B
Well, ideally you would have intervened years ago.
- [32:53]
A
Yeah. Tell me the money.
- [32:54]
B
The best. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time is today. And so this is why I hate it when foundations only give away 5% of their capital every year because they don't understand the discount rate. They don't understand that their money is going to be less effective in the future. The cost of saving a life is going to go up in the future.
- [33:15]
A
Except for this fire sale that you just pointed out.
- [33:17]
B
Now everything is on sale. Everyone should just be spending all of their money right now, all of their, like, philanthropic capital right now, throwing it into sub Saharan Africa, wherever right now. Because now it's on sale. Now there's an urgency. Now it's like, cheaper to save a life than ever. And then ultimately just trust either that like sanity will prevail at some point the arc of human history is gonna bend towards justice or for sure, or just trust that, that right now you're doing, there will be future philanthropists in the future who are also going to have money and who will be able to fund future needs that you don't need to save up your money, your philanthropic money for the future, because either it will be less effective or someone else will have money.
- [34:05]
A
I like that. There's like a comfort in that. It's almost like burning a hole in your pocket. I think that's a nice framing and a comforting framing and a sort of another way to discipline your compassion. I guess it's soothing to think that. And it's true. And I mean, making this episode for Planet Money was like, I normally do, like, what's the structure of the treasury market? And like, I love that stuff. Get me wrong, but the texture of this is obviously so different. And I was like, what am I doing with my life? Do I need to go quit and like, go work for an ngo? Like, that's not my expertise. I don't spend a Lot of time there. And yeah, it's pretty urgent and the needs are increasing.
- [34:40]
B
It's funny, I texted you. I sent a bunch of cash to Aleema before your episode came out.
- [34:46]
A
You saved a life with that cash.
- [34:47]
B
I saved a life with that cash. And then I heard your episode. I'm like, like, yeah. That was like Mary just tapping me on the shoulder and saying, good job, Felix.
- [34:55]
A
Oh, I love that. Yeah. The context of me being here today is that I got a random screen grab from you out of nowhere of your donation. How did you come to them? Why do you know them?
- [35:05]
B
I've been. I've been supporting them for, I don't know, six or seven years, something like that.
- [35:10]
A
How did you find out about them?
- [35:11]
B
As I say, I have friends in the development.
- [35:13]
A
Friends. Okay, okay.
- [35:14]
C
But.
- [35:14]
B
But Aleema. No but Aleema. In some ways, it's a bit of an oversimplification, but you can say oversimplifying that it kind of spun out of Doctors Without Borders and long time Slate Money listeners will remember from like eight, nine years ago. I did like a whole matching donations thing for Doctors Without Borders and wound up raising like $40,000 for doctors without Borders from Slate Money. And. Yeah, do it again. And do it again.
- [35:45]
A
Let's do it.
- [35:46]
B
Let's do it again. We will come up with some.
- [35:48]
A
We'll come up with a matching scheme.
- [35:50]
B
But this time we'll do it for Lima.
- [35:52]
A
I think journalistically. I don't know if I can do that. I can do. I don't know. I'll have to check my ethics.
- [35:57]
B
Do you have, like an NPR ethics system?
- [36:01]
A
I don't know. I just covered them in a story, so I would assume I can't give them money, right? You can't just give money to people that you cover. That's a rule. You're looking at me like you can't.
- [36:11]
B
Receive money from people that you cover. I feel like giving money is fine.
- [36:15]
A
Listen, I'm going to ask the ethics people just to make sure. But it seems like life saving work would be probably a good use of money.
- [36:21]
B
If you take one lesson from this podcast, go out and save some lives, anyone who can afford it should do it. All right, final question. Mary.
- [36:28]
A
Yeah.
- [36:29]
B
Since this is a money podcast, okay. If someone makes a donation in your name, or if you make a donation in someone else's name as a gifty type. Gift, gift. Do you tell them how much you donated?
- [36:42]
A
Oh, that's nice. I would have said yes, but let's imagine that it's millions and millions of dollars. And you can just like, hold onto the fantasy that you just saved, like, a lot. That's nice. Yeah. Don't say.
- [36:53]
B
Leave it vague.
- [36:54]
A
Maybe. Yeah. Cause if it's $25, you're like, okay, thank you. You know, but it's also like, people give what they can. Like, we can't all be throwing around three grand.
- [37:03]
B
So that's the other thing. There are two big lies in philanthropy.
- [37:07]
A
One is that it's cheap to save a life.
- [37:09]
B
That it's cheap to save a life. And the other one is every penny counts. It's like, really? No. If you get a million dollars from mackenzie Scott, that really does count. Much more than if you get 25 bucks from some kid.
- [37:20]
A
Yeah. I just think all the time about how, like, the Ice Bucket Challenge, people made fun of it at the time and they're like, it's too much money. It's gonna break these foundations. And then they, like, found cures and it's like, oh, well, that they didn't. They've made enormous progress because of all the fundraising promise. There was a really good New Yorker article about it. They have not cured it, you're right. But they are finding cures, and that feels huge.
- [37:42]
B
We're getting there.
- [37:42]
A
Yeah.
- [37:43]
B
So happy way to end hope 2025.
- [37:46]
A
Imagine that.
- [37:47]
B
Imagine that. Mary, thank you so much for coming on Money Dog. It's so great.
- [37:52]
A
It's a delight, as always.
- [37:53]
B
And we will have you back soon to talk about something completely different.
- [37:56]
A
Absolutely. Let's do it.
- [37:57]
B
Thank you. Oh, and also many thanks to Jessamine, Molly and Magnus Hendrickson here at Bloomberg, who managed to press buttons which I could never otherwise find.
- [38:04]
A
Really important buttons.
- [38:06]
B
Very important buttons. And to everyone else, Chinna Roth and everyone putting it together. And to you guys, thank you for listening and thank you even more if you gave money to a Lehman. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info and more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply. Been out here all morning. Not a single bite. Guess the fish finally figured it out. Just like hackers do when Cisco Duo's on guard with Duos. End to end fishing resistance. Every log in, every device, every user stays protected. No hooks no catches, no bites. Cisco Duo fishing season is over. Learn more@duo.com.