I found this flyer in a lecture theatre today:
“Join in an amazing two week volunteer and adventure program in South America or the Fijian Islands this year. The first week will see you commuting via canoe to a remote Amazonian village or living with a host family in Fiji; where you will be restoring a primary school, teaching children English and helping to provide a village with access to fresh water. The second week you will be off on an Amazonian adventure trekking, fafting and exploring the unique biodiversity that the jungle has to offer. Or in Fiji, sail from island to island, snorkelling, swimming diving; the world is your oyster! Join us this year and make a difference.”
Such a trek is no more condemnable than any other adventure holiday, but it’s amazing people can get a warm fuzzy feeling out of it given it has to be among the most conspicuously cost ineffective ways of assisting poor people imaginable. Never underestimate our ability to deceive ourselves into thinking what is good for us is good for everyone else. All the more reason to watch your actions, not your feelings if you want to see what you really care about.
Now I wonder what we should make of the way so much foreign aid goes to pay expensive Western wages to get rich people to do what poor locals could do at a fraction of the cost.
Similar fun from Half Sigma:
I think the following quote from a NY Times article about the busy summers of affluent teenagers is especially ironic:
for example, Putney Student Travel, a private company, offers a five-week summer program of seminars at Yale and a trip to Cambodia to address poverty issues for $6,990
It costs how much to learn about poverty? Poor people manage to learn about poverty for free.
Tagged: altruism, psychology
