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mohamedkoubaa • today at 8:46 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

There was modest farmland in Iraq managed by a trust for about 400 years that paid for the wedding dresses for all women in the nearby town. The colonial administrators found this ineffective and dismantled the trust fund and privatized the land.

There is something to be said about how we sometimes fail to account for the effectiveness of ineffective altruism.


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SpicyLemonZest • today at 9:17 PM

When people talk about ineffective altruism, they're generally talking about organizations like the American Heart Association, which spends over half of annual donations on payroll (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/135...). I don't think many people in the effective altruist movement would complain about a targeted trust that successfully and reliably achieves some niche goal.

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