Life in General

Global Fund appeal

John Quiggin175 Comments

As promised, this is the post for my second “cash for comment” appeal. I’ll be giving $1 per comment, once again, up to a limit of $1000 (last time there were about 500 comments). I plan to donate the proceeds to Medecins Sans Frontieres, and express a preference for projects related to the The Global Fund to fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria . These diseases kill over 6 million people each year, and the numbers are growing. Of course, cosponsors are welcome to nominate their own preferred charity.

As before, I’m also hoping for cosponsors, who agree to put in 5,10, 20 or 50 cents up to whatever limit seems appropriate. When the appeal is done, I’ll email to tell you how much you’ve promised. You then send the donation to MSF or your preferred alternative. If you can advise me when you’ve done it (and if you want, send a copy of the receipt) that’s great, but this entire appeal is being done on the basis of trust. I’ve already had one offer of 10c per comment, which I hope to confirm soon.

As regards your comments, anything you want to say is fine (civilised discussion and no coarse language, please), and it doesn’t have to be more than a word or two. But I’d be interested in discussion on the issues raised by exercises of this kind, for example, priorities in aid, the role of private philanthropy vs governments, NGOs, business and so on.

I’ll just mention that I’m financing my contribution partly from the payment I got for a review of Lomborg’s book, Global Crises, Global Solutions, coming out of the Copenhagen Consensus. Although I had some severe criticisms of that exercise, there were some important positives as well, and the assessment of health initiatives was largely consistent with the priorities identified by the Global Fund. So it seems appropriate to allocate the proceeds to a high-priority good cause.

The appeal will continue until 6pm Sunday Queensland time. I’ve got a few things on over the weekend, but I’ll try to post some updates.

Update 11pm Friday The appeal has barely begun and already cosponsors have promised 80 cents a comment, in addition to my $1. That’s a target of $1800. So please, spread the word.

Update Saturday 4pm I expected to get more comments than last time and fewer cosponsors, having already leaned on the generosity of my regular readers. In fact, it’s been pretty much the reverse. Comments have been a bit slow coming on, but the support from cosponsors has been truly impressive. Roughly in order

An anonymous regular reader has offered 50c per comment
Ken Harwood has offered 20c
Jonathan Lundell has offered 10c
Harry Clarke has offered 20c
Mister z has offered 10c
rdb has offered 10c
Emma has offered up to $100 (not sure what rate)
matthew Klugman has offered 10c

If my arithmetic is right, that’s a total pledge of $2.30 a comment. Given that it looks pretty unlikely that the upper limit is going to be reached, I’ll pitch in another 70c, and bring it up to $3. Is this a bargain, or what?

Update 2pm Sunday We’ve just passed 150 comments, so the amount raised is over $500, which is not bad, although there’s a lot more than this still on the table. Let’s hope we can make at least 200 by 6 pm (four hours to go).

Additional cosponsors

Peter Fuller offers 20 cents per comment – up to 500 ($100)
Bill Gardner offers 0.25 / comment, up to A$100.
Caitlin offers $50 if we reach 500

I forgot to mention in the earlier update that Jack Strocchi has offered 10c, subject to the requirement that I should say something nice about Bill Gates and his charitable efforts. Sooner done than said!

Appeal ended 6pm Sunday A total of 156 comments and a bit over $500 raised. Not as successful as last time, but a good effort nonetheless. Tomorrow, I’ll be getting in touch with the many generous cosponsors to tell them how much they’ve promised. Thanks very much to them, and to everyone who took the time to comment and think a little a bit about the issues. Thanks also to Tim Blair, Mark Bahnisch, Claire from Anggargoon(?) and others who linked. My Trackbacks aren’t working properly so there may be others I’ve missed.

fn1. At my absolute discretion, I’ll delete bots, spammers, repetitive commenters etc. If you don’t trust me to act fairly in this respect, or any other, don’t participate.

175 thoughts on “Global Fund appeal”

  2. ok, so, (having read the Griffiths book recommended on CT recently) how do I, an ignorant and a fool when it comes to economics and foreign aid, figure out which causes to support? Any can recommend a book which looks into the short and long term effects of various measures?

  4. Bill Gates Foundation is doing some marvellous work – and I understand its his stated goal to give away his wealth during his own lifetime

  7. This is as good a time as any to tell you I thought your article in Journal of Political Philosophy on globalization (JPP 9 #1) was really good.

  9. Well I’ll give a reasoned refutation of Richard’s position (message number 12 here), over at his blog later, but for now I’ll just flame him in the interests of the greater good.

    When I refute his position he will either object on utilitarian grounds, possibly concealed even from himself, or he will reject it on unreasonable grounds from not sharing the same fundamental premises as my own. If the former, he will discredit hos own position in the eyes of others, if the latter he will be adopting a position that elevates corporate collectivities over individual bases. That last leads to very fruitful enquiry, which often suggests pragmatic collective action but never justifies collective basis without at the same time generating inherent contradictions.

    Contra Marx, that will not destroy his tactical resistance but it too will discredit him in the eyes of others – if rational such there be.

    But he will, if he resists in that way, be approving my flaming him now because it serves the greater good of a flame war here in furtherance of squeezing funds out of that exploiter of the masses, JQ.

    That will help the deserving and stimulate my Schadenfreude.

    Remember: flame early, flame often.

  17. Matthew R Simmons’ Thirteen Points of Light – an essential part of Energy Stability.

    Because, would you trust an oil executive to tell you the truth about the size of his reserves ? I wont, because I are one.

    Ian Whitchurch

  18. Not my meeting – copied off HotCopper. Even if it’s a forgery, I reckon theres good advice in there.

    Meeting with Warren Buffett 28 Jan 05 – synthesized notes by topic
    On investing…

    How Warren spends his day:

    · Wakes up at 6:45, reads paper at home, often doesn’t make it into the office until after the market opens
    · No set schedule, WB hates having a full calendar

    · Always takes reading material home

    · Spends 80% of the day reading, 20% talking on the phone (he then said it might be more like 90/10)

    · Phone conversations are generally short

    Investment process:

    · In the past some things were cheap enough WB could decide in a day (this was somewhat a function of a time period where companies would sell at 2-3x earnings)
    · Decisions should be obvious to onlookers. You should be able to explain why you bought something in a paragraph.

    · “I don’t do DCF� (WB says he does a rough approximation in his mind)

    · Finding ideas is a function of cumulative knowledge over time. Something just comes along – usually an event takes place, like a good management team screwing up – that creates the opportunity (WB seems to imply here that his reading isn’t specifically targeted at finding ideas, but rather that ideas jump out at him as a natural consequence of vociferous reading)

    · You must be patient…good ideas tend to be clustered together, and may not come at even time intervals…when you don’t find anything for a while it can be irritating

    · WB isn’t bothered by missing something outside his circle of competence

    · Missing things inside the circle is nerve racking…examples include WMT, FNM

    Advice for new investors:

    · Don’t worry too much about your mistakes
    · Don’t learn too much from your mistakes

    o Don’t become Mark Twain’s frog that never sat again on a stove after being burned
    o BUT…never be willing to play a “fatal� game

    · Don’t confuse social progress with the chance to make money – look at airlines and autos for examples
    · Law degree is not essential, but good if you think it will help in your specific career

    · Learning to think like a lawyer is a valuable trait

    · Allocate even more of your day to reading than he does

    · Read lots of K’s and Q’s – there are no good substitutes for these

    · Read every page

    · Ask business managers the following question: “If you could buy the stock of one of your competitors, which one would you buy? If you could short, which one would you short?�

    · Always read source (primary) data rather than secondary data

    · If you are interested in one company, get reports for competitors. “You must act like you are actually going into that business, and if you were, you’d want to know what your competitors were doing.�

    Why more people don’t follow his advice:

    · The advice doesn’t promise enough…it’s not a “get rich quick� scheme, which is what a lot of other philosophies promise
    · WB mentioned that when he was really young he started investing using technical analysis, but found that he never could make any money with it

    · “I realized that technical analysis didn’t work when I turned the chart upside down and didn’t get a different answer.�

    · After seeing that charting didn’t work, he switched to Graham…it made sense and it worked

    What Warren reads:

    · Most of reading includes K’s, Q’s and 5 newspapers daily
    · Hasn’t found much worthwhile book reading outside of Graham and Fisher

    Advice to nonprofessional investors:

    · If you like spending 6-8 hours per week working on investments, do it
    · If you don’t, then dollar cost average into index funds. This accomplishes diversification across assets and time, two very important things.

    · “There is nothing wrong with a ‘know nothing’ investor who realizes it. The problem is when you are a ‘know nothing’ investor but you think you know something.�

    o NOTE: this is analogous to the concept of ‘metaknowledge’ that Mauboussin talked about…there’s also a Confucius quote on this
    Avoiding human misjudgment:

    · WB said repeatedly that it doesn’t take above a 125 IQ to do this…in fact, IQ over this amount is pretty much wasted. It’s not really about IQ.
    · Staying within circle of competence is paramount

    · When you are within the circle, keep these things in mind:

    o Don’t get in a hurry
    o You are better off not talking to others

    o Just keep looking until you find something (don’t give up)

    o Good ideas come in clumps – by time, by sector, by asset class

    Discount rates used for valuation:

    · Use a long term normalized interest rate for Treasuries…e.g. 6%
    · Don’t use different discount rates for different businesses…it doesn’t really matter what rate you use as long as you are being intellectually honest and conservative about future cash flows.

    · Only want one variable to compare in order to assess the viability of an investment – price versus value. If we allowed discount rates to change it would lead to more than one variable.

    · WB’s assessment of the risk of a company is baked into the probabilities for future cash flow scenarios of the company

    · “I don’t know what the true cost of capital is for a business unless we own it�

  19. You have a thousand cubic feet of gas, congratulations. Now go get a real job.

    You have a million cubic feet of gas. Probably not worth connecting, even in Oklahoma. Go get a real job.

    You have a billion cubic feet of gas. Are you in the Lower 48 ? If so, congratulations. If not, go get a real job.

    You have a trillion cubic feet of gas. Shell has your phone number.

    You have a hundred trillion cubic feet of gas. You are Oman.

  20. While we’re feeling charitable, one thing I’ve often wondered about on those “celebrity gameshow specials” such as the recent Eddie-thon on Channel 9, how fussy the TV channels are over what charities they will support. I wonder if they’d be happy to have their celebrity extracting money for MSF, for instance.

    I wonder just how politically anodyne you have to be…

  26. In essence, the philosophies of the New Right are based on a recognition of the value of the individual and an abhorrence of anything that stands in the way of the individual, such as unions, bureaucracies, taxation, regulation or other individuals.
    I can perhaps best illustrate this by example. We favour the introduction of university fees, although I forget why, because obviously only the wealthier type of individual will be in attendance. … We favour the idea of people working for the dole because it provides a sense of dignity for the people for whom the people on the dole are working, and it gives the unemployed an opportunity to work without contributing to anything approaching a wages explosion. … and we question the alleged ‘right’ of single mothers to benefit from the state. If we start giving away to one group, pretty soon we’ll have taxpayers’ money being used to help bloody near anyone who needs help! This defeats the very purpose of taxation, which is to find ways of reducing taxation.

    From An Independant View, A COMPLETE dagg, John Clark

  32. Thanks for doing this John – I’ve been meaning to organise some yearly donations so this is a good chance – I’ll co-sponsor with 10cents a donation up to $100.

    ps I see your speaking at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas – I look forward to seeing you there.

  33. Well, this is kind of a cool idea, but I don’t really get it. Think I’m about to have a heated argument with my Matty (see above) where my puritan Presbyterian instincts kick in with a “let your right hand not know what the left is doing” quote. Or to be blunt, if you want to give $100 to Medicins Sans Frontiers why don’t you bloody give it without linking to the number of comments on a website?. Guess it’s still better than not doing it so thanks John….

  35. you rock, Daddy Q.
    This is a nice site to avoid doing homework with: i might pledge money later when i have a job.

  37. If there was a charity which spent its money directly on reducing greenhouse emissions, would you donate to it?

  45. This is an interesting way of giving to charity. You could have just quietly sent in a check, but doing it this way not only makes us lusers feel like we are doing something charitable just by taking 60 seconds to write a comment on someone else’s blog, but raises the profile of MSF throughout the social network, implicitly spreading awareness and goodwill and enticing additional donations.

  48. You could always disconnect your spam blocking for this thread, JQ.

    Or did you already do that?

    BTW, apart from the overstatement and tone, the stuff about the purpose of taxation being to reduce taxation is spot on. The function of government ought to include engineering out the need for it, as well as reducing it.

    The flaws come from reducing government without eliminating the need, at least in step but better still in advance.

    You cannot infer any ethical justification for government and its attendant burdens like taxation from the mere fact that things would otherwise – ceteris paribus – be worse. Government is itself at fault for creating and maintaining that situation, apart from some minor cases which do not extend to an absolute justification.

    Those cases, of course, are covered by the “…and other individuals” bit. It’s not so much man’s inhumanity to man as man’s human fallibility to man, though; a case of never impute to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by incompetence (or, cockup before conspiracy).

  49. There is no reason to “bring back” DDT since it has been continuously used against malaria since the 40s. However, in many places it is no longer effective because of resistance. The global fund is buying many a lot of insecticide treated nets which should be more effective than using DDT.

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