If you’re clicking through from an RSS feed, you know from the title that you’ve signed up for a longer post. Here goes.
It started on Friday. My friend Michael and I were talking about the “bountys” that are sometimes paid to motivate programmers to solve specific problems (e.g., I’ll pay $$ to anyone who can fix such and such bug in Firefox).
I really think the idea of a bounty is interesting and has potential play in the non-profit world. Making anything happen is usually just a process of finding the right set of incentives to drive the right behavior. But I hadn’t taken the thought of paying a bounty any further than that for the moment…
As I was noodling about the idea this weekend, the NYTimes Sunday Magazine arrived at the house. The Sunday Magazine is one of my favorite things in the world to read and this week’s was all about giving and philanthropy. As I started reading it, I came across an interesting article from Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner talking about business models to elicit more effective behavior in the non-profit world (see their related blog post here).
An emerging model in the minds of Levitt and Dubner is the idea of paying a bounty for progress against social issues. They specifically described the success of a program called Smile Train and contrasted its mission with Operation Smile.
Many of you have likely heard of Operation Smile, the non-profit organization that sends medical volunteers to developing nations to conduct surgeries on those with cleft lips or cleft palates. It’s a great organization that has made a big difference in a very focused way.
Smile Train on the other hand has taken a very different approach. They put their efforts into training medical professionals on-the-ground (who live in developing countries) to conduct the surgeries themselves. Very smart. But Smile Train is willing to go even further. They offer mid-wives roughly $10 to bring babies born with cleft lips and cleft palates to the hospital to have these surgeries. Why? Because in some developing nations, the shame of having a child with a cleft lip or cleft palate is so great, that the mid-wives will actually smother the infant to death rather than let it live a life of shame and poverty. So Smile Train decided to tackle that problem head-on by offering a bounty to the mid-wife to have them bring the children in for a cosmetic, but life-altering surgery. Very interesting. But is this an ethical way to use the money donated to Smile Train? I suppose that if there’s full disclosure, the ethical dilemma is reduced. So, for me personally, I can get over the ethical qualms about Smile Train’s approach pretty easily.
But my question is this: How far is too far when it comes to bribes for doing the right thing? Can I set up a bounty system to dis-incent the cultural (and sometimes religious) practice of female genital mutilation? In Kenya, can I pay off the Luos to stop forced relocation of the the Kikuyus? Can I pay off militias to keep them from stealing the food targeted for the starving populations in Somalia? How far is too far?
I love incentives. But I hate slippery slopes. If I wanted to leverage the idea of a bounty going forward, how far can I go? I’m interested in your perspective on this to help inform mine.
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7 comments:
This IS a deep post and question. A few thoughts:
We need to leave our morals at the door in situations like this and put ourselves in the context of the society in question.
Any culture that is smothering newborns with deformities has bigger problems to work through than debating whether taking a "bribe" like this is bad.
These poor societies are dealing with life or death on a scale that the West has not seen in hundreds of years. Their survival also depends on having children that can contribute to the household. So a child that will be unaccepted by society will also earn less for the family.
Finally, remember that life is, unfortunately, much cheaper in many parts of the world. Death is now fairly rare in the West, but a daily occurrence in many developing nations. Infant death is common - similar, actually, to a few hundred years ago in the U.S. and Europe.
Everything comes down to perspective...Isn't a financial incentive better than a dead child? Shouldn't we put ourselves in their shoes rather than apply our own bias?
"Any culture that is smothering newborns with deformities has bigger problems to work through than debating whether taking a "bribe" like this is bad."
I agree with that.... But by simply bribing people to not smother children with cleft lips/palates, we aren't addressing those bigger problems. It seems like we're simply temporarily burying them. Take away the bribe, and do the midwives go back to smothering the babies?
In a way we are applying our own bias, or at least or own American way of 'fixing' things... Money.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems to work in many situations. But is it a quick band-aid fix or a real solution? Shouldn't we be educating people instead?
Good post!
"We need to leave our morals at the door in situations like this and put ourselves in the context of the society in question."
Without the application of our moral and ethical standards we have no argument to take any action in the first place. One cannot, in good conscience, interfere with the affairs of another without perceived moral justification.
Once a determination has been made to interfere it becomes a matter of degree.
Offer a prayer or chant
Donate to reduce poverty
Offer the surgery free
Bribe the midwives
Ban procreation
Castrate the population
Assuming one feels justified to act the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
I always feel comfortable helping others when I know they've requested the help. I become quickly conflicted in matters where I must take the moral high ground to make judgments for others.
We humans don't necessarily have a good track record when attempting to decide what's best for our 'less knowledgeable' bretheren.
...I'd go with the bribe!
I don't know how you can disagree with smothering babies, but in this case I think its the $10 that makes it feel unethical--not the fact that you are replacing a bad behavior with a good outcome.
If the $10 becomes food for the midwives' family for a year (which it could be) that's great. If that $10 becomes training for more effective baby smothering techniques (which it probably isn't) that's bad. However, since it hasn't been spent yet the potential for that money to create more evil is still present.
These are all really thoughtful responses and helped me to clarify my own views on this topic.
Making the decision to intervene at all is already a decision -- the next decision (e.g., a bribe) is just a matter of the degree to which we will intervene...
There's a practical common sense in here as well that encourages action to fix the immediate problem (do what's necessary to keep mid-wives from smothering infants).
But also, a long-run view that says education has to be a part of the solution too or you'll just throw good money after bad.
All very helpful -- thanks for sharing your thoughts and I obviously welcome additional conversation around this...
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