TED- 网络募捐:网友的爱心错了吗?


来源:TED
发布时间:2017-12-10 10:14:00
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内容提要:我相信援助。 我相信大多数援助 比直接把钱从飞机窗户中扔出去好。 我也可以肯定地说, 现今的许多援助 不比直接把钱给穷人来得好。 我希望有一天,援助能做到这一点。


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I suspect that every aid worker in Africa comes to a time in her career when she wants to take all the money for her project — maybe it's a school or a training program — pack it in a suitcase, get on a plane flying over the poorest villages in the country, and start throwing that money out the window. Because to a veteran aid worker, the idea of putting cold, hard cash into the hands of the poorest people on Earth doesn't sound crazy, it sounds really satisfying.


00:46
I had that moment right about the 10-year mark, and luckily, that's also when I learned that this idea actually exists, and it might be just what the aid system needs. Economists call it an unconditional cash transfer, and it's exactly that: It's cash given with no strings attached. Governments in developing countries have been doing this for decades, and it's only now, with more evidence and new technology that it's possible to make this a model for delivering aid. It's a pretty simple idea, right?


01:22
Well, why did I spend a decade doing other stuff for the poor? Honestly, I believed that I could do more good with money for the poor than the poor could do for themselves. I held two assumptions: One, that poor people are poor in part because they're uneducated and don't make good choices; two is that we then need people like me to figure out what they need and get it to them. It turns out, the evidence says otherwise. In recent years, researchers have been studying what happens when we give poor people cash. Dozens of studies show across the board that people use cash transfers to improve their own lives. Pregnant women in Uruguay buy better food and give birth to healthier babies. Sri Lankan men invest in their businesses. Researchers who studied our work in Kenya found that people invested in a range of assets, from livestock to equipment to home improvements, and they saw increases in income from business and farming one year after the cash was sent. None of these studies found that people spend more on drinking or smoking or that people work less. In fact, they work more.


02:47
Now, these are all material needs. In Vietnam, elderly recipients used their cash transfers to pay for coffins. As someone who wonders if Maslow got it wrong, I find this choice to prioritize spiritual needs deeply humbling. I don't know if I would have chosen to give food or equipment or coffins, which begs the question: How good are we at allocating resources on behalf of the poor? Are we worth the cost? Again, we can look at empirical evidence on what happens when we give people stuff of our choosing. One very telling study looked at a program in India that gives livestock to the so-called ultra-poor, and they found that 30 percent of recipients had turned around and sold the livestock they had been given for cash. The real irony is, for every 100 dollars worth of assets this program gave someone, they spent another 99 dollars to do it. What if, instead, we use technology to put cash, whether from aid agencies or from any one of us directly into a poor person's hands. Today, three in four Kenyans use mobile money, which is basically a bank account that can run on any cell phone. A sender can pay a 1.6 percent fee and with the click of a button send money directly to a recipient's account with no intermediaries. Like the technologies that are disrupting industries in our own lives, payments technology in poor countries could disrupt aid. It's spreading so quickly that it's possible to imagine reaching billions of the world's poor this way.


04:49
That's what we've started to do at GiveDirectly. We're the first organization dedicated to providing cash transfers to the poor. We've sent cash to 35,000 people across rural Kenya and Uganda in one-time payments of 1,000 dollars per family. So far, we've looked for the poorest people in the poorest villages, and in this part of the world, they're the ones living in homes made of mud and thatch, not cement and iron. So let's say that's your family. We show up at your door with an Android phone. We'll get your name, take your photo and a photo of your hut and grab the GPS coordinates. That night, we send all the data to the cloud, and each piece gets checked by an independent team using, for one example, satellite images. Then, we'll come back, we'll sell you a basic cell phone if you don't have one already, and a few weeks later, we send money to it. Something that five years ago would have seemed impossible we can now do efficiently and free of corruption.


05:59
The more cash we give to the poor, and the more evidence we have that it works, the more we have to reconsider everything else we give. Today, the logic behind aid is too often, well, we do at least some good. When we're complacent with that as our bar, when we tell ourselves that giving aid is better than no aid at all, we tend to invest inefficiently, in our own ideas that strike us as innovative, on writing reports, on plane tickets and SUVs. What if the logic was, will we do better than cash given directly? Organizations would have to prove that they're doing more good for the poor than the poor can do for themselves. Of course, giving cash won't create public goods like eradicating disease or building strong institutions, but it could set a higher bar for how we help individual families improve their lives.


07:08
I believe in aid. I believe most aid is better than just throwing money out of a plane. I am also absolutely certain that a lot of aid today isn't better than giving directly to the poor. I hope that one day, it will be.


07:27
Thank you.


07:29
(Applause)

00:12
我猜测, 每一个在非洲的救援人员 在她的职业生涯中都会有这样一个阶段, 想要把她所有项目的钱—— 也许是一所学校,或是一个培训项目—— 塞进行李箱里, 坐上飞机飞过这个国家最贫穷的地区, 然后把那些钱都扔出窗外。 因为对于一个有经验的救援人员来说, 把现金交到 地球上最贫穷的人手里的理念 并不疯狂, 而是让人感到满意极了。


00:46
在工作了正好十年后我也有了这样的想法, 幸运的是,那也正是我知道 这种想法的确存在的时候, 而它也许正是救援体系需要的东西。 经济学家称它为无条件现金转移, 正如其字面意思: 现金直接转移,没有中间过程。 发展中国家的政府 数十年来一直是这么做的, 随着科技不断发展, 种种迹象表明, 用这种方式来传递帮助到如今才成为可能。 这是一个相当简单的想法,对吧?


01:22
那么,为什么我花了十年的时间 为穷人们做其他事呢? 老实说,我之前相信 比起让穷人们自己用这些钱 我可以用钱为他们做更多的好事。 我曾有两个假定: 第一,穷人之所以贫穷 部分是因为他们没有接受过教育, 并且不懂得如何做出好的选择; 第二,我们需要像我一样的人 去帮助他们弄清楚他们需要什么,然后给他们。 然而,事实表明并非如此。 最近几年,研究者一直在研究 当我们把钱给了穷人,会发生什么。 几十份调查显示 所以人都用汇给他们的钱 来改善他们自己的生活。 在乌拉圭,孕妇购买更好的食物, 生出更健康的孩子。 在斯里兰卡,男人投资他们的生意。 调查我们在肯尼亚的工作的研究者 发现人们投资了一系列资产, 从家畜到家用设施到房屋的改进装修, 而且,钱送到他们手上的一年后, 研究人员还看到了他们在商业和农业方面收入的增加。 没有任何一项调查发现 人们在喝酒或抽烟上花费更多的钱, 或减少工作时间。 实际上,他们工作得更多了。


02:47
现在,物质需求能满足了。 在越南,年长的接受者 用他们得到的钱来买棺材。 就像一些人怀疑马斯洛的理论是否错了, 我觉得这样优先满足精神需求的选择 让我感到深深的羞愧。 如果是我,我不知道我会选择 把钱用在食物、家用设施还是棺材上, 这就引出了一个问题: 我们替穷人分配资源, 分配的效果如何? 值得我们这样做吗? 我们再来看看经验事实—— 把我们选择的东西给穷人时 会发生什么。 一项研究调查了一个支援印度的项目—— 把牲畜给所谓的“极端贫困者”, 该调查结果极具说服力, 他们发现30%的接受者 竟把给他们的牲畜卖掉了, 换来了现金。 真正讽刺的是, 该项目每送出100美金的资产, 需要额外花费99美金来维护运营。 相反,如果我们用技术手段, 不论是通过援助机构或者我们中的任何一个人, 直接把钱给到穷人手里,会怎么样呢? 现在,四分之三的肯尼亚人使用移动支付, 它从根本上说是一个可以在任何手机上运行的银行账户。 一个捐助者可以付1.6%的服务费, 然后按一下按钮 直接把钱打到接收者的账户上, 没有中介者。 就像在现实生活中,科技颠覆着传统工业, 在贫穷的国家,支付技术也可颠覆援助。 该技术传播得如此快, 用这种方式帮助全世界数十亿的穷人都成为可能。


04:49
这就是我们「直接给予(GiveDirectly)」项目的做法。 我们是第一个致力于 将现金直接传递给穷人的组织。 通过一次性给每个家庭1000美元, 我们已经把钱送到了肯尼亚和乌干达乡村地区的 35000个穷人手上。 目前,我们在最贫穷的村庄寻找最贫穷的人, 在世界的这些角落, 他们住在用泥土和茅草 而不是水泥和钢铁, 筑成的屋子里。 我们假设那是你的家庭。 我们手拿安卓手机出现在你的门前。 我们将记下你的名字,拍下你的照片, 还拍下一张你的茅屋的照片, 并用GPS技术获取你家的经纬度信息。 当天晚上,我们把所有数据上传到云端, 每一份资料都由独立的团队 利用诸如卫星图像等信息进行审核。 然后,我们将回来, 卖给你一个具有基本功能的手机, 如果你还没有的话。 几周过后, 我们会打钱到你的手机上。 在五年前看起来 不可能的事, 我们现在可以高效地完成, 并且没有腐败。


05:59
我们给穷人的钱越多, 我们就会更多地获得该方式运作的数据事实, 我们也会对我们的其他一切付出思考得更多。 今天,援助的原则通常是: 好吧,我们最起码做了一点好事。 当我们盲目自满,把这个原则当作目标, 当我们告诉自己给予帮助 总比一点也不给予要好, 投资就会变得没有效率, 自以为我们头脑中的想法是具有创新性的, 在撰写报告时, 在飞机和SUV上。 如果是这样的逻辑呢: 我们会比直接给钱做得更好吗? 各个机构需要证明 相比穷人自己 他们能为穷人做更多的好事。 当然,直接给穷人钱不会创造公共福利, 如消除疾病,或建立完善的机构组织, 但是它可以为如何帮助单个家庭改善生活 树立一个更高的标准。


07:08
我相信援助。 我相信大多数援助 比直接把钱从飞机窗户中扔出去好。 我也可以肯定地说, 现今的许多援助 不比直接把钱给穷人来得好。 我希望有一天,援助能做到这一点。


07:27
谢谢。


07:29
(掌声)

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