JD Bauman (EA for Christians) and Colin Aitken (Economist, author of the Pepfar Report) discuss:

•  the freezing of PEPFAR
• whether aid programmes are effective
• coping with the tragedy of the USAID/PEPFAR freeze
• balancing radical Christian altruism with mental health
• and how to think about money without losing yourself over everyday purchases

Full transcript available here

Episode Highlights:

Investigating the effectiveness of aid programmes (PEPFAR):

“So I'd say the parts of the report I was most involved with, our goal was, can we get this kind of estimate outside of PEPFAR so people can have a more trustworthy, not that it's not trustworthy, but an independent source they can trust for PEPFAR's effectiveness? And also, can we do this in multiple ways? So we did this from the mortality data...  So I think we're pretty confident that between 7.5 and 30 million lives were saved by PEPFAR…”

Impact of the loss of aid 

“My rough back of the envelope guess is, I don't know, maybe one or two million deaths per year forever until we reinstate PEPFAR and sort of similarly effective foreign aid programs, which I don't know, I find it very hard to picture a million people. And that's only the people who die. Like the scale of suffering is probably like 10 or 100 times that.”

Role of Money in Christian Morality

“I think in most cases, people are erring on the wrong side of not caring enough about money versus caring too much about. Well, I mean, people care a lot about money, but caring enough about donating. I think in economics, we talk a lot about comparative advantage, which is, you know, if I can do stuff and you can do stuff, I should do what plays to my strengths the best. And you should do what plays to your strengths the best and we can trade and everything can end up better.

Money Is The Comparative Advantage for US Christians 

 “And I think for most Americans on a global scale, our comparative advantage is very strongly money. I think the amount of good you can do with your money far outweighs the amount of good you can do with everything else combined.”

Finding Hope in Christ in Moments of Despair

“The lives lost from HIV are not ultimately lost in the sense, but that these people are known by God, they're loved by God. When they die, they return to God. Their sufferings in this life are extremely important, but we're part of a greater picture, a greater plan of God to renew all things, to make good on all things, to do good things for those that he loves. I… I have to remind myself of that when I get especially discouraged because it does feel sometimes like I'm just witnessing this horror tragedy, like a plane crashing every hour… I do have confidence that God will make good and he'll use Christians like you to make a difference for many people out there.”