Dead Aid

The book blurbs aren't raising novel points, and reviews of the book indicate that it doesn't do so either. It also takes one viewpoint in a field where intellectual opinion is diverse. It's questionable whether this is on-topic, but if you do want to inform discussions of altruism with relevant literatures, then I would advise linking to a representative sample of the existing work (which includes strong popular books like Sach's and Easterly's if you don't just want to link academic work) instead of the blurb for a single unrepresentative book that you haven't read.

Politics or not, I find this to be a great illustration of the real-world consequences of failure of rationality. The interesting question is at what point the mechanism breaks down.

he logical course of action for rich countries is to study the most effective methods of poverty alleviation and development, and apply those. We can see clearly that this is not happening, but it's unclear as to why:

-Are rich countries wrong about the conditions they're facing, and thus using improper methods? If so, is there a bias that causes them to misperceive conditions? -Have rich countries erroneously identified ineffective methods of aid as effective? If so, is there a bias that causes them to wrongly pick the wrong methods? -Do rich countries actually want to harm poor countries and keep them down, under the guise of aid? If so, why is this scheme able to go on for so long? -Are, as EY implies, rich countries more interested in buying their own moral satisfaction? If so, why do people get moral satisfaction from appearances of morality instead of actual morality - wouldn't it be better if we derived pleasure from actually helping others?

There's probably more points at which the mechanism can fail. In any case, I think this is a great example of horrible consequences of failures of rationality: an entire continent's development may be slowed down, and countless lives shortened or destroyed. Perhaps issues like these are good for the purposes of discussion of practical applications of rationality - we probably won't be able to make everyone in power in rich countries a rationalist. How do we get them to act rationally?

When resources are freely available, they will be monopolized by whatever agent can exploit them most efficiently.

Only when resources are available only after wise use and careful thought will the wise and the careful prosper.

It might have been more on-topic for Overcoming Bias than Less Wrong, but I'm voting up because this is a data point in a topic that's frequently come up in both places: What are the real costs of "purchase of moral satisfaction" or feeling better about trying than succeeding?

I can't find now because Less Wrong doesn't keep pointers to old posts

There's a Google custom search box in the sidebar, usually works pretty well. Also, the "New" section has Next / Prev links at the bottom.

This is politics; off-topic for LessWrong.