“Against Addressing Root Causes” by Omnizoid

Crosspost form an article on my tooooootally amaaaaaaaazing blog that you should definitely check out! I’ve spent a few recent articles arguing that PEPFAR is really valuable and attempts to cut it would be disastrous. PEPFAR is an international program that combats HIV—it's saved many millions of lives. Probably the most common response has been roughly the following: “sure PEPFAR saves a few kids from diseases, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem which is [gestures vaguely at whatever bit of one's ideology explains why bad things happen].” Now, when it comes to PEPFAR, this is simply factually wrong. It is addressing the root of the problem. You can see this if you look at a graph of HIV deaths over time: People also make the same objection to effective altruism. They’ll say: “effective altruism only is a palliative solution, that doesn’t address the [...] The original text contained 3 images which were described by AI. --- First published: February 4th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/avromuCCv6H25BKtM/against-addressing-root-causes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.