You Can Buy A Malaria Net

2024 election takes

I’m scared about the second Trump administration. I’m scared about high tariffs that destroy the American economy, about mass deportations that rip innocent people from their homes, about corruption and authoritarianism and Trump’s deep-seated desire to be Hugo Chavez. I think there’s less than a five percent chance that Trump will become an autocrat, but I would really prefer American democratic backsliding be utterly unthinkable. And I’m disappointed and heartbroken, the culmination of more than a year of disappointment and heartbreak: really? You guys hate immigrants so much, and are so economically illiterate, that you’re going to re-elect a fraudster who literally tried to overthrow the government?

In this time of trouble, effective altruism is a comfort to me, because it reminds me: I can buy an insecticide-treated bednet.

To the extent that I’m upset about what will happen to me and my friends, this is very little comfort. But to the extent that I’m upset about the course of world events, about all the preventable suffering that won’t be prevented—

I can buy an insecticide-treated bednet. If I buy a bednet, a child will sleep under it, cozy and safe from mosquito bites.¹ The child will be protected from malaria. At best, malaria causes flulike symptoms. At worst, it causes a variety of horrible deaths, such as organ failure, the blockage of blood cells to the brain, or choking to death on the fluid in your lungs. Because the child isn’t crippled by chronic malaria, she may be able to go to school and learn, and certainly will be able to work a better job as an adult. She’ll be richer, in an environment where wealth means not sports cars and vacations but reliably having enough to eat. Maybe she’ll be a doctor or a teacher or start a factory, and make her country richer too.

Donald Trump can’t stop me from buying a bednet. My ability to buy a bednet isn’t dependent on the behavior of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. I can buy a bednet even if Joe Biden waited too long to drop out of the race, or the Kamala Harris campaign was too risk-averse, or the Democratic Party elites need to do a better job of disciplining their base. Buying a bednet in no way requires appeasing the Americans with the most confused, ignorant, incoherent, and self-contradictory beliefs, otherwise known as “swing voters.”

It has, to put it mildly, not been a great few years for institutional effective altruism. I’m still optimistic about the movement, but I understand why some people aren’t. But the source of comfort I returned to again and again is that I can buy a bednet.

Sam Bankman-Fried can’t affect whether I buy a bednet. Whatever my opinion of current effective altruist community leadership or norms, I can buy a bednet. Open Philanthropy’s sometimes questionable grantmaking decisions have nothing to do with my grantmaking decisions (I’m granting to bednets).

The reason I am an effective altruist, first and foremost, before any other label, is that effective altruism is the first movement that said to me: you don’t ever have to be scared and helpless and powerless. No matter what, there is always something you can do. We’ll help you find it.

I’m going to do my best to contain the harm of the Donald Trump presidency. And if there’s nothing else I can do except watch in mute and abject horror while he does his best to take a sledgehammer to the country I love—

I can buy a bednet.

And if I don’t feel like buying a bednet, I can buy Gladys from Kenya some cabbage seeds.

Gladys from Kenya: “Just yesterday, I sold my very first harvest and made $500! I feel like the happiest person alive because, to be honest, I can't remember the last time I held that much money in my hands.” This isn’t cherrypicked, she was the second person on GiveDirectly Live when I wrote this post.

You can even give cash transfers directly² to low-income Americans, if you want.

I hope this helps someone else as much as it helps me.

1. Insecticide-treated bednets being used for fishing is mostly a myth.

2. As it were.