“The more who die, the less we care.”

Nicholas Kristof asks “why we’re so willing to try to assist a stranger before us, while so unwilling to donate to try to save strangers from malaria half a world away. One of the reasons, I believe, is that humanitarians are abjectly ineffective at selling their causes. Any brand of toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than the life-saving work of aid groups. Do-gooders also have a penchant for exaggeration, so that the public often has more trust in the effectiveness of toothpaste than of humanitarian aid.”… “There are no easy answers here, but if a toothpaste company had these miserable results in its messaging, it would go back to the drawing board. That’s what bleeding hearts need to do as well.”