> This is debatable. If they are renting out the houses this could reduce rents which would improve the lives of the poor who rent much more often than own. If they are sitting on them it's much more likely to be negative.
Large investors don't tend to be drawn to projects offering affordable housing to local residents because they are not as profitable as the alternatives. Many large European cities are currently suffering a housing affordability crisis driven in part by properties increasingly catering to tourists (esp. Air B&Bs) and luxury properties for investment for international high-net worth individuals.
> I'll give you that you shouldn't earn to give by working for Gaddafi. I think the vast majority of EA would agree.
It usually wouldn't be as clear cut and easy to spot a case as that. But for example, until the war in Ukraine, European law firms were happy to act for any number of Russian businesses or oligarchs, provided they don't figure on any anti-money laundering lists (themselves, often relatively simple to circumvent). Or say, an African business person who has acquired their huge wealth in domestic assets and infrastructure through nepotism and is salting away the wealth offshore or into Europe via various direct or opaque investments, all legally facilitated by big law firms.
>The third rule at 80,000 hours the biggest proponent of earn to give is
3. Doesn’t cause harm
Not causing harm is much harder to tease out than one might think. The first order effects might appear harmless, but what about the second and third order effects? Is one often even in a position to know given the levels of abstraction in global financial markets? Are you lifting up developing countries by investment, or unwittingly enabling more to be extracted from them than is being put in?
