Think­ing glob­ally while acting locally has never been more difficult.

The New York Times reports today that CARE has decided to decline $45 mil­lion in fed­eral financ­ing (in the form of food aid) because the pro­gram that sup­plies the aid does more harm than good in the coun­tries it was designed to help.

The charity’s dilemma was a dif­fi­cult one: do you take money that you know will help people con­cretely, or do you reject that money for the sake of a larger but more ethe­real good? It’s not fair to char­ac­ter­ize the deci­sion as one between self-​interest and altru­ism, since even the char­i­ties that remain in the pro­gram are still pre­sum­ably putting the money to good work. But the dilemma is typ­i­cal of one we’re grow­ing more and more accus­tomed to: whether to act in pur­suit of some local, imme­di­ate, and vis­i­ble good or to take a struc­tural approach whose effects will likely be dif­fuse, long term, and invis­i­ble.