Farmed animals are neglected, so I do not think worldview diversidication would be at risk due to moving 100 M$ to animal welfare instead of global health and development. I calculated 99.9 % of the annual philanthropic spending is on humans.
I think it would be more appropriate to use something like human welfare spending for low-income countries rather than counting ~all charitable activity as in a broad “human” bucket. That is to maintain parity with the way you’ve sliced off a particularly effective part of the animal-welfare pie (farmed animal welfare). E.g., some quick Google work suggests animal shelters brought in 3.5B in 2023 in just the US (although a fair portion of of that may be government contracts).
Companion animal shelters may be the animal-welfare equivalent of opera for human-focused charities (spending lots on relatively few individuals who are relatively privileged in a sense). While deciding not to give to farmed-animal charities because of dog shelter spending doesn’t make much sense, I would submit that not giving to bednets because of opera spending poses much the same problem.
I don’t think that changes your underlying point much at all, though!
Thanks Jason, I would say that giving to animal shelters might be more like giving to the cancer society, or even world vision, rather than opera but that’s as fairly minor point.
I think it would be more appropriate to use something like human welfare spending for low-income countries rather than counting ~all charitable activity as in a broad “human” bucket. That is to maintain parity with the way you’ve sliced off a particularly effective part of the animal-welfare pie (farmed animal welfare). E.g., some quick Google work suggests animal shelters brought in 3.5B in 2023 in just the US (although a fair portion of of that may be government contracts).
Companion animal shelters may be the animal-welfare equivalent of opera for human-focused charities (spending lots on relatively few individuals who are relatively privileged in a sense). While deciding not to give to farmed-animal charities because of dog shelter spending doesn’t make much sense, I would submit that not giving to bednets because of opera spending poses much the same problem.
I don’t think that changes your underlying point much at all, though!
Thanks Jason, I would say that giving to animal shelters might be more like giving to the cancer society, or even world vision, rather than opera but that’s as fairly minor point.