I do see how this could be adversarial or uncooperative. Do X, or else I’ll stop buying medicine for dying kids. What?!
I think doing something like this could make sense and be reasonably cooperative if the marginal costs of donation were sufficiently burdensome to you (and you’d actually donate less if you weren’t trying to match). On your own, the cost-effectiveness — the benefits from your donations divided by your costs — might not look so good, but the benefits from matchees’ donations + the benefits from your donations all divided by your costs could make it seem worth taking on the extra burden to you. Then, it’s actually you and your matchee(s) cooperating to provide a public good: people or animals being better off. You’re appealing to others to take this on as a joint responsibility.
This is like people being willing to vote to ban cages and crates for farmed animals, but still buying products from caged and crated animals.
Or taxation for welfare for the poor or other public goods.
I do see how this could be adversarial or uncooperative. Do X, or else I’ll stop buying medicine for dying kids. What?!
Right, I feel like it’s easy to not notice this framing, but it feels pretty weird once you do frame it in that way.
I do agree that there are some circumstances under which donation matches make sense, and increasing marginal returns to donations is perhaps one of them (which is not exactly what you said I think? but similar). I just think these circumstances tend to be relatively niche and I don’t see how e.g. the FarmKind case is one of them.
I do see how this could be adversarial or uncooperative. Do X, or else I’ll stop buying medicine for dying kids. What?!
I think doing something like this could make sense and be reasonably cooperative if the marginal costs of donation were sufficiently burdensome to you (and you’d actually donate less if you weren’t trying to match). On your own, the cost-effectiveness — the benefits from your donations divided by your costs — might not look so good, but the benefits from matchees’ donations + the benefits from your donations all divided by your costs could make it seem worth taking on the extra burden to you. Then, it’s actually you and your matchee(s) cooperating to provide a public good: people or animals being better off. You’re appealing to others to take this on as a joint responsibility.
This is like people being willing to vote to ban cages and crates for farmed animals, but still buying products from caged and crated animals.
Or taxation for welfare for the poor or other public goods.
Right, I feel like it’s easy to not notice this framing, but it feels pretty weird once you do frame it in that way.
I do agree that there are some circumstances under which donation matches make sense, and increasing marginal returns to donations is perhaps one of them (which is not exactly what you said I think? but similar). I just think these circumstances tend to be relatively niche and I don’t see how e.g. the FarmKind case is one of them.