When everyone knows that there’s a basically solid argument for only donating to effective charities if you want to benefit others, when people donate to ineffective charities it’ll transparently be due to selfish motives.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. People may have motives for donating to ineffective charities that are better characterised as moral but not welfare-maximising (special obligations, expressing a virtue, etc).
Also, if everyone knows that there’s a solid argument for only donating to effective charities, then it seems that one would suffer reputationally for donating to ineffective charities. That may, in a sense, rather provide people with a selfish motive to donate to effective charities, meaning that we might expect donations to ineffective charities to be due to other motives.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. People may have motives for donating to ineffective charities that are better characterised as moral but not welfare-maximising (special obligations, expressing a virtue, etc).
Also, if everyone knows that there’s a solid argument for only donating to effective charities, then it seems that one would suffer reputationally for donating to ineffective charities. That may, in a sense, rather provide people with a selfish motive to donate to effective charities, meaning that we might expect donations to ineffective charities to be due to other motives.