Here are the three most popular comments as of now. One, “giving to effective charities can create poverty in the form of exploited charity workers”:
I’ve worked for a non-profit in the past at an unlivable wage. One of my concerns when I am looking at charities to give to and hearing that we need to give only to those that are most efficient, is that we are creating more poverty by paying the workers at some charities wages that they can’t live on.
Two, “US charities exist because the rich aren’t taxed enough”:
Our whole system of charity in the US has developed because the wealthy aren’t taxed enough, and hence our government doesn’t do enough. Allowing the rich to keep so much wealth means we don’t have enough national or state level funding for food, housing, healthcare, or education. We also don’t have adequate government programs to protect the environment, conduct scientific research, and support art and culture. I’m deluged every day by mail from dozens of organizations trying to fill these gaps. But their efforts will never have the impact that well planned longterm government action could.
Three, “I just tip generously”:
Lately I’ve been in the mindset of giving money to anyone who clearly has less than me when I have the opportunity. This mostly means extra generous tipping (when I know the tips go to the workers and not a corporation). Definitely not efficient, but hopefully makes a tiny difference.
These just seem really weak to me. What other options did the underpaid charity workers have, that were presumably worse than working for the charity? Even if the US taxed the rich very heavily, there would still be lots of great giving opportunities (e.g., to help people in other countries, and to help animals everywhere). Tipping generously is sort of admirable, but if it’s admittedly inefficient, why not do the better thing instead? I guess these comments just illustrate that there is a lot of room for the core ideas of effective altruism (and basic instrumental rationality) to gain wider adoption.
Here are the three most popular comments as of now. One, “giving to effective charities can create poverty in the form of exploited charity workers”:
Two, “US charities exist because the rich aren’t taxed enough”:
Three, “I just tip generously”:
These just seem really weak to me. What other options did the underpaid charity workers have, that were presumably worse than working for the charity? Even if the US taxed the rich very heavily, there would still be lots of great giving opportunities (e.g., to help people in other countries, and to help animals everywhere). Tipping generously is sort of admirable, but if it’s admittedly inefficient, why not do the better thing instead? I guess these comments just illustrate that there is a lot of room for the core ideas of effective altruism (and basic instrumental rationality) to gain wider adoption.