I agree that something like Give Directly is in principle the right thing to compare to as a baseline. I do not think the comparison is obvious, and I think it may go the opposite way. GiveDireclty has a positive effect on the people you are actually giving money to. First order wise, it is a big win. However, I am pretty doubtful that is has meaningful second order effects. It doesn’t help an economy develop. It doesn’t change a countries society long term, much less humanities. To succeed long term, we need economies to develop, which requires large pools of capital and lots of long shot bets, which is exactly what silicon valley specializes in. That is the kind of investment that has the potential to dramatically increase the number and well-being of humans many years and centuries down the road. That said, that makes any actual quantitative comparison to GiveDirectly extremely fraught. I don’t know of a good way to do the comparison. If you think GiveDirectly still outweighs other uses of money, that is a respectable position, but it is not an obvious one even after accepting EA principles.
I agree that something like Give Directly is in principle the right thing to compare to as a baseline. I do not think the comparison is obvious, and I think it may go the opposite way. GiveDireclty has a positive effect on the people you are actually giving money to. First order wise, it is a big win. However, I am pretty doubtful that is has meaningful second order effects. It doesn’t help an economy develop. It doesn’t change a countries society long term, much less humanities. To succeed long term, we need economies to develop, which requires large pools of capital and lots of long shot bets, which is exactly what silicon valley specializes in. That is the kind of investment that has the potential to dramatically increase the number and well-being of humans many years and centuries down the road. That said, that makes any actual quantitative comparison to GiveDirectly extremely fraught. I don’t know of a good way to do the comparison. If you think GiveDirectly still outweighs other uses of money, that is a respectable position, but it is not an obvious one even after accepting EA principles.