Makes sense. :) There are at least two different reasons why one might discourage taking more than one’s fair share:
Epistemic: As you said, there may be “collective wisdom” that an individual donor is missing.
Game theoretic: If multiple donors who have different values compete in a game of chicken, this could be worse for all of them than if they can agree to cooperate.
Point #1 may be a reason to not try to outcompete others purely for its own sake. However, reason #2 depends on whether other donors are in fact playing chicken and whether it’s feasible to achieve cooperation. If you genuinely have different values from other donors, you should try to do the best you can by your own values, which could include taking advantage of opportunities to donate less than your “fair” share.
It’s easy to feel warm fuzzies toward being “fair”, but we can imagine scenarios where those fuzzies don’t apply. For example, imagine that the USA and Russia are both contributing development aid to an international organization, and with any funds left over, Russia will buy attack drones from Iran. If there’s an opportunity to get Russia to contribute more than its “fair share” to the development aid, leaving less money left over for drones, the USA should try to do that.
Maybe being the kind of person who would never even consider aiming to gain some advantage for one’s own values is more effective at making cooperation actually happen, but being such a person could also lead to getting exploited. It seems non-obvious how exactly to best ensure that each party gives its fair share, especially when there are so many different possible donors to keep track of, and we have no way of knowing how much each entity would have contributed on its own.
Makes sense. :) There are at least two different reasons why one might discourage taking more than one’s fair share:
Epistemic: As you said, there may be “collective wisdom” that an individual donor is missing.
Game theoretic: If multiple donors who have different values compete in a game of chicken, this could be worse for all of them than if they can agree to cooperate.
Point #1 may be a reason to not try to outcompete others purely for its own sake. However, reason #2 depends on whether other donors are in fact playing chicken and whether it’s feasible to achieve cooperation. If you genuinely have different values from other donors, you should try to do the best you can by your own values, which could include taking advantage of opportunities to donate less than your “fair” share.
It’s easy to feel warm fuzzies toward being “fair”, but we can imagine scenarios where those fuzzies don’t apply. For example, imagine that the USA and Russia are both contributing development aid to an international organization, and with any funds left over, Russia will buy attack drones from Iran. If there’s an opportunity to get Russia to contribute more than its “fair share” to the development aid, leaving less money left over for drones, the USA should try to do that.
Maybe being the kind of person who would never even consider aiming to gain some advantage for one’s own values is more effective at making cooperation actually happen, but being such a person could also lead to getting exploited. It seems non-obvious how exactly to best ensure that each party gives its fair share, especially when there are so many different possible donors to keep track of, and we have no way of knowing how much each entity would have contributed on its own.