I am wondering if someone can explain, or point me to a link on, why they think global poverty charity matters compared with policy. For example, one statistic from GWWC was that the Iraq war cost more than all government foreign aid from the developed world for 50 years, and I would guess that the war’s economic effects on Iraq were comparable to its costs. Also, African exports and imports are worth about $35 billion each but total US international charity (to all countries, not just Africa) was $19 billion in 2012, according to this source. This suggests to me that (from an EA standpoint) policies on trade alone are more important than charity.
Merely comparing at the amount of money spent by the government or the economy on X or Y doesn’t tell you what is the best place for you to maximize your impact. Not that policy is always a waste of time, of course. It could very well be a great thing to pursue, but the benefits of policy advocacy are not that clear once you frame the problem correctly.
If you have no issue-specific info about crowdedness or tractability, then total effects seem a decent starting point. Right now what I see about policy (trade and wars) vs. charity is that there are a group of ~300 million US citizens who are somehow producing both. Therefore your expected contribution for both is something like (size of total effect)/(300 million).
Edit: I am also forgetting about immigration. Apparently there are 3.8 million black immigrants in the United States, who probably increased their standard of living enormously.
Well you can just point out that the amount of effort being put in by the average citizen is much greater for trade and war. You can tell by the amount of focus given to these issues in political debates and the amount of interest groups focused on these policies. The amount of person-hours and money spent by Americans producing wars and trade isn’t a clearly better ratio than the amount of person-hours and money spent by Americans producing charity.
I would agree there is more interest in war than international charity. On the other hand it could be that charity is limited in the interest it is capable of drawing, so there is effectively a hidden obstacle, or apathy. This would not pertain to your personal donations (since EAs are presumably not apathetic), but if you were thinking about outreach to build a movement with others, it would matter.
Also, even if changing these policies as a whole is not cost effective, I don’t see why changes orthogonal to partisan disputes would also be. For example, EAs prioritize Africa because of its low living standard. On immigration policy, instead of just fighting for more immigration, you might push for less immigration from, say, Mexico, and more from Africa.
I think the default explanation is that it’s surprisingly ineffective in practice to try for stuff that requires overcoming intelligent opposition. Obviously there are cases where this doesn’t apply, but it does seem reasonably sensible as a default, both from a decision-theoretic perspective and a practical perspective. You quote a 50x impact multiplier; I suppose it depends on how smart you think the opposition is, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a smart opposition would be able to reduce your impact by 50x.
Yes, your opposition is intelligent, but so are you. I think with politics it’s true that your median impact is lower because political policies often depend on getting a majority vote, so typically as an individual you will make zero difference. But your average impact, I think, ought to be fine.
I am wondering if someone can explain, or point me to a link on, why they think global poverty charity matters compared with policy. For example, one statistic from GWWC was that the Iraq war cost more than all government foreign aid from the developed world for 50 years, and I would guess that the war’s economic effects on Iraq were comparable to its costs. Also, African exports and imports are worth about $35 billion each but total US international charity (to all countries, not just Africa) was $19 billion in 2012, according to this source. This suggests to me that (from an EA standpoint) policies on trade alone are more important than charity.
Merely comparing at the amount of money spent by the government or the economy on X or Y doesn’t tell you what is the best place for you to maximize your impact. Not that policy is always a waste of time, of course. It could very well be a great thing to pursue, but the benefits of policy advocacy are not that clear once you frame the problem correctly.
If you have no issue-specific info about crowdedness or tractability, then total effects seem a decent starting point. Right now what I see about policy (trade and wars) vs. charity is that there are a group of ~300 million US citizens who are somehow producing both. Therefore your expected contribution for both is something like (size of total effect)/(300 million).
Edit: I am also forgetting about immigration. Apparently there are 3.8 million black immigrants in the United States, who probably increased their standard of living enormously.
Well you can just point out that the amount of effort being put in by the average citizen is much greater for trade and war. You can tell by the amount of focus given to these issues in political debates and the amount of interest groups focused on these policies. The amount of person-hours and money spent by Americans producing wars and trade isn’t a clearly better ratio than the amount of person-hours and money spent by Americans producing charity.
I would agree there is more interest in war than international charity. On the other hand it could be that charity is limited in the interest it is capable of drawing, so there is effectively a hidden obstacle, or apathy. This would not pertain to your personal donations (since EAs are presumably not apathetic), but if you were thinking about outreach to build a movement with others, it would matter.
Also, even if changing these policies as a whole is not cost effective, I don’t see why changes orthogonal to partisan disputes would also be. For example, EAs prioritize Africa because of its low living standard. On immigration policy, instead of just fighting for more immigration, you might push for less immigration from, say, Mexico, and more from Africa.
I think the default explanation is that it’s surprisingly ineffective in practice to try for stuff that requires overcoming intelligent opposition. Obviously there are cases where this doesn’t apply, but it does seem reasonably sensible as a default, both from a decision-theoretic perspective and a practical perspective. You quote a 50x impact multiplier; I suppose it depends on how smart you think the opposition is, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a smart opposition would be able to reduce your impact by 50x.
Yes, your opposition is intelligent, but so are you. I think with politics it’s true that your median impact is lower because political policies often depend on getting a majority vote, so typically as an individual you will make zero difference. But your average impact, I think, ought to be fine.