Isn’t one purpose of effective altruism to be “clever in understanding human needs”? If we aren’t spending dollars in any more effective ways than regular folks are when they spend their paychecks, we have failed miserably. In the current climate, it is still quite possible to do a tremendous amount of good with relatively few dollars. There are probably several organizations that can either save or drastically improve a life for less than $5,000. I can’t imagine that ordinary people are spending their money during the course of their day in a manner that even approaches this sort of highly leveraged effectiveness.
The purpose of charity in the first place is to do more good than we would normally do when spending our money. Otherwise, we would have no good reason to ever donate to any charities. The purpose of effective altruism is to identify the very best ways of spending money in order to do the most good. If we aren’t even beating the average Joe’s personal spending habits, why are we here?
One other thing to keep in mind is that “taxation of ordinary people” is only true for a very specific (and to me, bizarre), definition of people who are “ordinary,” ie, people making at least an order of magnitude above the median world income, and quite possibly two:
Isn’t one purpose of effective altruism to be “clever in understanding human needs”? If we aren’t spending dollars in any more effective ways than regular folks are when they spend their paychecks, we have failed miserably. In the current climate, it is still quite possible to do a tremendous amount of good with relatively few dollars. There are probably several organizations that can either save or drastically improve a life for less than $5,000. I can’t imagine that ordinary people are spending their money during the course of their day in a manner that even approaches this sort of highly leveraged effectiveness.
The purpose of charity in the first place is to do more good than we would normally do when spending our money. Otherwise, we would have no good reason to ever donate to any charities. The purpose of effective altruism is to identify the very best ways of spending money in order to do the most good. If we aren’t even beating the average Joe’s personal spending habits, why are we here?
One other thing to keep in mind is that “taxation of ordinary people” is only true for a very specific (and to me, bizarre), definition of people who are “ordinary,” ie, people making at least an order of magnitude above the median world income, and quite possibly two:
https://80000hours.org/2015/07/is-wealth-inequality-so-extreme-that-its-ok-to-be-a-ruthless-trader/