“The huge majority of the world is very poor. The poorer half of the world, almost 4 billion people, live on less than $6.70 a day. If you live on $30 a day you are part of the richest 15% of the world ($30 a day roughly corresponds to the poverty lines set in high-income countries).”
“private Americans, foundations, and corporations gave about $23 billion to support international affairs in one recent year. [That’s] an astoundingly large number, but it’s only about 5% of the $418 billion that Americans donated to charity that year.”
People outside of EA generally emphasize local altruism way too much. This means that the most effective opportunities for helping people alive right now are very likely not local.
There’s existing writing that addresses issues you’ve touched on:
And finally: EAs are into policy and systemic change.
Yes, but not enough, I suspect.
Also there seems to be an imbalance between different EA cause areas in terms of “how much work there currently is on policy and systemic change”. Reading the post titles under the policy tag may help one notice this.
Yeah I share your suspicion. Reading through the institutional decision making topic, most if not all of the writing seems to be basically applying LessWrong style rationality principles to decision making. There isn’t any real say structural analysis. For example in So Cal where I live, there’s precisely a zillion local municipalities, a bunch of Balkanized fiefdoms that often work at cross purposes. The challenge isn’t a lack of quality information and decision heuristics. It’s the reality that there’s a panoply of veto points and a rube goldberg esque system that makes it impossibly difficult to get things done. Vitalik had a nice piece on the underlying issues with Vetocracy that’s worth a read.
Thanks for sharing! I haven’t had a chance to dive super deep though the piece on improving institutions was very theoretical. Here’s the direct link to the comment I left on that post in case you’re at all curious.
Also a random tech support-ish q that I’m not sure where to put. How does one do something like the “improving institutions” with the little circle so that all the forum posts under that topic pop up? Also a meta q: where one direct these types of getting starting tech support q’s? Thanks!
Lastly regarding the articles you sent, how does “practicing compassion and generosity with those around us” get operationalized in the EA community?
How does “practicing compassion and generosity with those around us” get operationalized in the EA community?
The most salient example that comes to mind may be going vegetarian/vegan (for ethical and/or climate reasons), which (a little less than) half of the community members claimed to have done, according to a survey.
Apart from that there’s also everyday altruism, e.g. helping granny cross the street.
Nothing more comes up, though I had only thought about this for twenty seconds so I have probably missed something.
I like the following article as a summary of what’s going on in terms of why people don’t focus on local altruism: Global economic inequality: what matters most for your living conditions is not who you are, but where you are. There’s also this article from 2021: Don’t we spend too much on foreign aid already?
“The huge majority of the world is very poor. The poorer half of the world, almost 4 billion people, live on less than $6.70 a day. If you live on $30 a day you are part of the richest 15% of the world ($30 a day roughly corresponds to the poverty lines set in high-income countries).”
“private Americans, foundations, and corporations gave about $23 billion to support international affairs in one recent year. [That’s] an astoundingly large number, but it’s only about 5% of the $418 billion that Americans donated to charity that year.”
People outside of EA generally emphasize local altruism way too much. This means that the most effective opportunities for helping people alive right now are very likely not local.
There’s existing writing that addresses issues you’ve touched on:
Charity begins at home; shouldn’t we solve our own problems before helping others?
How not to be a “white in shining armor” (old)
And finally: EAs are into policy and systemic change. You should read more about that on the Forum: policy, improving institutions.
Yes, but not enough, I suspect.
Also there seems to be an imbalance between different EA cause areas in terms of “how much work there currently is on policy and systemic change”. Reading the post titles under the policy tag may help one notice this.
Yeah I share your suspicion. Reading through the institutional decision making topic, most if not all of the writing seems to be basically applying LessWrong style rationality principles to decision making. There isn’t any real say structural analysis. For example in So Cal where I live, there’s precisely a zillion local municipalities, a bunch of Balkanized fiefdoms that often work at cross purposes. The challenge isn’t a lack of quality information and decision heuristics. It’s the reality that there’s a panoply of veto points and a rube goldberg esque system that makes it impossibly difficult to get things done. Vitalik had a nice piece on the underlying issues with Vetocracy that’s worth a read.
Thanks for sharing! I haven’t had a chance to dive super deep though the piece on improving institutions was very theoretical. Here’s the direct link to the comment I left on that post in case you’re at all curious.
Also a random tech support-ish q that I’m not sure where to put. How does one do something like the “improving institutions” with the little circle so that all the forum posts under that topic pop up? Also a meta q: where one direct these types of getting starting tech support q’s? Thanks!
Lastly regarding the articles you sent, how does “practicing compassion and generosity with those around us” get operationalized in the EA community?
It’s just a link to the topic page, like you linked to a post. You can find all topics here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/all (on the left on the homepage there is a “topics” link).
There’s the Open Thread on the homepage, How to use the Forum, the Feature Suggestion Thread, or the support/feedback chat in the bottom right (at least on desktop)
The most salient example that comes to mind may be going vegetarian/vegan (for ethical and/or climate reasons), which (a little less than) half of the community members claimed to have done, according to a survey.
Apart from that there’s also everyday altruism, e.g. helping granny cross the street.
Nothing more comes up, though I had only thought about this for twenty seconds so I have probably missed something.