One reason to expect a long term excess of EAs earning to give is that EtG can be much less of a sacrifice than direct work. Earning to give lets you keep your cushy job, normally means you end up living on more than most people doing direct work live on, and is easy to exit if you start feeling more selfish in the future.
So if you’re more altruistic than most EAs, you should overcorrect away from earning to give.
ETA: Also, there are lots of EAs who have only recently started EtG. They’re going to massively increase their donations over the next few years, so we shouldn’t forget to plan for that too. I don’t think most of these people will switch away from EtG even if it’s the right thing to do.
Edit again, 2015-09-05: This criticism is much more applicable to software engineers than other EtG careers.
Early on in 80k, when promoting earning to give we were regularly getting the opposite argument, that what we were promoting was too much of a sacrifice! I just about agree with you, but I think it’s unclear—there are a lot of people who want to do meaningful work, and don’t care much about giving.
Maybe loss aversion/endowment effect is a bias that’s operating here? Donating hard-earned money is more psychologically painful than forgoing additional income?
I think you and I are psychologically different in that way. So maybe this gives you a comparative advantage in direct work, and me a comparative advantage in EtG?
Let’s see if the Less Wrong poll code works on the EAF… Which option would you find easier psychologically?
Are you considering the greatly reduced financial security? With etg, if you run into a problem you can just cut back your donations. That’s not true if your income is 4-times less.
It’s true that donations provide a cushion which should reduce insecurity, but I think the insecurity would be low anyway so reducing it has little value.
I think you’re reflexively looking for a heuristic explanation for something which is in fact fairly obvious. Most people consider stereotypical earning-to-give careers—management consultancy, IB and so on—as both stultifyingly dull and ethically nebulous on their own terms. The one redeeming fact of the situation is supposed to be that you are giving away an appreciable portion of your earnings. A life of this order requires you to meet a fairly high threshold of asceticism.
The idea that people might avoid earning-to-give because of the psychological toll of loss aversion fails to take into account that a lot of the people who are attracted to EA rate personal income as a low priority (or even something to be avoided).
Your statement sounds correct as far as it goes. I was picturing a person who already had a high-earning career being told that they were expected to give up income which had been going to savings or luxuries. Not sure which scenario Will’s experience was closer to.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that EtG is less of a sacrifice than direct work. It’s dependent on a number factors. If someone EtG by staying in the same job and working the same # of hours one would otherwise while still living on a substantial proportion of one’s salary, it may not be that much of a sacrifice.
However, EtG could also mean working at a job that may not have been one’s first choice otherwise (eg. Finance), working many more hours than one would otherwise and/or living on just as much or less than one would if they were doing direct work. The EtG work MacAskill suggests involves taking high paying jobs like finance rather than staying in whatever job one happens to be doing, so I don’t think your criticism stands in that case.
Most people who work on direct work are also probably working suboptimal jobs that require less sacrifice as well. But, whether the average EtG EA or the average direct work EA is making a greater sacrifice is irrelevant in deciding whether you pursue MacAskill’s suggested EtG path. There’s no reason why you would want to over correct from that. If your EtG plan itself involves minimal sacrifice, than you might want to correct for that. Same with direct work that requires minimal sacrifice.
I’m not sure if framing it as a “sacrifice” may be the best phrasing here. Though it may be descriptively accurate to say that for most people who are giving, they mentally account it as sacrificial, we should try—where possible—to frame it as something positive and willingly done. This would probably make it more motivational.
One reason to expect a long term excess of EAs earning to give is that EtG can be much less of a sacrifice than direct work. Earning to give lets you keep your cushy job, normally means you end up living on more than most people doing direct work live on, and is easy to exit if you start feeling more selfish in the future.
So if you’re more altruistic than most EAs, you should overcorrect away from earning to give.
ETA: Also, there are lots of EAs who have only recently started EtG. They’re going to massively increase their donations over the next few years, so we shouldn’t forget to plan for that too. I don’t think most of these people will switch away from EtG even if it’s the right thing to do.
Edit again, 2015-09-05: This criticism is much more applicable to software engineers than other EtG careers.
Early on in 80k, when promoting earning to give we were regularly getting the opposite argument, that what we were promoting was too much of a sacrifice! I just about agree with you, but I think it’s unclear—there are a lot of people who want to do meaningful work, and don’t care much about giving.
Maybe loss aversion/endowment effect is a bias that’s operating here? Donating hard-earned money is more psychologically painful than forgoing additional income?
I for one would find it much psychologically easier to live on 25% of my current comp than to donate 50% of it.
I think you and I are psychologically different in that way. So maybe this gives you a comparative advantage in direct work, and me a comparative advantage in EtG?
Let’s see if the Less Wrong poll code works on the EAF… Which option would you find easier psychologically?
[pollid:6]
Are you considering the greatly reduced financial security? With etg, if you run into a problem you can just cut back your donations. That’s not true if your income is 4-times less.
It’s true that donations provide a cushion which should reduce insecurity, but I think the insecurity would be low anyway so reducing it has little value.
I think you’re reflexively looking for a heuristic explanation for something which is in fact fairly obvious. Most people consider stereotypical earning-to-give careers—management consultancy, IB and so on—as both stultifyingly dull and ethically nebulous on their own terms. The one redeeming fact of the situation is supposed to be that you are giving away an appreciable portion of your earnings. A life of this order requires you to meet a fairly high threshold of asceticism.
The idea that people might avoid earning-to-give because of the psychological toll of loss aversion fails to take into account that a lot of the people who are attracted to EA rate personal income as a low priority (or even something to be avoided).
Your statement sounds correct as far as it goes. I was picturing a person who already had a high-earning career being told that they were expected to give up income which had been going to savings or luxuries. Not sure which scenario Will’s experience was closer to.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that EtG is less of a sacrifice than direct work. It’s dependent on a number factors. If someone EtG by staying in the same job and working the same # of hours one would otherwise while still living on a substantial proportion of one’s salary, it may not be that much of a sacrifice.
However, EtG could also mean working at a job that may not have been one’s first choice otherwise (eg. Finance), working many more hours than one would otherwise and/or living on just as much or less than one would if they were doing direct work. The EtG work MacAskill suggests involves taking high paying jobs like finance rather than staying in whatever job one happens to be doing, so I don’t think your criticism stands in that case.
Many more EtGers are in the first situation rather than the second, I think.
Most people who work on direct work are also probably working suboptimal jobs that require less sacrifice as well. But, whether the average EtG EA or the average direct work EA is making a greater sacrifice is irrelevant in deciding whether you pursue MacAskill’s suggested EtG path. There’s no reason why you would want to over correct from that. If your EtG plan itself involves minimal sacrifice, than you might want to correct for that. Same with direct work that requires minimal sacrifice.
I’m not sure if framing it as a “sacrifice” may be the best phrasing here. Though it may be descriptively accurate to say that for most people who are giving, they mentally account it as sacrificial, we should try—where possible—to frame it as something positive and willingly done. This would probably make it more motivational.
http://effective-altruism.com/ea/4r/cheerfully/