It’s been lost a bit in all the noise, but I think people should still be very excited and satisfied about “earning to give” and donating.
Anyone who can donate $5000 via GiveWell can save a life.
Possibly you can do even better than that per dollar if you’re okay accepting some premises around nonhuman animal welfare / sentience or risks from emerging technologies.
I think this is all very cool.
Moreover, while a $5000 donation is a big commitment, it is also achievable by a rather wide array of people. Many people are wealthy enough to do this donation, but do not do it, or donate far less effectively. You could have the same philanthropic power as a multi-millionaire philanthropist by allocating better.
If you earn a median income of ~$40K USD/yr[1] and spend $32,400[2], that gives you $7600 left over to donate each year, which could potentially save three lives every two years.
Spend $6K/yr on taxes. Then spend $1K/mo on rent and $100/mo on utilities which is doable in most metropolitan areas in a small apartment or if you have roommates. Then maybe spend $300/mo on groceries and $300/mo on other things. Then save 15% of your income ($6K/yr), which is pretty standard financial advice.
This seems like a common group misperception to me, that (other) EAs have turned against earning to give. Take this comment for instance—zero disagrees.
But maybe there’s a vague unease as opposed to explicit beliefs? Like student clubs just not broaching the subject as much as they had before? Self-censoring? If so, it’s not obviously represented in any forum activity I’ve seen, neither is it obvious on the EA survey, which finds “further de-emphasize ETG” in only 5% of responses. Maybe that’s enough to be worried anyways?
To be clear, I don’t think people have turned against earning to give as a concept, as in they think it’s no longer good or something.
But I do think people have turned against “donating $5K a year to GiveWell[1] is sufficient to feel like I’m an EA in good standing, that I’m impactful, and that I can feel good about myself and what I’m doing for the world” as a concept. And this seems pretty sad to me.
Moreover, there’s been a lot of pressure over the past five more recent years of EA to push people onto concrete “direct good” career paths, especially at the (elite) university level, and this is likely a good thing, but I think the next step is that people feel like failures if they don’t succeed along this path, when that wouldn’t be the emotions I would recommend.
Feel free to substitute in Animal Charity Evaluators, non-profits working on existential risk, Rethink Priorities, etc. as “GiveWell” specifically is not the important part of my point.
It’s been lost a bit in all the noise, but I think people should still be very excited and satisfied about “earning to give” and donating.
Anyone who can donate $5000 via GiveWell can save a life.
Possibly you can do even better than that per dollar if you’re okay accepting some premises around nonhuman animal welfare / sentience or risks from emerging technologies.
I think this is all very cool.
Moreover, while a $5000 donation is a big commitment, it is also achievable by a rather wide array of people. Many people are wealthy enough to do this donation, but do not do it, or donate far less effectively. You could have the same philanthropic power as a multi-millionaire philanthropist by allocating better.
If you earn a median income of ~$40K USD/yr[1] and spend $32,400[2], that gives you $7600 left over to donate each year, which could potentially save three lives every two years.
As a single American.
Spend $6K/yr on taxes. Then spend $1K/mo on rent and $100/mo on utilities which is doable in most metropolitan areas in a small apartment or if you have roommates. Then maybe spend $300/mo on groceries and $300/mo on other things. Then save 15% of your income ($6K/yr), which is pretty standard financial advice.
This seems like a common group misperception to me, that (other) EAs have turned against earning to give. Take this comment for instance—zero disagrees.
But maybe there’s a vague unease as opposed to explicit beliefs? Like student clubs just not broaching the subject as much as they had before? Self-censoring? If so, it’s not obviously represented in any forum activity I’ve seen, neither is it obvious on the EA survey, which finds “further de-emphasize ETG” in only 5% of responses. Maybe that’s enough to be worried anyways?
To be clear, I don’t think people have turned against earning to give as a concept, as in they think it’s no longer good or something.
But I do think people have turned against “donating $5K a year to GiveWell[1] is sufficient to feel like I’m an EA in good standing, that I’m impactful, and that I can feel good about myself and what I’m doing for the world” as a concept. And this seems pretty sad to me.
Moreover, there’s been a lot of pressure over the past five more recent years of EA to push people onto concrete “direct good” career paths, especially at the (elite) university level, and this is likely a good thing, but I think the next step is that people feel like failures if they don’t succeed along this path, when that wouldn’t be the emotions I would recommend.
Feel free to substitute in Animal Charity Evaluators, non-profits working on existential risk, Rethink Priorities, etc. as “GiveWell” specifically is not the important part of my point.