Apologies for leaving out animal welfare entirely for the sake of simplicity.
I have got you covered ;). I think criticising spending on cathedrals in high income countries because people in extreme poverty are worse off, and helping them increases impartial welfare more cost-effectively is in some tension with helping such people instead of farmed animals. I believe:
Farmed animals are worse off. People in extreme poverty are thought to have positive lives (otherwise, saving them would be bad for them), whereas I estimate farmed chickens and shrimp have negative lives.
Helping animals increases impartial welfare much more cost-effectively. I estimate cage-free campaigns are 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, and that the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) has been 64.3 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
The difference in cost-effectiveness between helping people in high income countries and extreme poverty can easily be much smaller than that between helping people in extreme poverty and animals. For example, under the typical assumption than welfare increases with the logarithm of consumption, donating to people in extreme poverty with a consumption of 1 $/​d, or 365 $/​year, would only be 100 times (= 36.5*10^3/​365) as cost-effective as donating to someone with a consumption of 36.5 k$/​year. The rations above are higher than 100.
It is unclear whether saving human lives is beneficial or harmful due to the meat-eating problem. I see improving the conditions of farmed animals as much more robustly beneficial.
I understand one can prioritise helping humans in extreme poverty over animals (at the margin, which is what matters for career choice and donations) by strongly rejecting impartial hedonism[1]. However, the same is true about prioritising spending on cathedrals in high income countries over helping people in extreme poverty. I suppose many of the people who are more enthusiastic about donating to rebuild or preserve the Notre Dame than to GiveWell’s top charities would happily concede such charities save human lives way more cheaply. However, they still prefer supporting the Notre Dame for e.g. nationalistic, cultural, artistic or religious reasons.
Thanks for the post, Julia!
I have got you covered ;). I think criticising spending on cathedrals in high income countries because people in extreme poverty are worse off, and helping them increases impartial welfare more cost-effectively is in some tension with helping such people instead of farmed animals. I believe:
Farmed animals are worse off. People in extreme poverty are thought to have positive lives (otherwise, saving them would be bad for them), whereas I estimate farmed chickens and shrimp have negative lives.
Helping animals increases impartial welfare much more cost-effectively. I estimate cage-free campaigns are 462 times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities, and that the Shrimp Welfare Project (SWP) has been 64.3 k times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.
The difference in cost-effectiveness between helping people in high income countries and extreme poverty can easily be much smaller than that between helping people in extreme poverty and animals. For example, under the typical assumption than welfare increases with the logarithm of consumption, donating to people in extreme poverty with a consumption of 1 $/​d, or 365 $/​year, would only be 100 times (= 36.5*10^3/​365) as cost-effective as donating to someone with a consumption of 36.5 k$/​year. The rations above are higher than 100.
It is unclear whether saving human lives is beneficial or harmful due to the meat-eating problem. I see improving the conditions of farmed animals as much more robustly beneficial.
I understand one can prioritise helping humans in extreme poverty over animals (at the margin, which is what matters for career choice and donations) by strongly rejecting impartial hedonism[1]. However, the same is true about prioritising spending on cathedrals in high income countries over helping people in extreme poverty. I suppose many of the people who are more enthusiastic about donating to rebuild or preserve the Notre Dame than to GiveWell’s top charities would happily concede such charities save human lives way more cheaply. However, they still prefer supporting the Notre Dame for e.g. nationalistic, cultural, artistic or religious reasons.
In my mind, the key is strongly rejecting impartiality, since animals arguably matter a lot under non-hedonistic views.
I’ve downvoted this because I don’t think it engages with the major points or the spirit of the article.