eliminating the production of meat required for one individual’s diet for one year confers social welfare benefits equal to the benefits of increasing annual global output by more than $100,000.
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If you’re neither vegetarian nor offsetting, here’s hoping that you produce enough positive externalities to get your life (overall) back into the green!
This sounds like a really high bar, but it’s much less than it appeared to me at first read. It’s not $100k to the world’s poorest or $100k to the marginal EA charity, but something closer to money to everyone equally, right? Back of the envelope, world GDP per capita is $10k/y and GiveDirectly recipients are living on ~$300/y. Figuring that additional money is valuable in inverse proportion to what you already have, GiveDirectly receiving money is ~33x as valuable as increasing GDP. GiveWell thinks they can find giving opportunities at 5x to 8x GiveDirectly, like AMF, bringing marginal global poverty spending to ~166x. That brings the initial $100k down to ~$600. I think almost all EAs are doing something at least as beneficial as donating $600/y to AMF!
(If the $100k is actually money in proportion to what people already have, then it’s even more dramatic)
(If the $100k is actually money in proportion to what people already have, then it’s even more dramatic)
I think it is in proportion to what people already have, but this doesn’t make it much more dramatic because you’ve done the calculation for money to an average person, whereas if it were actually split equally among people the benefits would be dominated by the share of money going to the world’s poorest.
Yes, I would certainly expect EAs to be net-positive for the world!
Note that this is a link post, and the original post was not directed specifically at EAs. I do also genuinely hope that others generate enough positive externalities to put them in the green (and would be interested to learn more about any empirical assessments of that question).
This sounds like a really high bar, but it’s much less than it appeared to me at first read. It’s not $100k to the world’s poorest or $100k to the marginal EA charity, but something closer to money to everyone equally, right? Back of the envelope, world GDP per capita is $10k/y and GiveDirectly recipients are living on ~$300/y. Figuring that additional money is valuable in inverse proportion to what you already have, GiveDirectly receiving money is ~33x as valuable as increasing GDP. GiveWell thinks they can find giving opportunities at 5x to 8x GiveDirectly, like AMF, bringing marginal global poverty spending to ~166x. That brings the initial $100k down to ~$600. I think almost all EAs are doing something at least as beneficial as donating $600/y to AMF!
(If the $100k is actually money in proportion to what people already have, then it’s even more dramatic)
I think it is in proportion to what people already have, but this doesn’t make it much more dramatic because you’ve done the calculation for money to an average person, whereas if it were actually split equally among people the benefits would be dominated by the share of money going to the world’s poorest.
Yes, I would certainly expect EAs to be net-positive for the world!
Note that this is a link post, and the original post was not directed specifically at EAs. I do also genuinely hope that others generate enough positive externalities to put them in the green (and would be interested to learn more about any empirical assessments of that question).