But I think a practical moral philosophy wherein donation expectations are based on your actual material resources (and constraints), not your theoretical maximum earning potential, seems more justifiable.
It’s complicated, I think. Based on your distinguishing (a) and (b), I am reading “salary sacrifice” as voluntarily taking less salary than was offered for the position you encumber (as discussed in, e.g., this post). While I agree that should count, I’m not sure (b) is not relevant.
The fundamental question to me is about the appropriate distribution of the fruits of one’s labors (“fruits”) between altruism and non-altruism. (Fruits is an imperfect metaphor, because I mean to include (e.g.) passive income from inherited wealth, but I’ll stick with it.)
We generally seem to accept that the more fruit one produces, the more (in absolute terms) it is okay to keep for oneself. Stated differently—at least for those who are not super-wealthy—we seem to accept that the marginal altruism expectation for additional fruits one produces is less than 100%. I’ll call this the “non-100 principle.” I’m not specifically defending that principle in this comment, but it seems to be assumed in EA discourse.
If we accept this principle, then consider someone who was working full-time in a “normal” job and earn a salary of 200 apples per year. They decide to go down to half-time (100-apple salary) and spend the half of their working hours producing 100 charitable pears for which they receive no financial benefit. [1]The non-100 principle suggests that it’s appropriate for this person to keep more of their apples than a person who works full-time to produce 100 apples (and zero pears). Their total production is twice as high, so they aren’t similarly situated to the full-time worker who produces the same number of apples. The decision to take a significantly less well-paid job seems analogous to splitting one’s time between remunerative and non-remunerative work. One gives up the opportunity to earn more salary in exchange for greater benefits that flow to others by non-donation means.
I am not putting too much weight on this thought experiment, but it does make me think that either the non-100 principle is wrong, or that the foregone salary counts for something in many circumstances even when it is not a salary sacrifice in the narrower sense.
It’s complicated, I think. Based on your distinguishing (a) and (b), I am reading “salary sacrifice” as voluntarily taking less salary than was offered for the position you encumber (as discussed in, e.g., this post). While I agree that should count, I’m not sure (b) is not relevant.
The fundamental question to me is about the appropriate distribution of the fruits of one’s labors (“fruits”) between altruism and non-altruism. (Fruits is an imperfect metaphor, because I mean to include (e.g.) passive income from inherited wealth, but I’ll stick with it.)
We generally seem to accept that the more fruit one produces, the more (in absolute terms) it is okay to keep for oneself. Stated differently—at least for those who are not super-wealthy—we seem to accept that the marginal altruism expectation for additional fruits one produces is less than 100%. I’ll call this the “non-100 principle.” I’m not specifically defending that principle in this comment, but it seems to be assumed in EA discourse.
If we accept this principle, then consider someone who was working full-time in a “normal” job and earn a salary of 200 apples per year. They decide to go down to half-time (100-apple salary) and spend the half of their working hours producing 100 charitable pears for which they receive no financial benefit. [1]The non-100 principle suggests that it’s appropriate for this person to keep more of their apples than a person who works full-time to produce 100 apples (and zero pears). Their total production is twice as high, so they aren’t similarly situated to the full-time worker who produces the same number of apples. The decision to take a significantly less well-paid job seems analogous to splitting one’s time between remunerative and non-remunerative work. One gives up the opportunity to earn more salary in exchange for greater benefits that flow to others by non-donation means.
I am not putting too much weight on this thought experiment, but it does make me think that either the non-100 principle is wrong, or that the foregone salary counts for something in many circumstances even when it is not a salary sacrifice in the narrower sense.
How to measure pear output is tricky. The market rate for similar work in the for-profit sector may be the least bad estimate here.