You are relying quite heavily on the 18 animals/dollar figure, which seemed very high to me. Does it really seem likely that spending 6 cents on corporate outreach can save a life that brings several dollars in profit per month?
I don’t really see a strong connection between these two numbers. To start, it’s primarily not sparing animals from factory farming but changing the conditions in which they live. That being said, welfare reforms do tend to increase food prices, and assuming animals don’t produce any less food per animal, the number of animals used per year would tend to decrease, too (but not necessarily the number of animals alive at any time, e.g. if companies switch to slower growing broiler chickens, there may be more of them alive at any moment because they have to be alive longer before they’re slaughtered). A company has to consider what happens to their profits if they’re viewed as particularly unethical. However they respond, their expected profits will suffer because of a campaign.
In fact, it seems that ACE has updated this to less than one for THL in 2018. Granted, ASF, another ACE top charity, does maintain a very high figure, however, I’m concerned by this fluctuation year-over-year that we saw with THL. It seems driven by one-off wins, not a sustainable, predictable pattern.
Is this just because of data on new campaigns, or did they also change their model? Or has THL’s work focus changed?
I’m not sure if this is an implicit assumption in your comment, but it does sound like you think credit should not sum past 100%, but this need not be the case. Abstractly, if A and B are together necessary and sufficient causes for C, then A and B both deserve 100% of the credit for C, if C happens. For example, biological parents are 100% responsible (in causal terms) for everything that happens to their children and that their children do, because if they hadn’t had their children, they wouldn’t exist for anything to happen to them or for them to do anything. Similarly, you are 100% responsible for your own veganism, but others are also partially responsible for it, too.
Credit should be thought of in causal terms: what would have happened otherwise. If, without the involvement of a given charity, a given company would not have made (with certainty) the switch but did in fact make the switch, then that charity is 100% responsible. When you consider the possibility that they might have made the switch regardless (at the same time or later) or to a smaller extent, things get much more complicated.
I don’t really see a strong connection between these two numbers. To start, it’s primarily not sparing animals from factory farming but changing the conditions in which they live. That being said, welfare reforms do tend to increase food prices, and assuming animals don’t produce any less food per animal, the number of animals used per year would tend to decrease, too (but not necessarily the number of animals alive at any time, e.g. if companies switch to slower growing broiler chickens, there may be more of them alive at any moment because they have to be alive longer before they’re slaughtered). A company has to consider what happens to their profits if they’re viewed as particularly unethical. However they respond, their expected profits will suffer because of a campaign.
There’s also been recent research by Rethink Priorities and Charity Entrepreneurship on this.
Is this just because of data on new campaigns, or did they also change their model? Or has THL’s work focus changed?
I’m not sure if this is an implicit assumption in your comment, but it does sound like you think credit should not sum past 100%, but this need not be the case. Abstractly, if A and B are together necessary and sufficient causes for C, then A and B both deserve 100% of the credit for C, if C happens. For example, biological parents are 100% responsible (in causal terms) for everything that happens to their children and that their children do, because if they hadn’t had their children, they wouldn’t exist for anything to happen to them or for them to do anything. Similarly, you are 100% responsible for your own veganism, but others are also partially responsible for it, too.
Credit should be thought of in causal terms: what would have happened otherwise. If, without the involvement of a given charity, a given company would not have made (with certainty) the switch but did in fact make the switch, then that charity is 100% responsible. When you consider the possibility that they might have made the switch regardless (at the same time or later) or to a smaller extent, things get much more complicated.