My understanding is you are unsupportive of earning-to-give. I agree the trappings of expensive personal luxuries are both substantively bad (often) and poor optics. But the core idea that some people are very lucky and have the opportunity to earn huge amounts of money which they can (and should) then donate, and that this can be very morally valuable, seems right to me. My guess is that regardless of your critiques of specific charities (bednets, deworming, CATF) you still think there are morally important things to do with money. So what do you think of ETG—why is the central idea wrong (if you indeed think that)?
I thought he spelled out his ETG criticism quite clearly in the article, so I’ll paraphrase what I imbibed here.
I think he would argue that, for the same person in the same job, donating X% of their money is a better thing. However, the ETG ethos that has hung around in the community promotes seeking out extremely high-paying jobs in order to donate even more money. These jobs often bring about more harms in turn (both in an absolute sense but possibly also to the point that ETG is net-negative, for example in the case of SBF), especially if we live in an economic system that rewards behaviour that profits off negative externalities.
Then perhaps one question could be whether he thinks ETG as an idea is per se problematic, or whether the main point is ~ that it needs to be better channeled /​ have more robust guardrails.
For instance, in conventional morality, being a neurosurgeon is seen as prosocial, beneficial activity (even though they make some serious coin, at least in the US). One might think that encouraging people to become neurosurgeons is benign at worst. In contrast, even apart from SBF, one might think crypto is net-negative for the world, and that at least certain pathways to getting rich in crypto rely on behavior that is morally problematic. (I am not expressing an opinion on that perspective beyond a view that is plausible on its face.) Furthermore, one might believe that ETG creates a fertile ground for motivated reasoning, such as dismissing the harms of crypto because it produces a lot of money to further EA aims. That seems much less of a concern for neurosurgery, even though I actually do have some criticisms of that field too!
There’s also an implicit criticism of the idea that merely funding something makes you as responsible for outcomes and altruistic as the people using your money to deliver outcomes [even if it’s a small fraction of your enormous disposable income], and the related (but considerably less fashionable in EA than it used to be) idea that ETG delivers more value than direct work
related (but considerably less fashionable in EA than it used to be) idea that ETG delivers more value than direct work
One related question might be what he would recommend to [1] individuals whose talents, interests, opportunities, resources, and so forth don’t line up well with direct work, and [2] those who try to break into direct work, but are unable to do so due to resource constraints.
My understanding is you are unsupportive of earning-to-give. I agree the trappings of expensive personal luxuries are both substantively bad (often) and poor optics. But the core idea that some people are very lucky and have the opportunity to earn huge amounts of money which they can (and should) then donate, and that this can be very morally valuable, seems right to me. My guess is that regardless of your critiques of specific charities (bednets, deworming, CATF) you still think there are morally important things to do with money. So what do you think of ETG—why is the central idea wrong (if you indeed think that)?
I thought he spelled out his ETG criticism quite clearly in the article, so I’ll paraphrase what I imbibed here.
I think he would argue that, for the same person in the same job, donating X% of their money is a better thing. However, the ETG ethos that has hung around in the community promotes seeking out extremely high-paying jobs in order to donate even more money. These jobs often bring about more harms in turn (both in an absolute sense but possibly also to the point that ETG is net-negative, for example in the case of SBF), especially if we live in an economic system that rewards behaviour that profits off negative externalities.
Then perhaps one question could be whether he thinks ETG as an idea is per se problematic, or whether the main point is ~ that it needs to be better channeled /​ have more robust guardrails.
For instance, in conventional morality, being a neurosurgeon is seen as prosocial, beneficial activity (even though they make some serious coin, at least in the US). One might think that encouraging people to become neurosurgeons is benign at worst. In contrast, even apart from SBF, one might think crypto is net-negative for the world, and that at least certain pathways to getting rich in crypto rely on behavior that is morally problematic. (I am not expressing an opinion on that perspective beyond a view that is plausible on its face.) Furthermore, one might believe that ETG creates a fertile ground for motivated reasoning, such as dismissing the harms of crypto because it produces a lot of money to further EA aims. That seems much less of a concern for neurosurgery, even though I actually do have some criticisms of that field too!
I think this is a good reframing that would reveal something more interesting!
There’s also an implicit criticism of the idea that merely funding something makes you as responsible for outcomes and altruistic as the people using your money to deliver outcomes [even if it’s a small fraction of your enormous disposable income], and the related (but considerably less fashionable in EA than it used to be) idea that ETG delivers more value than direct work
One related question might be what he would recommend to [1] individuals whose talents, interests, opportunities, resources, and so forth don’t line up well with direct work, and [2] those who try to break into direct work, but are unable to do so due to resource constraints.