I think you are too optimistic about how much the average person in the global north care about people in the global south (and possibly too pessimistic about how much people care about animals, but less confident about that).
“Saving children from malaria, diarrheal disease, lead poisoning, or treating cataracts and obstetric fistula is hard to argue against without sounding like a bad person.”
The argument that you should help locally instead (even if the people making that argument don’t do so) is easily made without sounding like a bad person. I live in the Netherlands and any spending on developmental cooperation or charity work tends to be very unpopular, our current government also pledged to cut a lot of that spending. Pushback on ‘giving money to Africa’ is something I certainly encounter, it might be less than for being vegan but I’m not sure and also not sure by how much. I would want better data on this, this piece seems to assume a big difference in how socially acceptable, moderate and politizised global health is compared to animal welfare. I would like to see better data on whether that assumption is true or not.
I find the slippery slope argument pretty weak, historically expanding the moral circle (to women, slaves, people of color, lhbtqi+ people) has been quite important and still requires a lot of work. It seems much easier to not go far enough than to go too far, and expanding the moral circle to animals or people in the global south is both an expansion. A core strength of EA is that there is a lot of attention to groups that are outside the moral circle of many comperatively affluent and wealthy people or institutions (the global poor, animals, and future generations). The slippery-slope argument is only meaningful if going down the slope would be bad, which is unclear to me.
The argument that you should help locally instead (even if the people making that argument don’t do so) is easily made without sounding like a bad person.
Yes, but I think there’s a difference at work here:
You should spend your charitable dollars on some other cause instead is pretty much a socially acceptable criticism, no matter what the charitable cause under discussion.
You’re just lighting your money on fire is socially acceptable for some causes but not others; I would think it is rather hard to pull off for global health work (but not for at least some of animal welfare) in most polite company.
Finally, there’s your work is actually causing net harm and is worse than lighting money on fire. One could potentially pull that off for animal welfare in polite company, although it would probably be a stretch for most animals. E.g., if animal welfare doesn’t matter at all, AW efforts may cost jobs, raise prices (disproportionately on the poor), and sometimes have negative environmental effects (e.g., beef vs. chicken as an environment-welfare tradeoff).
I think you are too optimistic about how much the average person in the global north care about people in the global south (and possibly too pessimistic about how much people care about animals, but less confident about that).
“Saving children from malaria, diarrheal disease, lead poisoning, or treating cataracts and obstetric fistula is hard to argue against without sounding like a bad person.”
The argument that you should help locally instead (even if the people making that argument don’t do so) is easily made without sounding like a bad person. I live in the Netherlands and any spending on developmental cooperation or charity work tends to be very unpopular, our current government also pledged to cut a lot of that spending. Pushback on ‘giving money to Africa’ is something I certainly encounter, it might be less than for being vegan but I’m not sure and also not sure by how much. I would want better data on this, this piece seems to assume a big difference in how socially acceptable, moderate and politizised global health is compared to animal welfare. I would like to see better data on whether that assumption is true or not.
I find the slippery slope argument pretty weak, historically expanding the moral circle (to women, slaves, people of color, lhbtqi+ people) has been quite important and still requires a lot of work. It seems much easier to not go far enough than to go too far, and expanding the moral circle to animals or people in the global south is both an expansion. A core strength of EA is that there is a lot of attention to groups that are outside the moral circle of many comperatively affluent and wealthy people or institutions (the global poor, animals, and future generations). The slippery-slope argument is only meaningful if going down the slope would be bad, which is unclear to me.
Yes, but I think there’s a difference at work here:
You should spend your charitable dollars on some other cause instead is pretty much a socially acceptable criticism, no matter what the charitable cause under discussion.
You’re just lighting your money on fire is socially acceptable for some causes but not others; I would think it is rather hard to pull off for global health work (but not for at least some of animal welfare) in most polite company.
Finally, there’s your work is actually causing net harm and is worse than lighting money on fire. One could potentially pull that off for animal welfare in polite company, although it would probably be a stretch for most animals. E.g., if animal welfare doesn’t matter at all, AW efforts may cost jobs, raise prices (disproportionately on the poor), and sometimes have negative environmental effects (e.g., beef vs. chicken as an environment-welfare tradeoff).