Your calculation with the $55,000 dollars assumes that if you work for a week you’re only donating 10% of the marginal income that you get, but if you give up that time to kidney donation you’re giving 100% of the marginal time cost to charity. That’s an unfair comparison.
In an apples-to-apples comparison where a person earning $55,000 gives up 100% of their pre-tax income for the marginal time, it would only take 2 weeks for them to make $2,000.
But it might be a relevant comparison for many people. i.e., I expect that there are people who would be willing to forego some income to donate a kidney (and they may not need to do this, depending on the availability of paid medical leave), but who wouldn’t donate all of that income if they kept both kidneys.
I think Ben’s criticism is fair, in that a perfectly rational altruist wouldn’t make it. That is, if you are willing to give up three weeks of income to donate a kidney, you should be willing to work for three weeks and donate all of your income, not just whatever percentage you donate normally. This is not to say that it’s an unreasonable decision in all cases—taking three weeks off of work to donate a kidney has all sorts of other consequences (you probably get to do a lot of reading while you’re stuck in bed), but from a first order altruistic standpoint, at the income level I mentioned it still wouldn’t make sense.
Yes, I agree with that, and it’s worth someone making that point. But I think in general it is too common a theme in EA discussion to compare some possible altruistic endeavour (here kidney donation) to perfectly optimal behaviour, and then criticise the endeavour as being sub-optimal—Ryan even words it as “causing net harm”!
In reality we’re all sub-optimal, each in our own many ways. If pointing out that kidney donation is sub-optimal (assuming all the arguments really do hold!) nudges some possible kidney donors to actually donate more of their income, then great. But I still think that there are people who would consider donating a kidney but who wouldn’t donate an extra half-month’s salary instead.
Your calculation with the $55,000 dollars assumes that if you work for a week you’re only donating 10% of the marginal income that you get, but if you give up that time to kidney donation you’re giving 100% of the marginal time cost to charity. That’s an unfair comparison.
In an apples-to-apples comparison where a person earning $55,000 gives up 100% of their pre-tax income for the marginal time, it would only take 2 weeks for them to make $2,000.
But it might be a relevant comparison for many people. i.e., I expect that there are people who would be willing to forego some income to donate a kidney (and they may not need to do this, depending on the availability of paid medical leave), but who wouldn’t donate all of that income if they kept both kidneys.
I think Ben’s criticism is fair, in that a perfectly rational altruist wouldn’t make it. That is, if you are willing to give up three weeks of income to donate a kidney, you should be willing to work for three weeks and donate all of your income, not just whatever percentage you donate normally. This is not to say that it’s an unreasonable decision in all cases—taking three weeks off of work to donate a kidney has all sorts of other consequences (you probably get to do a lot of reading while you’re stuck in bed), but from a first order altruistic standpoint, at the income level I mentioned it still wouldn’t make sense.
Yes, I agree with that, and it’s worth someone making that point. But I think in general it is too common a theme in EA discussion to compare some possible altruistic endeavour (here kidney donation) to perfectly optimal behaviour, and then criticise the endeavour as being sub-optimal—Ryan even words it as “causing net harm”!
In reality we’re all sub-optimal, each in our own many ways. If pointing out that kidney donation is sub-optimal (assuming all the arguments really do hold!) nudges some possible kidney donors to actually donate more of their income, then great. But I still think that there are people who would consider donating a kidney but who wouldn’t donate an extra half-month’s salary instead.