Nitpicky point: Depending on how much better the farming practices were, and how wide they might have spread, the hypothetical comparison to abolition may not be as clear as it looks. If this list is even close to accurate, famines seem to have killed millions of people in the average decade of the 19th century. Iâm not sure what better practices might have been possible to introduce âearlyâ in that era, but I think EA circa 1800 might have had âfamineâ as a major cause area!
*****
I canât easily find the link, but GiveWellâs early discussions of U.S. interventions focused on how difficult it can be to make a permanent change in someoneâs life in the developed world. One example (this is mine, not theirs): some of the worst-off people in the U.S. are prisoners, and you canât pay to get someone out of jail.
On the other hand, Open Philanthropy made multiple grants to the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, with the goal of reducing the amount of time Americans spend in a state of imprisonment. The first of these came two years after the GiveWell Labs â Open Philanthropy transition, which means the organization was being seriously considered and researched even earlier.
If GiveWell of 1800 could pay to buy permanent freedom for slaves, itâs not crazy to think theyâd have done quite a lot of that. (And perhaps advocated for abolition or funded the Underground Railroad; they seriously considered multiple U.S.-based âsystemicâ causes early on, all of which ran into the problem that itâs really hard to do as much good for people here as for people in the developing world with similar amounts of money. This picture looks different when thereâs a huge slave population in your country, and clear measures can be taken to free them.)
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Now Iâm fascinated by this question, so hereâs an ugly BOTEC (based on the year 1850, since I wasnât quickly able to find good data for 1800):
If GiveWell allocated 1â4 of that to buying slaves and setting them free (~$28 million), they could have done so for 2,000 people in a single year. With similar spending every year from 1850 to 1860, maybe 20,000 people total?
The price of slaves increased during that period, but GiveWellâs ability to move money would also have increased, if we assume a similar trajectory for the org as what we see today.
That would be ~0.5% of all slaves in the country. Itâs a small number, but would spending the 1850 equivalent of $250 million over the course of a decade have advanced the cause of abolition by more than a tiny amount?
I donât know how much money the most prominent abolitionist philanthropists gave, nor how long it would have taken them to actually achieve abolition without the Civil War.
Of course, this is an ugly BOTEC, and there are many ways one could object. A few that come to mind:
Buying slaves and then transporting them back to the North + setting them up with the beginnings of a life would add a lot of cost.
People were much poorer in those days; $400 in 1850, or $14,000 in 2021, was several times the average income. GiveWellâs actual donations likely wouldnât have been anywhere close to the 1850 equivalent of $100 million or more per year, unless they had enormous amounts of support from many of the countryâs wealthiest people (not counting slaveowners).
The most notable philanthropist (I think?) of the age, George Peabody, donated nearly $200 million over his lifetime in 2021 dollars. Thatâs much, much less than Good Ventures has provided/âwill provide to GiveWell.
If international donations were at all feasible, it seems likely that preventing a death would still have cost much less than $14,000 in 2021 dollars; maybe GiveWell still would have focused on preventative healthcare. And given that the Civil War wound up creating abolition without the help of philanthropists, maybe theyâd have been right to do so?
Heck, scrap the âinternationalâ part; even the United States had a major malaria problem at the time.
Or maybe thereâs a reason that philanthropic support for abolition was important to the Civil War starting in the first place? I donât know much about history and Iâm sure this analysis is laughable on a few other dimensions. I just wanted to run the dumb numbers.
Nitpicky point: Depending on how much better the farming practices were, and how wide they might have spread, the hypothetical comparison to abolition may not be as clear as it looks. If this list is even close to accurate, famines seem to have killed millions of people in the average decade of the 19th century. Iâm not sure what better practices might have been possible to introduce âearlyâ in that era, but I think EA circa 1800 might have had âfamineâ as a major cause area!
*****
I canât easily find the link, but GiveWellâs early discussions of U.S. interventions focused on how difficult it can be to make a permanent change in someoneâs life in the developed world. One example (this is mine, not theirs): some of the worst-off people in the U.S. are prisoners, and you canât pay to get someone out of jail.
On the other hand, Open Philanthropy made multiple grants to the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, with the goal of reducing the amount of time Americans spend in a state of imprisonment. The first of these came two years after the GiveWell Labs â Open Philanthropy transition, which means the organization was being seriously considered and researched even earlier.
If GiveWell of 1800 could pay to buy permanent freedom for slaves, itâs not crazy to think theyâd have done quite a lot of that. (And perhaps advocated for abolition or funded the Underground Railroad; they seriously considered multiple U.S.-based âsystemicâ causes early on, all of which ran into the problem that itâs really hard to do as much good for people here as for people in the developing world with similar amounts of money. This picture looks different when thereâs a huge slave population in your country, and clear measures can be taken to free them.)
*****
Now Iâm fascinated by this question, so hereâs an ugly BOTEC (based on the year 1850, since I wasnât quickly able to find good data for 1800):
The average price of a slave in 1850 was $400, or $11,300 in 2009 dollars (roughly $14,000 in 2021).
GiveWell got ~$114 million in donations in 2020.
If GiveWell allocated 1â4 of that to buying slaves and setting them free (~$28 million), they could have done so for 2,000 people in a single year. With similar spending every year from 1850 to 1860, maybe 20,000 people total?
The price of slaves increased during that period, but GiveWellâs ability to move money would also have increased, if we assume a similar trajectory for the org as what we see today.
That would be ~0.5% of all slaves in the country. Itâs a small number, but would spending the 1850 equivalent of $250 million over the course of a decade have advanced the cause of abolition by more than a tiny amount?
I donât know how much money the most prominent abolitionist philanthropists gave, nor how long it would have taken them to actually achieve abolition without the Civil War.
One comparison might be the criminal justice reform movement; how much money has been spent by organizations in that space, for a relatively modest (albeit promising!) decline in total incarceration?
Of course, this is an ugly BOTEC, and there are many ways one could object. A few that come to mind:
Buying slaves and then transporting them back to the North + setting them up with the beginnings of a life would add a lot of cost.
People were much poorer in those days; $400 in 1850, or $14,000 in 2021, was several times the average income. GiveWellâs actual donations likely wouldnât have been anywhere close to the 1850 equivalent of $100 million or more per year, unless they had enormous amounts of support from many of the countryâs wealthiest people (not counting slaveowners).
The most notable philanthropist (I think?) of the age, George Peabody, donated nearly $200 million over his lifetime in 2021 dollars. Thatâs much, much less than Good Ventures has provided/âwill provide to GiveWell.
If international donations were at all feasible, it seems likely that preventing a death would still have cost much less than $14,000 in 2021 dollars; maybe GiveWell still would have focused on preventative healthcare. And given that the Civil War wound up creating abolition without the help of philanthropists, maybe theyâd have been right to do so?
Heck, scrap the âinternationalâ part; even the United States had a major malaria problem at the time.
Or maybe thereâs a reason that philanthropic support for abolition was important to the Civil War starting in the first place? I donât know much about history and Iâm sure this analysis is laughable on a few other dimensions. I just wanted to run the dumb numbers.