Yes, agreed.
I donāt believe it to be utilitarian to arbitrarily link two unrelated actions (donating money and, separately, taking a life).
The reason for taking the life would never be because itās enjoyable or convenient, it would only be if it is in direct service of saving the other lives.
Update for anyone else who may find it useful:
You need to fill out Form 8283: https://āāwww.irs.gov/āāpub/āāirs-pdf/āāf8283.pdf
You can calculate the āFair Market Valueā of the stock(s) you donated by averaging the highest and lowest price of that stock on the day you donated it. I used this page to find that, but you can replace āMSFTā in the URL with whatever stock it is you sold.
https://āāwww.wsj.com/āāmarket-data/āāquotes/āāMSFT/āāhistorical-prices
Is anyone in the U.S. savvy with how to deduct from your taxes the value of stocks which have been donated to eligible charities? The stocks have been held for decades with a very high value and capital gains. Would love help as my tax guy hasnāt seen this before.
Amazing. Yes, super relevant. Will read now.
Thanks! I guess Iāve been spoiled with a life partner who is a very good baker and being in NYC where there are already some incredible vegan bakeries. But in my experience even many grocery store cookie mixes are vegan if you just substitute aquafaba or something, and I personally cannot tell the difference.
Would certainly be willing to entertain this as plans come together.
No idea, but could be great down the line. I bet way more red tape and just a lot more people in the chain of command who youād have to convince, but who knows, there may be a sweet spot for medium-large companies looking to save money š¤·āāļø
Disclaimer: I am mostly skimming as thereās a lot to read and havenāt gotten through it all. But I do believe part of the idea with FarmKind is that the donors are already sympathetic to animal charities, and agree with the premise of effective animal charities, but also just want to get some warm fuzzies in as well. As opposed to most of their money going to something they do not agree with or have any care for.
Thanks, Luke. When I have some more time I might brainstorm next steps on this including how to put together a team. If so, Iāll reach out!
Thanks for the feedback. The way I envision it, it wouldnāt require any profound change of anyoneās attitude. There are so many businesses doing round-up for charity around the world. If someone were to sleuth around and put in the time, surely they could identify the low-hanging-fruit of businesses that are happy to change their round-up charity at the credit card reader without much convincing.
Of all the people in the position to change the setting on the credit card reader at their small business (if thatās even how it works) some of them may be receptive to this for reasons like:
-theyāre receptive to some very basic compelling stats about a specific EA charity without having to subscribe to EA
-they donāt really care what the charity is anyway and will change it if someone asks
Of course, I like your vision of the potential scope of this. Perhaps if thereās any success with some small businesses here and there that donāt take much convincing, down the line there could be more involved campaigns to get much larger supermarket chains, fast food joints, and payment processing companies to feature selected effective charities that are palatable to the general public.
I wonder how much thought even large companies put into this, though. In the non-profit world, are there huge, competitive campaigns to secure a spot on the round-up button at Walmart? Or is it more like, some random executive arbitrarily decides to feature St. Jude as the beneficiary?
Thanks for posting. Iāve been trying to find the best place to donate in blindness prevention for a few giving cycles now.
Intuitively, it feels like interventions without the direct goal of mortality prevention, like preventing blindness, could achieve nearly as much good over the years as preventing deaths.
Thanks for writing, and great meeting you back in August.
For me the ironic thing about critiquing current practices of EA is that it is, in itself, an act of EA.
The same canāt necessarily be said for critiquing the underlying premise of EA.
Hey Aaronāreally want to sit down and read this thoroughly when I have a moment. Someone sent me the link to your post, otherwise, I havenāt been on EA Forum for a minute.
That said, I did a talk on just this topic back at the EA Global āUnconferenceā over the summer. Would love to maybe be in touch about this idea...the link to my talk is here:
Ah, okay. So tractability is built into the term āmost importantā?
I thought they were two separate concepts: https://āāconcepts.effectivealtruism.org/āāconcepts/āāimportance-neglectedness-tractability/āā
I agree that all that really matters is how effective a particular intervention will be in reducing suffering for the amount of money you plan to donate. Other metrics (especially neglectedness) are just heuristics.
Kind of unrelated, but Iāve wondered about these first two considerations that people use to pick a charity, as listed above:
1) which cause is most important
2) which interventions in the cause are most effective
Couldnāt there be a cause that is extremely important but just that donāt have any good interventions? Maybe there is a āmost effectiveā intervention for this cause, but itās still not that good, and donating to that intervention doesnāt really result in much.
See FarmKindās most current iteration.
https://āāwww.farmkind.giving/āā