This post invites the old critique of earning to give:
You just tell yourself that, because you want to feel good about actually acting selfishly.
The correct conclusion from this premise would be, if it is even tru, to donate even more capital to those in need via GiveDirectly .
I think you should not only care about impact. But yes, you will achieve more professionally in 80000 hours than in 40000 hours.
I personally think it’s important to enjoy your own life on the way. No one else can do it for you.
My view on this: I think governments do foreign aid for a variety of reasons, some are selfish (like providing contracts for domestic companies), some are more altruistic (though a more developed Africa benefits us all through better market access and more efficient use of resources, as well as fewer global health crises and political crises to deal with).
And a different way of looking at it: Some amount of foreign aid is going to be directed towards altruistic goals. Anyone should want that money to be used as effectively as possible.
That’s right, but in the original meaning of the word, it’s actually not against EA at all. Us too would prefer sustainable interventions that lead to a better system and that do not have hidden costs. And I think rigorous RCTs that measure general markers are a good tool to find such interventions.
One of EAs anti-examples, Play Pumps, failed because it turned out not to be holistic at all.
I feel like effective aid policy is at a similar stage to what animal well-being was at a few decades ago. People would agree that animal well-being is good, but they wouldn’t feel it’s important.
Maybe we need an org that does targeted public campaigns on how a certain aid organization is wasting money, combining that with pushing them to a commitment to more effectiveness. This approach has worked with some meat-intensive companies, and it might also work for non-profits if it can threaten their donor base.
What advice do you have to other filmmakers who are trying to spread ideals of effective charity on YouTube? What should they focus on?
Thanks for the great video! I think it did a great job at bringing the usual MrBeast emotional content to a charity whose impact is difficult to film.
Where does Beast Philanthropy get its funding from? Is it just revenue from BP videos (incl. Sponsors), or money from MrBeast, or also other philanthropists?
I have too many EA T-shirts from conferences. What should I do with them?
On further googling, there is actually an active proposal by the Commission!
The proposed directive introduces a new type of legal form (the “European cross-border association”), which will make it a lot easier for non-profits to operate across the entire EEA.
However, at this stage, the issue of taxation is not addressed. The European Parliament is expected to work on the proposal before the election next year, so now may be a good time to call further attention to this :)
I looked into this for a few hours a while ago—it’s crazy to me that Cross-Border commerce is so easy in the EU, but tax-deductible cross-border donations are not.
I think there should be a push for harmonizing EU rules on tax-deductibility. Two scenarios:
You could make anything that’s deemed a charity/public benefit in an EU country automatically deductible everywhere.
Or, if member states can’t agree on criteria, create a new legal status for some orgs that means they are automatically deemed public benefit by any EU country. Ideally, this status would also be available to non-EU entities.
I would like to make this happen, but I have no idea how.
Do you have any takes on insect farming? There’s a company that sells protein powder made from crickets, and they basically claim they feel no pain and are super efficient. Could that be on the same scale or even better than vegan protein powder, made from e.g. peas?
I wonder what EV projects the money was dedicated for. Which project actually ended up with a budget shortfall?
I very much agree, and I believe the whole community needs to think about our values. Every local group or other EA group should agree on some values and live by them.
Charity Navigator has published a list of trustworthy, disaster relief organizations working in the area: https://www.charitynavigator.org/discover-charities/where-to-give/israel-hamas-conflict/
They only evaluated one organization for impact and gave it a perfect score, but don’t show their work: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/453782061
Knowing nothing else, you could select a few promising orgs from that bucket, but I wouldn’t give them the label of being “highly effective”. Maybe the best thing to do is even to support groups in Israel that advocate for a more humanitarian military response.
I really like this frame of “given these constraints, how can we do the most good?”, and I think EA doesn’t do enough of that.
Giving the standard EA answer: Usually, people in crisis situations are less neglected than the global poor, that also lack access to clean water and healthcare. Right now, millions of people are thinking about how they can help Palestinians. So you should still prefer donating to e.g. GiveWell recommendations.
However, that misses the point that there are cheap effectiveness improvements you can unlock by slightly improving your friends’ decision making and having them select a better Palestinian org.
First, some terminology: cash transfers are an intervention within the Cause Area of extreme poverty.
Their effectiveness needs to be compared to other available interventions. GiveWell is an organization that does just that, and they found bednets much more effective than cash transfers. I suppose many EAs choose to follow GiveWell on these judgements.
While Give Directly is definitely awesome and more effective than most charities, they don’t really put together a convincing argument that they are more effective than bednets in this post. In general, I do like their point that we should think beyond the marginal donation. However, this isn’t a post about politics or how to influence large amounts of money. It’s a post that wants to get you to donate to Give Directly.
The Problem isn’t that they make money from their superior product. The problem, as I understand, is that they use an unethical business model to do so, heavily distorting the options available to doctors and locking them into using their product.
At the very least, I think they should openly justify their pricing strategy. The public and Danaher’s customers should know about their profits, per-machine and per-test, so they can negotiate fairer deals.
I suppose the question then is: does EA bring out the best in people? If not, how can we empower community members to be their best self in an EA context?
For example, community members should notice when they’re not being their best self, and have enough agency to change the causes for that.
I never quite know how to engage with sociological analysis of this sort. It attacks longtermism not by its arguments as a philosophical stance, but by its function as a social group.
This is however, how the world works. If someone powerful proclaims an altruistic motive for a move that just happens to increase their power (like Elon entering MAGA and trying to reduce the power of government), alarm bells should be going off.
Moreover, Longtermism should not be central to our society. Longtermism provides a convenient justification for all sorts of monstrosities, simply because it says all of us are less important than trillions of people in the future. That’s not something that democracy really is compatible with.
I propose that no more than 1% of our societal resources go towards long-term thought and planning. That’s much more than we do today, but it’s less dangerous to humans currently alive.