{"items": [{"author": "Taviy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135628079872210", "anchor": "fb-135628079872210", "service": "fb", "text": "Hm, let's get the discussion started with a bang. Personally, i tend to agree more with your friend that the best good is the good you can do with your own hands and see with your own eyes. My reasoning has a little bit to do with the fact that giving via international aid in no way redresses the inequalizing force of America's global economic activity: for some to get ahead, others must fall behind. A more productive course of good would, in my mind, be working to change the fundamental elements of exploitive culture rather than extending a colonial hand of charity.
The next thing i'm going to say is sure to be misinterpreted:
Averting infant deaths is such a warm and fuzzy goal. Hello. Global population growth? Death is natural. People need the experience of grief and the growth it brings. We in the \"first world\" are so skittish of those realities, and based on our perceptions of others' grief experiences we feel like we should extend our skittishness?
But as you can see, this is a deeply ingrained personal perspective. I think it's ultimately SILLY to disagree over where you can do the most good. Because where you can do the most good is where you are naturally inclined to invest yourself - be it your hand labor or your disposable income.", "timestamp": "1318688560"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135634439871574", "anchor": "fb-135634439871574", "service": "fb", "text": "This is an interesting discussion. I'm not yet ready to articulate a thoughtful position, but I'm commenting so I'm notified of further discussion.", "timestamp": "1318689932"}, {"author": "Alex", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/100936518160252317727", "anchor": "gp-1318691253095", "service": "gp", "text": "Here's a wrench to throw into your discussion: I don't think that there is a single objective continuum of suffering where you can take a sticky note, put it on the continuum, and say, \"this is how much person X suffers, who labors 7 days a week in a factory in Guangdong, China.\" There is no absolute measure of that sort of thing, and not just because \"they don't know what they're missing\" or anything. It's because the human brain doesn't work that way.\n
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\nThere's not really a way to compare the happiness or suffering or \"quality-of-life\" between two people from two different cultures. Take Kenya for example. Infant mortality is high, productivity is low, and everyone is corrupt. I just finished a memoir of an American who spent several decades there, and he talked about the local Masai tribesman whose job was to slaughter cows for meat for a particular tourist village. The Masai's culture is rather permeated with cows, so this guy knows what a healthy cow looks like. The tribesman was jovial, friendly, and blithely corrupt, and poisoned half the tourist village when he accepted a cow for slaughter who had died on the way.\n
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\nInstead of calling for his head afterward, the workers (who were poisoned by this guy! Poisoned! They could have died!) were merely annoyed for a day and then promptly forgot about it. If that happened here, things would be different, and it has everything to do with culture. There's a word in Swahili, 'dunia', that basically means \"that's the world, that's how it is,\" and it basically gets to the heart of the issue: if someone gets poisoned, and they shrug it off as just the way of the world, are they really suffering? If a third of your children die before adolescence, but so does everyone else's, and you expect it, is each death just as tragic? If you are a rich, well-off American, but the most important person in your life dies from cancer, do you suffer less because of your other material comforts?\n
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\nI would argue that it depends entirely on your cultural context, which is why it makes some sense to help those who are suffering nearby rather than those who suffer far away: you can assess their suffering by understanding their cultural context, in a way you cannot do the same for someone in China. Only in the most severe of cases, such as famine, genocide, or systematic oppression, can we tell without having to go there that someone is really suffering. Economic shortcomings, general health, education... these are things that are much harder to judge.", "timestamp": 1318691253}, {"author": "Allison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103741579182942078941", "anchor": "gp-1318694343177", "service": "gp", "text": "I don't think we have to choose between giving locally and giving abroad. It seems that local/community-based focus/service has to do with being educated (time) and involved (time + effort), with maybe a little bit of money sprinkled in. In the summer, it's actually cheaper for me to buy local produce. I can vote, play an activist's role, and help others physically. When there was flooding out here, people's entire homes were destroyed, and some of those people had no friends or family to help and no insurance. They're alive, but to quote Game of Thrones, \"see what life is worth when everything else is stripped away.\" Ignoring local needs completely seems heartless.\n
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\nOn the flip side, it's good to regularly donate money to high-need areas abroad--it's the most efficient way to help those people in the long run. Understanding a totally new culture would take a lot of time and effort, and most people would be unhappy doing so unless they were really committed, thus giving money makes sense. Ignoring suffering children seems heartless.\n
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\nI think another aspect of this is each individual's priorities. Say I have a certain amount of time, effort, and money to spend helping other people. My priorities would put most of my time and effort locally and most of my money abroad. (And I still don't think time/effort is exchangeable with money.) But I enjoy that balance. Jeff, you seem to enjoy a strict maximization of life per dollar. Other people enjoy focusing their efforts only locally. Still more enjoy not helping anyone at all. In the end, we may not agree with each other, but I'm glad that the discussion is out there and that the focus is on how to help people and not the million other ways to use money and spend time/effort.", "timestamp": 1318694343}, {"author": "Jonah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135663646535320", "anchor": "fb-135663646535320", "service": "fb", "text": "See also http://lesswrong.com/.../efficient_philanthropy_local_vs.../", "timestamp": "1318695243"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135665026535182", "anchor": "fb-135665026535182", "service": "fb", "text": "OK, I think I've figured out how to articulate my initial reaction: I'm more interested in structural change than charity. I've done no calculations to determine relative merit on any sort of absolute scale, and I'm not really sure such calculations are possible (although it's an interesting intellectual exercise). But my (initial) gut conviction is that many of the world's problems are large structural problems, which need large structural solutions. To use the running example: I might be able to make a donation to save the life of some remote infant, but that's taking a small bite out of the symptom, not addressing the cause. To make a meaningful impact on the cause requires an organized collective effort to change policies and other political and economic structures--and /that/ is something more easily grown out of local activism than remote donation.
That said, I think there's certainly room for both, and you're to be applauded, Jeff, for your commitment to charity (and more generally to making the world a better place). One of my favorite quotes of all time is one I got from Pat James at Swarthmore, which the internet attributes to Howard Thurman:
\"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.\"", "timestamp": "1318695508"}, {"author": "David German", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/111229345142780712481", "anchor": "gp-1318695845783", "service": "gp", "text": "@Alex\n I think disease is another case where it's pretty obvious that someone is suffering. As I understand it, \n@Jeff Kaufman\n's strategy is focused on efficient prevention of famine and disease. It's not that the suffering caused by a cancer case in North America is less than the suffering caused by a diphtheria case in Africa; it's just that the latter is much cheaper to address.", "timestamp": 1318695845}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135692676532417", "anchor": "fb-135692676532417", "service": "fb", "text": "While I'm generally dubious of utilitarian arguments, I still find your case here entirely persuasive. Saving an infant's life for (an estimated) $500 is an INCREDIBLE bargain.
Your anonymous friend may be right that local help does a lot of good; Alex Benn (on g+) may be right that a child's death means slightly different things in different cultural contexts; @Tavi may be right that in the long run we'll need to curb population growth, and that the U.S.'s cultural attitude towards death may not be the healthiest one to export (though I highly doubt that we'll inflict our neuroses on other nations merely by vaccinating their children); @Andrew might be right that we need to seek structural solutions, and that there are limits on the good that pure monetary charity can do. I'm willing to grant ALL of those arguments.
But even if I grant all of those, it doesn't change the fact that $500 is an absurdly small cost for saving a child's life. When children aren't receiving $41 of vaccinations that could spare them a short life of physical suffering, and spare their parents the long grief of losing a child, that's not just a tragedy. That's an emergency.
An analogy: Imagine your neighbor's house is on fire, and you have a hose that can put it out. (I don't think this is a stretch at all; preventable infant mortality is quite like a house on fire.)
Will you say, \"But I can do so much good with this hose by watering my other neighbor's garden\"? It's true, but you can do so much MORE good here.
Will you say, \"Maybe that fire isn't as painful for them as it would be for me\"? Might be true, but irrelevant - even if it's LESS painful, it's got to be pretty damn painful.
Will you say, \"There's overdevelopment here anyway, and we need to reduce the number of houses\"? Might be true, but this isn't the way to accomplish that goal.
Will you say, \"We're too attached to our material possessions anyway, so I should let theirs burn\"? Again, this is not a fair way to accomplish that goal.
Will you say, \"It shouldn't be the neighbor's job to put out the fire; we need a better fire department, and less blind charitable giving of water\"? Again, could be true, but now's not the time for that debate.
Now, once we deal with the medical emergency of unvaccinated children (and comparable emergencies like famine and genocide, as Alex Benn mentioned), I'm open to hearing arguments that giving to charities like Village Reach is no longer the best way to improve the world. But until then, I think all the other arguments are missing the point.", "timestamp": "1318700339"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1318712916421", "service": "gp", "text": "I would encourage everyone reading here on g+ to read \n@Ben\n's comment on facebook: \nhttps://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407", "timestamp": 1318712916}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1318735825854", "service": "gp", "text": "@allison\n \"You seem to enjoy a strict maximization of life per dollar\"\n
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\nNot 'enjoy'. I think I'd enjoy more spending money on myself and people I know. Travelling internationally, perhaps taking a shot at playing music or calling professionally. But I think it would be wrong of me to do this. There are people dying for lack of cheap vaccines, and I can do something about it.\n
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\n@allison\n \"Ignoring local needs completely seems heartless.\"\n
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\nThe way I think of this is that when you engage in charity there are two benefits: you get a warm feeling inside and the people you help have their lives improved. The confounding thing is, different charitable options have different amounts of these benefits. Giving money (or a sandwich) to someone on the street asking for food gives quite a bit of the former, but much less of the latter. Donating to an international charity has very little of the former, but a lot of the latter. Both are important. If the people around you have lost their homes, you will probably be compelled to help them. This is human. We help those around us. We need to do this in order not to deplete our inner warmth. The tricky thing is, doing things for the warm fuzzy feeling is doing things for yourself. It's a very positive kind of selfishness. Real altruism is doing what does the most good, regardless of how it makes you feel. And we need this too. We need a lot of it.", "timestamp": 1318735825}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135865233181828", "anchor": "fb-135865233181828", "service": "fb", "text": "What Ben said, but also:
@Tavi: \"I think it's ultimately silly to disagree over where you can do the most good. Because where you can do the most good is where you are naturally inclined to invest yourself.\"
I think this is very much not true. Julia gives the example of homemaking. She feels naturally inclined to grow her own kale, make really good pies, and raise backyard chickens. Instead she is studying to be a social worker where she will help people in abusive relationships, with drug additions, or with getting jobs. It's pretty clear to me that she will do more good as a social worker than as a homemaker.
@Andrew: \"many of the world's problems are large structural problems, which need large structural solutions\"
But do we do as much good with time or money spent addressing them structurally as we would donating to effective charities?", "timestamp": "1318737090"}, {"author": "Taviy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135871913181160", "anchor": "fb-135871913181160", "service": "fb", "text": "@ Jeff, What i meant by \"It's ultimately silly to disagree over where you can do the most good...\" is this: You believe you can do good by contributing to charities like Village Reach, and your inclination is to live and work such that you have disposable income to give to charities. Your friend believes he can do the most good locally, and likely lives in such a way that he does not have the financial luxury to give to charities. Who's doing the most good? You are both seeking to do good in a way that you are naturally inclined to. Your friend is not going to be effective at giving to charities because he doesn't believe in the value of it as a means of doing good. But does that mean that he's failing to do good in his own way? Then again, it seems as though we come from very different perspectives (i approach such questions from a daoist one) and that my arguments are as unlikely to be appealing to you as yours are to me. We all have very different ideas of what \"doing good\" entails.", "timestamp": "1318738392"}, {"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/102487727783123805341", "anchor": "gp-1318742015340", "service": "gp", "text": "In the church, or at least in my church, they talk a lot about the difference between justice and charity. They're both necessary and not the same. They always tell some story about bodies in a river which explains the whole thing. I don't know, but maybe it's easier to do justice work locally? I suppose you'd know more about the local system than you would about some far-away one, and so you'd be more successful at changing it.", "timestamp": 1318742015}, {"author": "David", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135991259835892", "anchor": "fb-135991259835892", "service": "fb", "text": "Tavi, I'm not sure that lowering infant mortality is likely to increase population growth. I remember reading somewhere the lowering infant mortality has a tendency to cause fewer births over the long run because it makes people more concerned with caring for the infants they have. I don't have a source or evidence though unfortunately.", "timestamp": "1318774807"}, {"author": "David", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=135992853169066", "anchor": "fb-135992853169066", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, I don't have any evidence that you might have misevaluated, but I wonder if the combination of the two from a single person might be even more effective. The scenario I'm picturing is, a person who gives a lot to international charity somehow helps a poor local person make significantly more money over time, and the formerly-poor local person goes on to give a lot to international charity.", "timestamp": "1318775125"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=136020729832945", "anchor": "fb-136020729832945", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff: It's not clear to me how to calculate that. Donating to an effective symptom-addressing charity is (hopefully) a relatively low-impact, high success rate approach (it does not do much to change the conditions that cause houses to catch fire so much, but you can be fairly sure you've put out the fire you pointed your hose at). Working to address the structural problems is a higher-impact endeavour with much greater uncertainty (if you succeed in inventing fire-proof building materials you save way more houses than you could have putting out fires one at a time, but you're less certain at the outset that your invention will work).", "timestamp": "1318780852"}, {"author": "Taviy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=136043593163992", "anchor": "fb-136043593163992", "service": "fb", "text": "Zizek... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g", "timestamp": "1318784969"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=136322189802799", "anchor": "fb-136322189802799", "service": "fb", "text": "@Tavi: Zizek goes into a bunch of things in that video. I agree with him that more good comes from \"earn a lot, then give money away\" than \"buy organic, feel good that you are doing good\". I also agree that with charity we address a symptom rather than the cause.
At around 6:30 he starts to make a pretty extreme point: charity is actively harmful because it makes the current system not so bad and so delays fixing it, with an analogy to slaveholding, that \"the worst slaveholders were those that were kind to their slaves.\" The primary way this analogy fails is that while people who were repulsed by slavery had all sorts of examples of functioning non slaveholding societies to emulate, it's not clear what we would replace capitalism with. Zizek acknowledges that 20th century communist states did not work. So even if we let things get really bad, and stopped all charity, I'm not convinced that would lead us to a better system because I'm not convinced there is a better system out there ready for us to pick up and use. Even if a better system is coming, however, I'm not convinced at all that charity is delaying it. In the slaveholding analogy, the usa ended slavery in a civil war brought on primarily by economic reasons, not because of a slave revolt. The repulsion towards slavery that fueled abolitionism certainly helped, but I don't think a slave holder being nicer to their slaves would have delayed abolition much. Abolitionists would have been no less fervent had slaves been getting proper medical care.
Then he claims, without explanation, that \"charity degrades and demoralizes\". Where does he get that? Even so, this is testable. Pick some good charity (ex: village reach) and compare rates of demoralization in the active areas and control areas. I don't think you'll find demoralization going up, but even if you did I doubt it would go up much. (I'm not interested in claims about bad charities degrading and demoralizing. You can (should) choose to give to well-monitored effective charities, so the marginal impact of the donation comes through them and not charities as a class).
In the rest of the video he argues against each major economic system. But just arguing that systems are bad is not sufficient here. We will have some system, and we need to pick among them. He gives no argument that we should do something other than stick to our current system.", "timestamp": "1318854136"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=136451556456529", "anchor": "fb-136451556456529", "service": "fb", "text": "@Tavi: do you support zizek's claims in the tragedy/farce video? I'm curious why you linked it here.", "timestamp": "1318878407"}, {"author": "Taviy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/135599443208407?comment_id=136608893107462", "anchor": "fb-136608893107462", "service": "fb", "text": "I just linked it because i felt it's another perspective on the discussion.", "timestamp": "1318907328"}]}