{"items": [{"author": "Julia", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/114588710186521489410", "anchor": "gp-1321234691950", "service": "gp", "text": "This is why Holden Karnofsky is \"basically fine with investing in evil\": \nhttp://blog.givewell.org/2007/01/20/21/\n
\nI think it makes sense to have separate budgets for charity and personal consumption, so that what kind of chocolate I buy won't impact how much I give.", "timestamp": 1321234691}, {"author": "Ariel", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/113667834513475506190", "anchor": "gp-1321242906269", "service": "gp", "text": "The ethical difference isn't the only change there, though (except in the case of wind energy). Buying eggs that are labelled \"free-range\" doesn't always make a difference, but actual fresh eggs from small farms taste a lot better (in my experience). And may be healthier? I'll try to find a citation. Similarly, companies that pay attention to where they source their chocolate tend to also make higher quality chocolate with higher cacao content (this doesn't necessarily follow like in the case of eggs, it's just a pattern I've observed). Often, consumer goods that are made in a more responsible way are also higher quality, so it's hard to do the calculation based only on the \"charity\" payoff.", "timestamp": 1321242906}, {"author": "Joanna", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858?comment_id=146848988749660", "anchor": "fb-146848988749660", "service": "fb", "text": "I love pastured/free-range animal products, so this caught my eye... So, it seems to be focused on efficient use of the dollar? 'The most good'? I've thought about that sometimes (e.g., not giving money to street people but wanting to give it to organizations that work with homeless), but not others (e.g. I'd much rather spend money supporting farmers I know, even if it means I have no budget for charity).", "timestamp": "1321243425"}, {"author": "George", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858?comment_id=146884852079407", "anchor": "fb-146884852079407", "service": "fb", "text": "I think there is an essential difference between donating to a charity that, say, vaccinates people for free and paying more for clean power. In the former, your donation could save some number of lives that would not be saved without it. In the latter, your action ONLY matters based on how it affects other people and markets, not in how much carbon you avoid emitting. If your decision to buy clean power doesn't increase the probability of other people collectively agreeing to use or being forced to use clean power, then it does nothing to avert catastrophic climate change. There is a collective action problem at the heart of avoiding catastrophic climate change that isn't part of just vaccinating people that don't have the resources to do so themselves; thinking at the margin doesn't solve the dilemma. If all US residents who believe fossil fuel use is causing global warming bought clean electricity for their homes when it was offered and we assume these people didn't do anything else different than what they normally do, fossil fuels would still get burned to generate electricity and climate change would still happen in catastrophic ways (remember we are assuming these people don't exercise political power about this). Whereas if all those same people spent the money they pay for \"premium\" electricity on vaccinating poor people, they would save a number of lives at least proportional to the money invested. As Steve Easterbrook puts it, \"[carbon theatre is] the very idea that an appropriate response to climate change is to make personal sacrifices.\" http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=1260", "timestamp": "1321253858"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858?comment_id=146965592071333", "anchor": "fb-146965592071333", "service": "fb", "text": "@Megan: \"don't buy eggs, and you can give every cent of your egg money to Deworm the World\"
If you would like to eat eggs but instead eat something cheaper you don't like as much, then the tradeoff is more complicated. On one side you have suffering chickens and eggs you enjoy, on the other you have some food you like less and more money to donate.
In the simpler case of trading off less enjoyment for you against money to donate, I think it's important to go for the most cost effective options first. If you're spending a lot on rent to have a three bedroom apartment, but wouldn't be much less happy with a two bedroom, that probably saves you more money for the amount of unhappiness than switching from eggs to some other food would. What cuts best balance minimizing your sacrifice and maximizing how much you can give does vary by person, though.
To factor in the chicken suffering, I'd try and convert the suffering embodied in an egg to a dollar amount to fit it in the calculation above.", "timestamp": "1321277779"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321278592300", "service": "gp", "text": "@Ariel\n \"Often, consumer goods that are made in a more responsible way are also higher quality\"\n
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\nDefinitely. I'll spend more to buy local apples in season, or to buy cabot cheddar, because they taste much better. Eating food you enjoy more is good. But if I don't enjoy high cacao content organic chocolate any more than hersheys, I'm not going to buy the more expensive chocolate to be a more responsible consumer.", "timestamp": 1321278592}, {"author": "Ariel", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/113667834513475506190", "anchor": "gp-1321279675331", "service": "gp", "text": "Fair enough. I would point out, with regards to the energy thing also, that that operates in a very different way than consumer goods. \"Ethical\" consumer goods are basically a niche product -- even if relatively a lot of people buy slavery-free chocolate, Hershey's won't change because their profit model is based on volume rather than price (similarly, I'm pretty sure it's impossible to produce enough free-range eggs to satisfy the egg consumption of the whole US). These are things that you could then argue make a marginal difference in terms of moving the system. However, the power industry views these \"pay more for wind power\" things as testing the market for wider shifts. They're proving grounds for various pricing and subsidy models. There, enough people buying in can materially change how the industry operates by affecting what projects and subsidies get approved.", "timestamp": 1321279675}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321280137622", "service": "gp", "text": "@Ariel\n I'm not sure; over on facebook [1] george dahl is saying the opposite.\n
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\n[1] \nhttps://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858", "timestamp": 1321280137}, {"author": "Ariel", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/113667834513475506190", "anchor": "gp-1321280886650", "service": "gp", "text": "Right, the relevant difference is him saying: \"If your decision to buy clean power doesn't increase the probability of other people collectively agreeing to use or being forced to use clean power, then it does nothing to avert catastrophic climate change.\"\n
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\nMy understanding of the way the industry's looking at it is the following: obviously power generators are invested (financially and therefore sometimes ideologically) in their own means of generation (eg coal, NG, wind, etc.) However, we no longer operate on a system where the grid utilities are the same company as the power generators (we semi-used to) and the utilities are generation-method agnostic except insofar as different methods have different availability/supply issues (wind is intermittent, for example), since they buy power from the generation companies and sell it to us. There's a lot of weird interconnected stuff regarding the power of utilities, as state-approved local monopolies, to affect government regulatory action vis-a-vis power generation/pricing and vice versa, but the point is that in many areas, the regulatory bodies and utilities are playing with these pricing schemes to see how they work in the market since on the macro level the main barrier in the US towards moving away from coal generation is profitability (intermittent supply is a secondary barrier since we haven't installed enough capacity yet for it to come into play). So essentially, it may be the case that the decision of individuals to buy clean power can lead to the community at large being forced to use clean power.", "timestamp": 1321280886}, {"author": "Alex", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858?comment_id=146992585401967", "anchor": "fb-146992585401967", "service": "fb", "text": "@George: it's worth pointing out two important externalities that grow out of personal-sacrifice-as-activism. On the one hand, at the margin, it's worse than you might think, since every dollar I spend on clean energy or whatever is a dollar of reduced demand for dirty energy. It's the prisoner's dilemma -- defection is incentivized, since as far as the market is concerned, they are substitute goods.
On the other hand, if you get past the marginal effects, collective action has some real positive effects. One major advantage is economy of scale. It's much cheaper per egg to fill an eighteen-wheeler with free range eggs than a small pickup, and it's much cheaper to build a solar panel in a giant plant than in a small lab. On top of this, if a large enough group votes with their dollars, producers listen by investing in those new niches, which brings costs down further. Neither of these effects show up at the margin, but they are real. Only through consumer demand has substantial organic food variety come to your local supermarket, rather than only being sold at the eccentric corner store across town.", "timestamp": "1321282766"}, {"author": "Sean", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/107270646379592003271", "anchor": "gp-1321282771455", "service": "gp", "text": "I find the linked article to be somewhat shortsighted and, dare I say it, MBA-ish. \n
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\nThe whole article and concept concentrates on the assumption that all outcomes are completely known and on short-term goals. Take the lawyer that it talks about, improving the world much more personally by working overtime at their current high-paying job and donating the profits to some highly efficient charity giving than by stopping his work and doing something charitable. Granted, the author chooses a pretty obvious one, but what if the lawyer instead donated his hour to providing legal protection or setup for a charity that pays the 100 people $10 an hour to cleanup the park? \n
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\nGiven the author's contention, we would have been better off purchasing metal braces and electrolysis for polio patients than we would've been to invest in finding a vaccine. \n
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\nIt seems that most of his admonitions are directly aimed at short term solutions and patches. The world is not completely known, and for many of these things we cannot know what will be successful. Trying different things and seeing what works is necessary and in the long run far more beneficial than sticking with the most efficient band-aid RIGHT NOW.\n
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\nI also find it to be idealistically naive when it comes to human nature. The author may have the mental fortitude to work lots of overtime to donate to starving children and never feel a warm glow, but the vast majority of us are not so empathicly endowed. We NEED positive feedback to keep making sacrifices of any variety. Pretending otherwise is a sure and fast way to make sure people try living \"The Good Life(tm)\" for a while, get burnt out fast, and stop doing anything to improve their world because it's too hard and too painful. I have no hard evidence for this one, but anecdotally, I think environmentalists from the 60's and 70's sort of banged up against this. They demanded that people completely change their lifestyles, make lots of sacrifices, etc. As a result, after a good start, people got burned out of environmentalism, and we had 15-20 years where it was half-forgotten. (the 80's and 90's). A close relative is a bit of an example. We went from one extreme ('if it's yellow let is mellow if it's brown flush it down' to save water when I was a kid), to her modern self, who cannot be convinced to bother with CFLs because she doesn't like the lighting conditions or to purchase a prius instead of a van because it will be slightly more difficult to deal with her dogs inside. She got BURNT OUT on trying too hard to make the right choices; she didn't get enough warm fuzzies.\n
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\nSimilarly, I think it's pretty clear that most lawyers, after spending a few months or a few years working overtime to donate money to people they never see will simply stop working overtime, stop donating, and go get a house on the beach.", "timestamp": 1321282771}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321283953437", "service": "gp", "text": "@Ariel\n I was with you up until your concluding sentence: \"so essentially, it may be the case that the decision of individuals to buy clean power can lead to the community at large being forced to use clean power\". Are you saying that individuals signing up for nstar green (wind) leads to pushing the cost of wind power down enough that there's a massive switch from CO2 generating fuels to wind?", "timestamp": 1321283953}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1321285364492", "service": "gp", "text": "@Sean\n You're talking about the Yvain \"efficient charity, do unto others\" post [1], right?\n
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\n\"Given the author's contention, we would have been better off purchasing metal braces and electrolysis for polio patients than we would've been to invest in finding a vaccine.\"\n
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\nI'm not sure where you're seeing that at all. Could you point me at a part of the article that implies this?\n
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\n\"I think environmentalists from the 60's and 70's sort of banged up against this. They demanded that people completely change their lifestyles, make lots of sacrifices, etc. As a result, after a good start, people got burned out of environmentalism, and we had 15-20 years where it was half-forgotten.\"\n
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\nThis makes a lot of sense, but I don't think I interpret it the same way. The environmentalism of the 60s and 70s was full of things I find do give warm fuzzies: direct personal action towards global problems, contact with nature, working with friends towards an important goal, and seeing the positive effects of small scale projects you had a hand in.\n
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\nI do agree that \"trying too hard to make the right choices\" and requiring too much sacrifice of yourself and others does burn people out. I know that 'perfect is the enemy of good' and that if I try and always do exactly the right thing I'll stand a good chance of burning out and giving up in frustration. So I think the path that's most likely to work for most people is to do something simple like give 10% of income to the most effective charity you can find, and then not worry about which eggs to buy or whether to get organic chocolate. By taking the donation money off the top you can save money elsewhere in your budget, wherever hurts the least.\n
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\n[1] \nhttp://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others/", "timestamp": 1321285364}, {"author": "Ariel", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/113667834513475506190", "anchor": "gp-1321286074960", "service": "gp", "text": "Not exactly. I skipped over a couple steps there so I'm sorry to be confusing. Basically, the power market is extremely regulated. This means that 1) the cost that power generation companies charge utilities for electric power is strongly affected by government subsidies and also that 2) the cost that utilities can then charge consumers for power is set by the government. This model was developed on a system that uses only power generation methods that can supply a relatively constant load -- coal, NG, and large hydro. (Hydro can change somewhat with the seasons, but in a normally very predictable way, and NG gas turbines can be ramped up and down quickly, but they do it in response to demand so it fits the utility's needs as well). All of these generation methods have various subsidy and tax structures associated with them (in terms of what the companies pay for fuel, interest rates on loans they took out for startup capital, taxes they pay, what the utility pays the companies, etc.) Wind (and solar to the extent it's being installed), being basically new, doesn't have this whole regulatory framework set up yet and, being intermittent sources, how much you can actually rely on them is still sort of up in the air since no one's done the necessary grid overhauls yet to make it not an issue (it's not really clear the technology is there yet to do this -- it's an energy storage problem and it's underdeveloped). The key bit is that it is routinely the case that regulations singlehandedly determine which generation projects are profitable by setting how much the project costs and how profitable it can be (for example, the state with the most installed wind capacity in the US is Texas, because the Texas state government put subsidies in place for wind installation partially as a boon to farmers in the panhandle who can now rent out their land to generation companies but also for a lot of other complicated political reasons). How that regulatory framework is going to take shape surrounding these new clean generation methods is something that's the subject of a lot of political (and lobbying) debate because there are a lot of options (traditional subsidies, buy-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, carbon markets...).\n
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\nThe way that individual consumers buying in affects things is that different states are trying different of these models, somewhat motivated by the political will of the people in favor of clean energy. So it's the case that individuals buying wind power is in some sense a \"vote\" towards wind power, but more than that, the more people use these programs, the more money they bring in and the more data there is on how they work, in a number of ways: a) it's better known what can actually be expected from a wind farm of x MW in terms of real generation capacity, effect on the grid, etc. -- people feel more confident investing in them if their behavior/profitability under x conditions is understood better; b) similarly, it's better known which regulatory conditions lead to better profitability and this encourages their development; c) it's a way for politicians to score political points and if a politician scores political points doing something then other politicians want to do it too.\n
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\nBasically what I mean is that overhauling our (very entrenched) power generation system to be cleaner is something that takes a lot of financial and political work, and that work needs a driving force. It won't do for people to wait until we have the magic clean generation method that can supply base load capacity at below market price -- that's not going to happen any time soon and we don't have the time to wait for it. We need to make the clean generation methods we have be profitable using the tools at hand, and the way to get that to happen is to agitate for it and make it easier. Buying wind power does both of these things in a way that's very accessible to consumers. It's probably not enough by itself, but it definitely contributes.", "timestamp": 1321286074}, {"author": "George", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858?comment_id=147024572065435", "anchor": "fb-147024572065435", "service": "fb", "text": "Alex That is why I said it only matters inasmuch as it affects the large scale choices of other people and affects markets. Direct political action is probably always more effective and we know how little that gets done. I would love to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and actually tax carbon and invest in cleaner energy on a large societal scale, but me personally buying is hard to justify in Jeff's (admittedly crazy :P) brand of utilitarianism. Amusingly, buying clean energy is pretty easy to justify with Kantian morality, although I am not espousing some particular ethical framework here.", "timestamp": "1321287667"}, {"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/146800342087858?comment_id=147160095385216", "anchor": "fb-147160095385216", "service": "fb", "text": "I like the idea of the eggs roaming around and not being confined to their boxes.", "timestamp": "1321306664"}]}