Limits of Giving

March 3rd, 2021
ea
A friend recently asked what my goal was in giving: was there some amount of donations that would be enough? If someone give me a large enough amount of money, which I then donated, would I be free of further altruistic obligations?

These questions feel to me like they come from a very different perspective, so I want to try and explain how I think about it. If I continue on my current path, perhaps over the next 40 years I might manage to donate $10M. There's a sense, then, in which I have a target of $10M. If through some unrealistically good fortune my 0.34% of Wave stock options turned into $50M, however, I wouldn't donate $10M and then devote myself to leisure.

The level of need in the world is enormous, far bigger than my personal efforts can address. The poorest billion people need a marginal dollar far more than I do; no one should be dying of malaria; our society's ability to handle a pandemic is terrifyingly bad; we are putting much less effort than we should be into making sure humanity doesn't go extinct.

Now I'm not going to sell all my possessions and live as cheaply as possible, but I am going to be thoughtful about balancing costs to myself against benefits to others and making good altruistic tradeoffs. The more money I have, the larger a portion I can give while continuing to spend money on myself in ways that make me happy.

Considered this way, responding to receiving $50M by decreasing the percentage I gave would be exactly backwards.

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, the EA Forum

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Facts I Learned From My Copy of The Birth of the Pill

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, had a complicated relationship with her father.

via Thing of Things October 31, 2024

Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO

There's a common narrative that Microsoft was moribund under Steve Ballmer and then later saved by the miraculous leadership of Satya Nadella. This is the dominant narrative in every online discussion about the topic I've seen and it's a commo…

via Posts on October 28, 2024

Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk

A discussion I have with myself a lot The post Inner dialogue, walking down the sidewalk appeared first on Otherwise.

via Otherwise October 10, 2024

more     (via openring)