Summaries of Earning to Give

March 11th, 2013
ea, earning_to_give
There are roughly four ideas that make up the "earning to give" approach to effective altruism:
  1. donate
  2. to the most effective organizations
  3. earn more so you can give more
  4. spend less so you can give more
Very few people will take these all to the limit, earning as much as they can while minimizing their self-spending so they can give as much as possible to the most effective charities. (I don't; I could push (3) and (4) harder than I do.) I don't even want to give people the impression that anyone expects this of them, because then you get "if I can't be perfect I won't even try." So: I'm looking for ways of summarizing this idea in a way that preferentially communicates the most important parts and doesn't turn off people who are only willing to go part way. I'm not that happy with either of the ones I have so far:
"Give money to the most effective charities, and maximize your impact by earning more and spending less."

"The best thing you can do to improve the world is make a lot of money and give it to great charities."

Suggestions of better ones?

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Mindful posting

It is important, for the preservation of American democracy and maybe the world, that the Democrats take the House and Senate in November.

via Thing of Things September 18, 2026

There's no point at which turning your brain off will work

In early 2025, I started seeing people turn off their brain as they use LLMs1. They would have an LLM take an action (summarize text, write some code, etc.), and just assume that it worked2. This generally didn't work in early 2025 and the result was …

via Posts on September 18, 2026

My Weirdy Creatures

Over the last few days, I've been working on some little creatres. But they're very weird. I call them "weirdy creatures". I've made quite a lot of them, I think maybe 5-6, not sure. Weirdy Predator This is a weirdy predator. They'…

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts September 13, 2026

more     (via openring)