Yascha Mounk at his Substack:
People volunteer at organizations that fail to advance the causes to which they are supposedly devoted. They donate to their local cat shelter even though there are already enough organizations caring for stray pets in their affluent neighborhood. They buy their alma mater a fancy new gym even though the campus already has state-of-the-art facilities.
This is all the more galling because the same amount of money could make a vastly bigger difference if directed to more productive purposes. In America or Germany or Chile or South Korea, even a citizen with a perfectly ordinary job could, if they regularly donate a modest share of their income to a charity which provides people in malaria-infested regions with mosquito nets or distributes anti-parasite medications to people in worm-infested regions, save a human life. According to some calculations, the most effective charities take as little as $3500 to do so.
The upshot, effective altruists argue, is simple: If each of us can save a human life with limited effort or generosity, it is grossly unethical for us to fail to do so. And if we do decide to engage in altruistic activities, we should do so in effective ways. Why spend a ton of money on some pet cause when that same sum could make a vastly bigger difference in improving human welfare?
More here.
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