Amount of money spent is a radically different thing from amount of good done. Even among charities effectiveness can differ by about 1000x. Government spending is likely to fall more in line with the least effective charities because it is biased by political motives. Most spending is not even in areas that are likely to be effective like global health, or rationality outreach. The money that is spent on global health is politically directed, going largely to local neighbours and sites of war and terrorism, not to those most in need.
As the most effective charities are likely 100-10000x more effective than government spending, the calculation should be adjusted down by 3-5 orders of magnitude. We’re looking at more like $0.01 - $15,000 as the equivalent impact.
GiveWell disagrees with the conclusions you suggest in drawing on that link, arguing that saving lives in rich countries is worth substantially more than saving lives in poor countries, since these contribute more to economic growth, scientific progress, donate to charity and pay taxes for foreign aid themselves, have a higher standard of living, and so forth. They think that this attenuates greatly the gap among charities. ETA: foreign aid still comes out ahead of most rich country charity in their view, because it is SO cheap as to offset the reduced impacts of saving a life there.
I would expect considerable differences in effectiveness among charities to remain. Even after these social and economic effects are taken into account, donating to charities that save lives in rich countries will either still be worth significantly less, per dollar donated, than saving lives in poor countries, or it will be worth significantly more. It would be surprising if the innate human tendency to favour the near and dear, which disregards causal information about how the economy and society operate, could produce results equal or very similar to those that a rational, impartial donor would want to produce.
Yes, there are differences, but the QALY numbers in the link will usually overestimate the differences in long-term QALYs between rich and poor country activities.
Amount of money spent is a radically different thing from amount of good done. Even among charities effectiveness can differ by about 1000x. Government spending is likely to fall more in line with the least effective charities because it is biased by political motives. Most spending is not even in areas that are likely to be effective like global health, or rationality outreach. The money that is spent on global health is politically directed, going largely to local neighbours and sites of war and terrorism, not to those most in need.
As the most effective charities are likely 100-10000x more effective than government spending, the calculation should be adjusted down by 3-5 orders of magnitude. We’re looking at more like $0.01 - $15,000 as the equivalent impact.
GiveWell disagrees with the conclusions you suggest in drawing on that link, arguing that saving lives in rich countries is worth substantially more than saving lives in poor countries, since these contribute more to economic growth, scientific progress, donate to charity and pay taxes for foreign aid themselves, have a higher standard of living, and so forth. They think that this attenuates greatly the gap among charities. ETA: foreign aid still comes out ahead of most rich country charity in their view, because it is SO cheap as to offset the reduced impacts of saving a life there.
I would expect considerable differences in effectiveness among charities to remain. Even after these social and economic effects are taken into account, donating to charities that save lives in rich countries will either still be worth significantly less, per dollar donated, than saving lives in poor countries, or it will be worth significantly more. It would be surprising if the innate human tendency to favour the near and dear, which disregards causal information about how the economy and society operate, could produce results equal or very similar to those that a rational, impartial donor would want to produce.
Yes, there are differences, but the QALY numbers in the link will usually overestimate the differences in long-term QALYs between rich and poor country activities.