I’m still a student and am only planning how i might spend money when i have it (it seems like a good idea to have a plan for this sort of thing). Thus far I’ve been looking at both effective altruism and financial independence (mostly frugality+low risk investment) blogs as possible options. It’s quite possible that once money is actually in my hands and I’m actually in the position of making the trade-off, I’ll see the appeal of the “charity budget” method...or I might discover that my preferences are less or more selfish than I originally thought, etc.
Right now though...suppose the rate was 5$ a life. If I was going to go out and buy a 10$ sandwich instead of feeding myself via cheaper means for 5$, i’d be weighing that sandwich against one human life. I would be a lot more frugal and devote a greater portion of my income to charity, if reality was like that. I’d be relatively horrified by frivolous spending.
On the other extreme, if it costed a billion dollars to save a single life, I could spend all my days being frugal and giving to charity and probably wouldn’t significantly help even one person. I’d fulfill more of my preferences by just enjoying myself and not worrying about altruism beyond the interpersonal level.
More realistically, If it costs $2000 to save a life, buying a sandwich at the opportunity cost of saving <1% of a life … it’s still sort of selfish to choose the sandwich, but I’m simply not that good of a person that I wouldn’t sometimes trade 1/100th of a strangers life for a small bit of luxury. But I’d certainly think about getting, say, a smaller house if it meant I could save an additional 1-2 people a year.
Of course, the “charity budget” model is simple and makes sense on a practical level when the good / dollar rate remains relatively constant—as I suppose it generally does. But I wouldn’t actually know how large to make my charity budget, unless I had a sense of how much good I could potentially do.
I’m still a student and am only planning how i might spend money when i have it (it seems like a good idea to have a plan for this sort of thing). Thus far I’ve been looking at both effective altruism and financial independence (mostly frugality+low risk investment) blogs as possible options. It’s quite possible that once money is actually in my hands and I’m actually in the position of making the trade-off, I’ll see the appeal of the “charity budget” method...or I might discover that my preferences are less or more selfish than I originally thought, etc.
Right now though...suppose the rate was 5$ a life. If I was going to go out and buy a 10$ sandwich instead of feeding myself via cheaper means for 5$, i’d be weighing that sandwich against one human life. I would be a lot more frugal and devote a greater portion of my income to charity, if reality was like that. I’d be relatively horrified by frivolous spending.
On the other extreme, if it costed a billion dollars to save a single life, I could spend all my days being frugal and giving to charity and probably wouldn’t significantly help even one person. I’d fulfill more of my preferences by just enjoying myself and not worrying about altruism beyond the interpersonal level.
More realistically, If it costs $2000 to save a life, buying a sandwich at the opportunity cost of saving <1% of a life … it’s still sort of selfish to choose the sandwich, but I’m simply not that good of a person that I wouldn’t sometimes trade 1/100th of a strangers life for a small bit of luxury. But I’d certainly think about getting, say, a smaller house if it meant I could save an additional 1-2 people a year.
Of course, the “charity budget” model is simple and makes sense on a practical level when the good / dollar rate remains relatively constant—as I suppose it generally does. But I wouldn’t actually know how large to make my charity budget, unless I had a sense of how much good I could potentially do.
I’m also a student about to graduate and have looked a lot at both EA and financial independence. I think you’re thinking about things correctly.