Can you imagine a world where everyone followed this advice? I don’t really know what would happen but it seems possible if all disposable income is given to people who don’t have an income in regions that don’t have an economy that this would choke economies and bringing the entire world population down to a subsistence level.
That’s like imagining a world in which everyone became nurses and we had no other professions, or where everyone decided not to have children and the population crashed. We shouldn’t discourage people from becoming nurses or not having children just because it would be bad if everyone did. If economies really started crashing because everyone gave away lots of money (or we had too many nurses or not enough babies), people would adjust their behavior.
Organizations like Giving What We Can and The Life You Can Save advocate those of us in the developed world giving between 1% and 10% of our income. That would easily end the worst of world poverty, and (I believe) would not destroy economies.
Obviously, people in the developed world are not leaping to give away 50% of their income. Until they start, I’ll continue trying to make up for them.
I’m pretty sure that if everyone did what their explicit morality told them to we would have endless global religious wars, but that doesn’t mean that a world where people who build sane explicit moralities for themselves wouldn’t make the world better by following those moralities in so far as they can.
Well I had to reread the original article as it was written more than a year ago...
But what the speaker was suggesting was if people agree to his scenario where giving up all but subsistence income to save 10 lives, then they should in fact now give every dollar they make beyond a basic subsistence level to charities that would distribute it to places were people want for food or clean water.
So it was not proposing a “middle-ground”; at least in my reading of it. You could almost extrapolate that he believes it immoral to posses above a subsistence level if there are people in the world still starving.
My point was that some people starve because they live in broken economies, and funneling money out of functioning economies into broken ones may not be very optimal in its performance against the speaker’s assumed preferences.
ETA: I shouldn’t say that is actually the speaker’s viewpoint. I think he was trying to challenge his audience’s beliefs about their own morality more than suggest a particular one.
You think that if most people in privileged countries suddenly made maximising the total worldwide good their true goal in life, it would be a bad thing? I’d like to believe this to justify my own small extravagances, but I doubt it.
It is only necessary to give up to the point where the problem is fixed. If everyone giving all their surplus would be non-optimal, there is some amount less than “all” for each person to give that would be optimal. However, most people are not giving anywhere near this amount, so in the here and now the world will be better if you give all your surplus. If the world were different, the principles that led to this advice would lead to different advice that would be optimal in that situation.
My entire point was that the problem cannot be fixed in this way. Pouring money into a region that doesn’t have a functioning economy doesn’t create an economy, in fact it may even make a self-sustainable economy impossible. Meanwhile, it takes money out of an economy that is functioning which amounts to a net loss to world productivity.
This is a fairly common and important criticism of aid; it is part of the hypothesis of Dambisa Moyo. Whilst a valid criticism against certain types of aid, it certainly does not apply to all of them. For example, public health interventions such as increased vaccinations, or combating infectious diseases, require little in the way of a local functioning economy. Furthermore, such items are generally considered to be both quasi-public goods (due to herd immunity) and merit goods—so, there is a strong economic argument that they will be under provisioned, especially in a country lacking an effective government.
But, yes, development aid has a very checquered record.
I agree—in fact, we’re seeing some of this right now, with the financial crisis. It’s related to the paradox of thrift: if everybody saves, the economy collapses and we’re all in trouble.
Similarly, if instead of spending money on consumption and local goods, I sent it all to the poorest people I could find, a whole variety of other people would have no means of income. Remember that spending on consumption goods doesn’t destroy the money (or more to the point, prevent charity from being done), since somebody else still gets it.
As an offset, of course, we might expect the poorest countries to become legitimate markets and thus increase total wealth.
Can you imagine a world where everyone followed this advice? I don’t really know what would happen but it seems possible if all disposable income is given to people who don’t have an income in regions that don’t have an economy that this would choke economies and bringing the entire world population down to a subsistence level.
That’s like imagining a world in which everyone became nurses and we had no other professions, or where everyone decided not to have children and the population crashed. We shouldn’t discourage people from becoming nurses or not having children just because it would be bad if everyone did. If economies really started crashing because everyone gave away lots of money (or we had too many nurses or not enough babies), people would adjust their behavior.
Organizations like Giving What We Can and The Life You Can Save advocate those of us in the developed world giving between 1% and 10% of our income. That would easily end the worst of world poverty, and (I believe) would not destroy economies.
Obviously, people in the developed world are not leaping to give away 50% of their income. Until they start, I’ll continue trying to make up for them.
I’m pretty sure that if everyone did what their explicit morality told them to we would have endless global religious wars, but that doesn’t mean that a world where people who build sane explicit moralities for themselves wouldn’t make the world better by following those moralities in so far as they can.
Well I had to reread the original article as it was written more than a year ago...
But what the speaker was suggesting was if people agree to his scenario where giving up all but subsistence income to save 10 lives, then they should in fact now give every dollar they make beyond a basic subsistence level to charities that would distribute it to places were people want for food or clean water.
So it was not proposing a “middle-ground”; at least in my reading of it. You could almost extrapolate that he believes it immoral to posses above a subsistence level if there are people in the world still starving.
My point was that some people starve because they live in broken economies, and funneling money out of functioning economies into broken ones may not be very optimal in its performance against the speaker’s assumed preferences.
ETA: I shouldn’t say that is actually the speaker’s viewpoint. I think he was trying to challenge his audience’s beliefs about their own morality more than suggest a particular one.
Can you imagine a world where everyone followed any advice based on how they imagined the world to be if everyone followed that advice?
You think that if most people in privileged countries suddenly made maximising the total worldwide good their true goal in life, it would be a bad thing? I’d like to believe this to justify my own small extravagances, but I doubt it.
He gave a justification; you didn’t. Point: jhuffman.
It is only necessary to give up to the point where the problem is fixed. If everyone giving all their surplus would be non-optimal, there is some amount less than “all” for each person to give that would be optimal. However, most people are not giving anywhere near this amount, so in the here and now the world will be better if you give all your surplus. If the world were different, the principles that led to this advice would lead to different advice that would be optimal in that situation.
My entire point was that the problem cannot be fixed in this way. Pouring money into a region that doesn’t have a functioning economy doesn’t create an economy, in fact it may even make a self-sustainable economy impossible. Meanwhile, it takes money out of an economy that is functioning which amounts to a net loss to world productivity.
This is a fairly common and important criticism of aid; it is part of the hypothesis of Dambisa Moyo. Whilst a valid criticism against certain types of aid, it certainly does not apply to all of them. For example, public health interventions such as increased vaccinations, or combating infectious diseases, require little in the way of a local functioning economy. Furthermore, such items are generally considered to be both quasi-public goods (due to herd immunity) and merit goods—so, there is a strong economic argument that they will be under provisioned, especially in a country lacking an effective government.
But, yes, development aid has a very checquered record.
That makes more sense. I don’t have the economics knowledge to answer it either way.
I agree—in fact, we’re seeing some of this right now, with the financial crisis. It’s related to the paradox of thrift: if everybody saves, the economy collapses and we’re all in trouble.
Similarly, if instead of spending money on consumption and local goods, I sent it all to the poorest people I could find, a whole variety of other people would have no means of income. Remember that spending on consumption goods doesn’t destroy the money (or more to the point, prevent charity from being done), since somebody else still gets it.
As an offset, of course, we might expect the poorest countries to become legitimate markets and thus increase total wealth.