But even if the charity you pick only yields 1 euro of value from the 1000 you send, it’s still be better to send the money.
That’s up to your own personal utility function of course, but another option is to donate somewhere else instead. There are still a great many causes that can do a lot more good for a lot more people in similarly dire situations than getting €1 worth of help out of every €1000 to the people who need it.
Yes, this sucks for people who are in terrible situations where helping them is also orders of magnitude more inefficient and/or dangerous to those trying to help than others in similar need. Maybe it feels better to spend your €1000 to give €1 of help to someone in such a situation, than to give hundreds of times more help to people in situations elsewhere that are just as bad but more accessible.
I’m all for choosing effective causes and charities to donate to. The case I’m making here is that if there’s only one cause that could move you to help, then you shouldn’t refrain from helping just cause the efficiency is low. If you realize that looking around for other charities would end in you just losing interest, then the reality in which you actually donate to a 1% efficient cause, you will have done more good than the reality when you look for a 50% efficient cause, are gripped by analysis paralysis and give up.
But if you have energy to optimize, of course, optimize!
That’s assuming that keeping the money for yourself is valueless. I would say that 1000 dollars for myself is probably worth more than 1 dollar to a refugee.
Fair point. I was writing this from a position of having earmarked a sum of money as “for charity”, thus removing the value to myself. But using your assumptions, then it’s just a matter of where you draw the line of how efficient a charity has to be, sure.
That’s up to your own personal utility function of course, but another option is to donate somewhere else instead. There are still a great many causes that can do a lot more good for a lot more people in similarly dire situations than getting €1 worth of help out of every €1000 to the people who need it.
Yes, this sucks for people who are in terrible situations where helping them is also orders of magnitude more inefficient and/or dangerous to those trying to help than others in similar need. Maybe it feels better to spend your €1000 to give €1 of help to someone in such a situation, than to give hundreds of times more help to people in situations elsewhere that are just as bad but more accessible.
I’m all for choosing effective causes and charities to donate to. The case I’m making here is that if there’s only one cause that could move you to help, then you shouldn’t refrain from helping just cause the efficiency is low. If you realize that looking around for other charities would end in you just losing interest, then the reality in which you actually donate to a 1% efficient cause, you will have done more good than the reality when you look for a 50% efficient cause, are gripped by analysis paralysis and give up.
But if you have energy to optimize, of course, optimize!
That’s assuming that keeping the money for yourself is valueless. I would say that 1000 dollars for myself is probably worth more than 1 dollar to a refugee.
Fair point. I was writing this from a position of having earmarked a sum of money as “for charity”, thus removing the value to myself. But using your assumptions, then it’s just a matter of where you draw the line of how efficient a charity has to be, sure.