When I want to buy fuzzies, I am nice to my friends or by tuna for the cats. When it comes to spending on benefiting strangers, I can’t see why I’d want to choose an inefficient way over an efficient way. But your mileage may vary.
If you don’t sympathize with Amanda enough that helping her would give you a fuzzy feeling, then obviously it’s not a good use of your money (from your perspective).
Rather, if my sympathy for her is not at least two orders of magnitude greater than it is for unknown Africans. I don’t mean that to sound moralistic—my sympathy for my cats really is greater, awful as that sounds.
It was explicitly proposed as a form of warm-fuzzy giving, not as an efficient purchase of utilons.
Of course, for the specific purpose of helping Amanda and her family, it’s the most efficient way of giving I know of.
When I want to buy fuzzies, I am nice to my friends or by tuna for the cats. When it comes to spending on benefiting strangers, I can’t see why I’d want to choose an inefficient way over an efficient way. But your mileage may vary.
If you don’t sympathize with Amanda enough that helping her would give you a fuzzy feeling, then obviously it’s not a good use of your money (from your perspective).
Rather, if my sympathy for her is not at least two orders of magnitude greater than it is for unknown Africans. I don’t mean that to sound moralistic—my sympathy for my cats really is greater, awful as that sounds.
For me, helping unknown Africans generally comes out of the utility budget, rather than the fuzzy budget. You may be different.
In any case, yes, it’s a question of amount-of-fuzziness per unit-of-money donated.