I’m sorry, but this argument seems rather confused to me.
Assuming some upper limit on the cost you’re willing to pay to reduce carbon emissions, your best strategy is to choose the option that provides the greatest reduction for the least personal cost.
No, it’s to choose the best n options, up to the point at which you reach your cost limit. Depending on the limit, and the options you face, n could be 0, or 20, or 100; but there’s no particular reason to think it should be 1.
Of course, assuming a fixed upper bound on willingness to sacrifice runs counter to the idea that the sacrifices you’re willing to bear should depend on the benefits obtained. There are two alternative perspectives you could take here:
From the perspective of what’s best for human welfare generally (which was the basis of my original claim) you simply shouldn’t have such a limit. If the net effect of an option (taking into account opportunity costs) is positive, you should just do it (This applies even if the option is suicide, though the opportunity cost of suicide is probably quite high compared with other ways of promoting human welfare.)
From the perspective of an imperfect altruist, a better way to think about it is in terms of the marginal rate of substitution that you’re willing to accept between your own welfare and others’. This will presumably increase as your own welfare decreases (and is probably the real reason we wouldn’t commit suicide to reduce emissions, even if the benefits to others did outweigh the personal and opportunity costs).
You’ve got to consider opportunity cost and marginal utility.
Agreed. The thing is, the opportunity cost of becoming vegetarian isn’t like the opportunity cost of $5. If I spend $5 on carbon offsets, that’s $5 I can’t spend on something else. If I become vegetarian, I haven’t really used up a resource that I could have done something else with; in fact I’ve probably saved money (maybe I’ve used up a bit of willpower in the process, I’m gonna say the effect is minimal). The opportunity cost of vegetarianism is my direct loss of utility minus whatever utility I can get from the money I’ve saved.
Assuming the costs can simply be summed
They can be, if you denominate them in human welfare. They clearly can’t if you denominate them in dollars, but I never claimed they could be, and my argument doesn’t rest on it.
No, it’s to choose the best n options, up to the point at which you reach your cost limit. Depending on the limit, and the options you face, n could be 0, or 20, or 100; but there’s no particular reason to think it should be 1.
I guess I wasn’t sufficiently clear there. My point is that you need to do a cost-benefit analysis, pick your best choice and then do a new cost-benefit analysis rather than just follow through with your 2nd and 3rd best choice from your original analysis. You can’t assume that your 2nd best choice becomes your new best choice after taking your best choice.
If you’re hungry and you decide your first choice is to buy a mars bar and your second choice a snickers and you buy and eat the mars bar you can’t assume that your next action should be to buy and eat the snickers—the situation has changed and you need to re-evaluate.
Of course, assuming a fixed upper bound on willingness to sacrifice runs counter to the idea that the sacrifices you’re willing to bear should depend on the benefits obtained.
Not a fixed upper bound, just a limit. Anyone who cares about reducing their carbon footprint will reach a point where they are not currently willing to make any further sacrifices for a further carbon emissions reduction because to do so would conflict with their other goals. What I’m saying is that each choice you make changes the calculation a little when considering future choices.
The thing is, the opportunity cost of becoming vegetarian isn’t like the opportunity cost of $5.
Not exactly no. The thing is that one might be willing to pay more than one currently does to continue eating meat. If the cost of meat doubled for example I would not reduce my consumption by 50%, I’d cut back elsewhere. I choose to spend a certain amount of money on meat because it represents better value than my next best opportunity. The reason I currently spend money on meat is that I value the meat more than the money (or other alternate uses of the money). You have to take that into account when considering the opportunity cost of becoming vegetarian.
Assuming the costs can simply be summed
They can be, if you denominate them in human welfare.
No, the benefits can be denominated in (general) human welfare. The costs are denominated in your own personal welfare. Money can serve as a convenient proxy for that to aid in calculation but I’m not sure you can give any direct measure, the best you can do may be a preference ordering.
I think we’re pretty much in agreement. Any remaining differences are either trivial, semantic, or (at the risk of angering the Aumann Gods) “things reasonable people can disagree about”.
I think we’re pretty much in agreement. Any remaining differences we have seem either trivial, semantic, or (at the risk of angering the Aumann-gods) things reasonable people can disagree about.
I’m sorry, but this argument seems rather confused to me.
No, it’s to choose the best n options, up to the point at which you reach your cost limit. Depending on the limit, and the options you face, n could be 0, or 20, or 100; but there’s no particular reason to think it should be 1.
Of course, assuming a fixed upper bound on willingness to sacrifice runs counter to the idea that the sacrifices you’re willing to bear should depend on the benefits obtained. There are two alternative perspectives you could take here:
From the perspective of what’s best for human welfare generally (which was the basis of my original claim) you simply shouldn’t have such a limit. If the net effect of an option (taking into account opportunity costs) is positive, you should just do it (This applies even if the option is suicide, though the opportunity cost of suicide is probably quite high compared with other ways of promoting human welfare.)
From the perspective of an imperfect altruist, a better way to think about it is in terms of the marginal rate of substitution that you’re willing to accept between your own welfare and others’. This will presumably increase as your own welfare decreases (and is probably the real reason we wouldn’t commit suicide to reduce emissions, even if the benefits to others did outweigh the personal and opportunity costs).
Agreed. The thing is, the opportunity cost of becoming vegetarian isn’t like the opportunity cost of $5. If I spend $5 on carbon offsets, that’s $5 I can’t spend on something else. If I become vegetarian, I haven’t really used up a resource that I could have done something else with; in fact I’ve probably saved money (maybe I’ve used up a bit of willpower in the process, I’m gonna say the effect is minimal). The opportunity cost of vegetarianism is my direct loss of utility minus whatever utility I can get from the money I’ve saved.
They can be, if you denominate them in human welfare. They clearly can’t if you denominate them in dollars, but I never claimed they could be, and my argument doesn’t rest on it.
I guess I wasn’t sufficiently clear there. My point is that you need to do a cost-benefit analysis, pick your best choice and then do a new cost-benefit analysis rather than just follow through with your 2nd and 3rd best choice from your original analysis. You can’t assume that your 2nd best choice becomes your new best choice after taking your best choice.
If you’re hungry and you decide your first choice is to buy a mars bar and your second choice a snickers and you buy and eat the mars bar you can’t assume that your next action should be to buy and eat the snickers—the situation has changed and you need to re-evaluate.
Not a fixed upper bound, just a limit. Anyone who cares about reducing their carbon footprint will reach a point where they are not currently willing to make any further sacrifices for a further carbon emissions reduction because to do so would conflict with their other goals. What I’m saying is that each choice you make changes the calculation a little when considering future choices.
Not exactly no. The thing is that one might be willing to pay more than one currently does to continue eating meat. If the cost of meat doubled for example I would not reduce my consumption by 50%, I’d cut back elsewhere. I choose to spend a certain amount of money on meat because it represents better value than my next best opportunity. The reason I currently spend money on meat is that I value the meat more than the money (or other alternate uses of the money). You have to take that into account when considering the opportunity cost of becoming vegetarian.
No, the benefits can be denominated in (general) human welfare. The costs are denominated in your own personal welfare. Money can serve as a convenient proxy for that to aid in calculation but I’m not sure you can give any direct measure, the best you can do may be a preference ordering.
I think we’re pretty much in agreement. Any remaining differences are either trivial, semantic, or (at the risk of angering the Aumann Gods) “things reasonable people can disagree about”.
I think we’re pretty much in agreement. Any remaining differences we have seem either trivial, semantic, or (at the risk of angering the Aumann-gods) things reasonable people can disagree about.