I agree these figures show it’s plausible that the value of donations in finance are significantly larger than the direct economic contribution of many jobs, though I see it as highly uncertain. When you’re working in highly socially valuable sectors like research or some entrepreneurship, it seems to me that the two are roughly comparable, with big error bars.
However, I don’t think this shows it’s plausible that earning to give is likely to be the path towards doing the most good. There are many careers that seem to offer influence over budgets significantly larger than what you could expect to donate. For instance, the average budget per employee at DfiD is about $6mn per year, and you get similar figures at the World Bank, and many major foundations. It seems possible to move this money into something similarly effective or better than cash transfers. We’ve also just done an estimate of party politics showing that the expected budget influenced towards your preferred causes is 1-80mn if you’re an Oxford graduate over a career, and that takes account of chances of success.
You’d expect there to be less competition to influence the budgets of foundations for the better than to earn money, so these figures make sense.
(And then there’s all the meta things, like persuading people to do earning to give :) )
One point to note with Carl’s 30x figure—that’s only when comparing the short-run welfare impact of a GDP boost with a transfer to GiveDirectly. If you also care about the long-run effects, then it becomes much less clear.
However, I don’t think this shows it’s plausible that earning to give is likely to be the path towards doing the most good.
Do you (meaning, I guess, anyone reading this) have a good idea of just how altruistic typical people considering “earning to give” are? I mean: a perfect altruist will indeed be looking simply for “the path towards doing the most good”, but someone who merely cares much more than most about the welfare of the world’s poorest people (or the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence, or eradicating disease, or ending aging, or whatever) will presumably attach some weight to their own earnings.
It seems like it could easily be true that (1) there are other things a smart hard-working person could do that do more good overall than ETG, but (2) ETG handily beats them in terms of the actual preferences of most people contemplating ETG.
(Though there might be benefits in not acknowledging those actual preferences too openly: e.g., doing so might make people feel less good about ETG and therefore less inclined to do it, or it might encourage them to put a higher weight on their own personal gain and therefore give less.)
When you’re working in highly socially valuable sectors like research or some entrepreneurship, it seems to me that the two are roughly comparable, with big error bars.
I have the same intuition, but I would be interested in hearing about whether you have object level reasons for thinking so.
One point to note with Carl’s 30x figure—that’s only when comparing the short-run welfare impact of a GDP boost with a transfer to GiveDirectly. If you also care about the long-run effects, then it becomes much less clear.
Quoting from an email that I wrote
A standard reply to “developing world stuff beats developed world stuff” is “but there are greater flow-through benefits from helping people in the developed world.” This is clearly true to some extent: increasing the productivity of an American who makes $50k/year by 1% increases world GDP by 100x as much as increasing the productivity of an African who makes $500/year by 1%, and assuming that this increase is uniformly distributed percentagewise, using the 30x figure from Carl’s blog post, you get a (100/30) greater increase in log of income worldwide.
But there’s a general a priori case for the flow-through effects being priced in: people are willing to pay for productivity boosts, industries are willing to pay for productivity boosts, etc.
I would be interested in seeing more analysis of flow-through effects of interventions in the developed world: when it comes to general efforts to increase economic growth / tech speedup, I don’t see an object level case for there being disproportionate flow-through effects coming from working in the developed world (though I still give the possibility substantial weight on priors).
Hi Jonah,
Great posts.
I agree these figures show it’s plausible that the value of donations in finance are significantly larger than the direct economic contribution of many jobs, though I see it as highly uncertain. When you’re working in highly socially valuable sectors like research or some entrepreneurship, it seems to me that the two are roughly comparable, with big error bars.
However, I don’t think this shows it’s plausible that earning to give is likely to be the path towards doing the most good. There are many careers that seem to offer influence over budgets significantly larger than what you could expect to donate. For instance, the average budget per employee at DfiD is about $6mn per year, and you get similar figures at the World Bank, and many major foundations. It seems possible to move this money into something similarly effective or better than cash transfers. We’ve also just done an estimate of party politics showing that the expected budget influenced towards your preferred causes is 1-80mn if you’re an Oxford graduate over a career, and that takes account of chances of success.
You’d expect there to be less competition to influence the budgets of foundations for the better than to earn money, so these figures make sense.
(And then there’s all the meta things, like persuading people to do earning to give :) )
One point to note with Carl’s 30x figure—that’s only when comparing the short-run welfare impact of a GDP boost with a transfer to GiveDirectly. If you also care about the long-run effects, then it becomes much less clear.
Do you (meaning, I guess, anyone reading this) have a good idea of just how altruistic typical people considering “earning to give” are? I mean: a perfect altruist will indeed be looking simply for “the path towards doing the most good”, but someone who merely cares much more than most about the welfare of the world’s poorest people (or the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence, or eradicating disease, or ending aging, or whatever) will presumably attach some weight to their own earnings.
It seems like it could easily be true that (1) there are other things a smart hard-working person could do that do more good overall than ETG, but (2) ETG handily beats them in terms of the actual preferences of most people contemplating ETG.
(Though there might be benefits in not acknowledging those actual preferences too openly: e.g., doing so might make people feel less good about ETG and therefore less inclined to do it, or it might encourage them to put a higher weight on their own personal gain and therefore give less.)
Thanks for all of these thoughts
I have the same intuition, but I would be interested in hearing about whether you have object level reasons for thinking so.
Quoting from an email that I wrote
I would be interested in seeing more analysis of flow-through effects of interventions in the developed world: when it comes to general efforts to increase economic growth / tech speedup, I don’t see an object level case for there being disproportionate flow-through effects coming from working in the developed world (though I still give the possibility substantial weight on priors).