“Earning to give” seems to me just another application of comparative advantage.
If somebody values my COBOL and reverse-engineering skills at $150k/yr, this says nothing whatsoever about how much my direct contribution of labour would be worth to an effective altruism organisation. It is very unlikely that I would be the best person for any particular job there.
If I worked directly for an EA organisation at lower than market rate for a very different job: (1) I am almost certainly worse for that job than many other people, (2) my company gets someone worse for my current job, (3) the EA organisation doesn’t get any money from me, (4) I live on a lot less money and am much more constrained in where I can work. In what way is this better for anyone?
You don’t need utilitarianism to decide whether this makes sense, it’s a strict Pareto improvement to stay with my current job and donate versus work directly for EA.
“Earning to give” seems to me just another application of comparative advantage.
If somebody values my COBOL and reverse-engineering skills at $150k/yr, this says nothing whatsoever about how much my direct contribution of labour would be worth to an effective altruism organisation. It is very unlikely that I would be the best person for any particular job there.
If I worked directly for an EA organisation at lower than market rate for a very different job: (1) I am almost certainly worse for that job than many other people, (2) my company gets someone worse for my current job, (3) the EA organisation doesn’t get any money from me, (4) I live on a lot less money and am much more constrained in where I can work. In what way is this better for anyone?
You don’t need utilitarianism to decide whether this makes sense, it’s a strict Pareto improvement to stay with my current job and donate versus work directly for EA.
Yeah this. Even assuming a more dentological framework, I don’t understand why earning to give is so vilified, IMO.
Like so many human behavior puzzles, the prevalence of status games really helps to understand.