I think adopting a child will likely be superior to donation for your all your personal preferences, while donating the equivalent amount of money will likely be superior than adoption for the smaller subset of your personal preferences which you call “morality”. Both the adoption and the effective charity donation are moral, but the donation is more moral. Additionally, both will likely satisfy the sum of all your preferences, but the adoption is likely to satisfy them more.
I may be wrong about your values, of course. At the end of the day, you will in theory do what you believe maximizes all your preferences rather than maximize the subset of preferences you label “moral”. Truly maximizing morality would mean giving up a lot—what actually happens is that morality is just one weighted variable among many others that you wish to maximize.
Adoption moral pros you may not have considered:
1) When you spend, you use money to transfer resources from one place to another, where you believe they will be more efficient. When you adopt, it’s true that you are likely diverting resources to a sub-optimal place morally, but the non-financial investment you put in is also creating resources.
2) Don’t just look at “good you could do with the money you would otherwise spend on the kid” in a vacuum. An un-adopted child still diverts money from someone. Adoption frees up those resources for the adoption center / the state to do more good work. So when calculating the total moral loss inherent in this choice, it’s [good you could have done with the money you will spend on the kid] - [good the state/adoption clinic will do with the money they will save from you adopting the kid] - [good you will do by raising the kid] … which is be a fair bit less moral loss than you might initially assume.
Adoption moral cons you may not have considered
1) If you don’t adopt the child, someone else is likely to do it. But if you don’t donate to effective charity, no one is likely to take your place. (However, you can mitigate this by adopting a child that other people would for some reason be unlikely to adopt)
Considering my preferences/values are strongly connected to my wife’s preferences/values, I should probably have her read some of this thread and get her thoughts as well. Getting a list of pros and cons and thinking about all of the items does help me think through decisions, and it helps me think of things that I may want to talk to the social worker about.
I think adopting a child will likely be superior to donation for your all your personal preferences, while donating the equivalent amount of money will likely be superior than adoption for the smaller subset of your personal preferences which you call “morality”. Both the adoption and the effective charity donation are moral, but the donation is more moral. Additionally, both will likely satisfy the sum of all your preferences, but the adoption is likely to satisfy them more.
I may be wrong about your values, of course. At the end of the day, you will in theory do what you believe maximizes all your preferences rather than maximize the subset of preferences you label “moral”. Truly maximizing morality would mean giving up a lot—what actually happens is that morality is just one weighted variable among many others that you wish to maximize.
Adoption moral pros you may not have considered:
1) When you spend, you use money to transfer resources from one place to another, where you believe they will be more efficient. When you adopt, it’s true that you are likely diverting resources to a sub-optimal place morally, but the non-financial investment you put in is also creating resources.
2) Don’t just look at “good you could do with the money you would otherwise spend on the kid” in a vacuum. An un-adopted child still diverts money from someone. Adoption frees up those resources for the adoption center / the state to do more good work. So when calculating the total moral loss inherent in this choice, it’s [good you could have done with the money you will spend on the kid] - [good the state/adoption clinic will do with the money they will save from you adopting the kid] - [good you will do by raising the kid] … which is be a fair bit less moral loss than you might initially assume.
Adoption moral cons you may not have considered
1) If you don’t adopt the child, someone else is likely to do it. But if you don’t donate to effective charity, no one is likely to take your place. (However, you can mitigate this by adopting a child that other people would for some reason be unlikely to adopt)
Considering my preferences/values are strongly connected to my wife’s preferences/values, I should probably have her read some of this thread and get her thoughts as well. Getting a list of pros and cons and thinking about all of the items does help me think through decisions, and it helps me think of things that I may want to talk to the social worker about.