How to do the most good possible

By W.Z.

IMAGINE you are walking in a park and come across a boy drowning in a pond. Chances are, you would not hesitate to jump in to save him, even if it meant ruining an expensive pair of shoes. Yet, if you read a news report about thousands of children drowning because of a flood in a distant country, you may not feel compelled to act at all. What could explain this seemingly incongruous gap in empathy? One reason is that you, as a human, are simply hard-wired to care more about those in your immediate vicinity. But another is that you might believe that you have no ability to meaningfully affect the lives of distant strangers. The "effective altruism" movement, a group of scientifically minded do-gooders, argue that this view is too pessimistic. They reckon that social science has advanced to the point where it is possible for individuals to do a tangible amount of good.

The most obvious way to affect the world is to choose the right career. Teaching is considered a natural vocation for a would-be do-gooder, but it is not clear that it should be. Effective altruists argue that if you are choosing a career and want to help the world, you should not worry about how much good a profession does overall—rather, you should focus on the impact you would make if you join them. If you become a teacher, chances are you would not actually increase the total number of teachers in your country. Instead, you would simply be taking a spot away from another candidate with a CV that looks a lot like yours. A better option might be to get a job on Wall Street. If you become a derivatives trader and commit to giving a large portion of your salary to charity, you might make a very positive impact on the world since you would be taking a job away from someone who probably would not donate the same amount of money.

One of the biggest intellectual achievements of the effective-altruism movement has come in the form of charity evaluation. GiveWell, a non-profit firm, has taken research from development economics and used it to calculate how much good each dollar donated to a number of charities can do. It measures a charity’s success not in financial returns, but rather by factors such as how much it costs the charity to save a life. For example, the Against Malaria Foundation distributes antimalarial bednets in sub-Saharan Africa. GiveWell reckons that the benefits of its work add up to the equivalent of a life saved for every $2,000 spent by donors.

A typical household in America makes around $58,000 a year. Suppose it commits 10% of that, every year, to efficient charities. Over the course of a 40-year working life, this would add up to $232,000. GiveWell’s analysis implies that such a family would be responsible for saving the lives of 116 children if it were to give to the Against Malaria Foundation. Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who first came up with the drowning-child argument, notes that the efficiency of the charity to which one gives is as important as the amount given. This is true for many causes. For instance, if you are interested in maximising the public enjoyment of art, you could choose to buy an expensive picture for a museum. Or you could spend just $100 and help someone living in a poor country get surgery to prevent blindness from trachoma. They could then spend their entire life gazing upon paintings.

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Faith, hope and clarity (June 2018)