This is a post about charity, and doing good.
In the very beginning, let me stress that this is not a dismissal of the good works done by activists, volunteers, the peace corps, or anybody else. People do good work.
And, this is not meant to say that you should give away your money if you don't want to. Clearly.
But.
The point -- it seems -- of going to the peace corps, or volunteer for a green organization, or running a soup kitchen, is to help people. That is, to do good in the world.
That is, the ultimate point isn't to make yourself a better person, or get to know yourself, or to understand the plight of the agricultural worker. The point is to make the world a better place.
So, shouldn't we -- ought we, in fact -- do charity in the way that creates the most good?
As an example from pop culture, in How I Met Your Mother, the lawyer Marshall wants to do good in the world by being an environmental lawyer. But, he has a wife and kid (spoilers) to support, so he works for the evil corporate GNB. His expenses increase, and he cannot afford to not work there.
Let us pretend for a moment that Marshall GNB salary is approximately that of a first-year associate doing big-law in DC: 160k. And that his environmental law job is 60k.
That's a huge difference, yes? So much so that Marshall could take $60,000 from his big-law firm to pay for a younger version of him to, you know, work for the environmental lobby and still wind up with more money. And the younger version of him, who doesn't have a kid and house, would be happy.
Instead, there's a lot of pretending that it is all or nothing. I think this attitude is pervasive -- either we're sellouts or we're martyrs. And its bullshit.
Give Directly has evidence -- actual empirical evidence -- that giving money to people does actual, lasting good. And, they open their books and practice a radical sort of transparency. Not volunteering in a soup kitchen, not going to Africa to teach English, but getting as much money as possible from the market and giving huge portions of it away.
It is why Carnegie will be remembered, and it is what Buffet is trying to get billionaires to do.
It doesn't have to come from the billionaires. It can come from all of us, producing as much as possible to extract as much wealth from the market as possible and, instead of lifestyle inflation, give the money to the needy.
So -- what's the point of this? Its half introspection, and half the message of: Do good work. If you want to do charity, don't become a lawyer who volunteers at a soup kitchen -- use your legal education to build your income, and use your income to do charity.
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I'm getting some unexpected +1's on this post, but no comments. I'm not sure what that means.
ReplyDeleteThere's also an assumption that living enough within your means to spend money on charity is impossible... and while I'm more than willing to accept living on $160K in certain areas around DC might be hard... there are also other areas around DC where it's not. As a society we suck at budgeting and saving, which also means we suck at charity.
ReplyDeleteI would walk back your comments about GiveDirectly a bit. The most recent study done that I've heard of on them (the one that, e.g., got discussed on Planet Money) indicates that giving people money with no strings attached works, not that it works better than anything else.
ReplyDeleteEva Schiffer This is true. My household -- in the DC area -- lives on substantially less than 160, and we live very well. Of course, we are savers and have a very different profile from most. I don't understand why folk making more than us can't decide what their priorities are, and spend money towards those -- or, worse yet, I don't know how anyone making that kind of money things it is OK to live paycheck to paycheck.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Levine Valid point, I'll update. Do you know of any research on how well traditional charity works?
ReplyDeleteI mean, it's a whole field? (And it's not mine - I just try to be an educated layperson with my own charitable giving). J-PAL might be a good place to start looking at stuff: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/
ReplyDeleteHere's a good recent piece about what Daniel Levine brought up: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/opinion/let-them-eat-cash.html?_r=1
ReplyDeleteThus why i said "that I've seen". Thanks, Daniel Levine and Eva Schiffer
ReplyDeleteEva Schiffer This certainly doesn't seem to contradict my position. In fact, think about it this way: Those who run charities are, often, gatekeepers. It used to make a hell of a lot of sense to have gatekeepers in this industry, and perhaps now it makes less sense. It may be time for those gatekeepers to go away, and make it easier to give money directly to those that need it.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I think there's still a place for charities in organization. A good charity can promise you what the money you give them is going for. And not all charities are about giving directly to people, some are about other good causes like digging wells or connecting doctors who are willing to volunteer with people who need surgery in areas with few doctors.
ReplyDeleteThere are also other potential roles for charities (though I agree that we should be wary, and asking the question, "are they just invidiously paternalistic here?"):
ReplyDelete1. Solving coordination problems. There is no reason, in principle, why if a well costs $10,000 to dig, 1000 villagers that we've given $10 each to couldn't pool their money and dig it. But in real life, that can be hard to arrange - it might be more likely to get done if you give a huge chunk to one agency.
2. Facilitation. Donor organizations can provide meeting spaces, bring in international trainers and other experts, etc., in ways that are difficult for locals without the same lines of access to do (related to 1, in the end).
3. Institutional knowledge. Good charities are engaged in their own processes of self-reflection. You could, of course, give $100 to GiveDirectly and $100 to J-PAL for research, and get a similar result.
4. Local knowledge. Even GiveDirectly has staff - you're not going to go to the slums of Liberia and hand out cash, and you might get taken if you tried (you also might get Ebola).
5. Advocacy. Just giving cash doesn't address political and structural problems. Like with 1, people could use the money to work less and agitate more, but there are coordination barriers to that. Oxfam and MSF can already throw a lot of weight around.
BRAC, to whom I usually give my yearly 10%, is a group that I support largely because it gets high marks on 2-5.
(PS I'm also not particularly convinced by utilitarianism, so I think there can be good reasons to, e.g., volunteer at your local soup kitchen rather than take on some more work hours and give the cash to GiveDirectly. But certainly once we're talking about "I want to give money to help poor people abroad" you should typically pick the most efficient way of accomplishing that.)
Daniel Levine Not convinced by utilitarianism? From nearly anyone else, I'd assume they misunderstood what UT is all about. Even so, a quick argument: The biggest task is in assigning utility values. I may value my city more than Ethiopia, and want my charity to happen there. If so, I still want to figure out how best to help the city -- right? If not, then I'm not sure what the point of charity is.
ReplyDeleteFor the rest -- this wasn't really meant as an advertisement for GiveDirectly, though it does kind of read that way. Instead, I'm arguing for throwing money at problems rather than self-sacrifice. Doing Peace Corp almost assuredly does good in the world, but could the same person bring about as much -- or more! -- good by working for as much money as they can get, and giving away huge portions?
That's meant to be the thrust, and the debate over which charity to give money to is icing. My intuition says we can do more good by acting selfishly towards the market and generously otherwise, than we can by giving our labor for free, especially when we could be generating much more value than, say, digging a ditch. I think the evidence at least doesn't contravene that, and may lean towards it.
William Nichols There's a slight fallacy in what you've just said. Not everyone can instantly get a job that pays them a lot of money and even then I think it's fair to make value judgments about what jobs you are willing to take. I could be making a lot more money if I was willing to work in industry, but I like my job in accademia. It's better for my health and sanity.
ReplyDelete+Eva SchifferInteresting. I'm not convinced it is a fallacy -- I didn't say everyone could extract large amounts, I said they should extract as much as possible. That's -- probably -- more from industry than from working for a charity.
ReplyDeleteAs for working for academia -- absolutely it is a value judgement! You are valuing your own mental well being over the good you could potentially do for others through the loot you'd gain by working a job you hate that will burn you out.
That's totally fair. I also do not work 60+ hours a week -- heck, I'm often at less than 40 -- because I value myself.
All that being said, the real point is, if your intention for a particular hour is to do good, do you do more good by working at market rates and then donating that money, or by volunteering?
As income potential rises, the argument for donating goes up.
Derek Balling That is something I've thought of, believe it or not. My hope -- and I admit this is institutional and doesn't have much of a backing of fact -- is the charity jobs such as Executive Director and the like would start paying market rates.
ReplyDeleteAt least one charity did work this way, until Charity Navigator gave them a shitty rating, for having high overhead costs. I could dig up the relevant research, but, basically, they brought in huge amounts of money, paid their people real amounts, and used a good chunk of money to do good work.
Hell, I'd love it if political positions payd market rates, too.
Derek Balling I don't think that's too big of a possibility in the real world, because different people have different priorities for what work they will accept and how much money they think they need to live on. I'm pretty sure those priorities are not directly correlated with their skill in those jobs. ;)
ReplyDeleteDerek Balling , didn't you spend some time in academia? My understanding is it was personal recovery time, which fits in with where Eva Schiffer is coming from.
ReplyDeleteTo point out a potential oversight, and maybe to get this conversation back on the rails I want:
ReplyDelete1. GD does not hand out physical cash, and they spend 90% of all incoming dollars as purely given out. That is, if you give them $100, at least $90 winds up in the hands of a poor person.
2. If you give money to people, then they can decide what doctors to use. It seems like hooking them up with doctors is acting as a gate keeper -- though, admittedly, there's an important distinction between gatekeeper and value-added middlemen, and it is one I often ignore.
I was thinking more of people who need surgery and live in the middle of nowhere in Africa, where there are no doctors who will perform the surgeries. If you live in the developed world you generally have lots of options within reasonable cost of travel.
ReplyDeleteand that's value-added middlemen, who are legitimately important.
ReplyDelete