Pledging to give
Quite a while ago, I listened to a podcast between Will MacAskill and Sam Harris. I have almost no recollection of that conversation. However, one topic that must have come up was charity. Some philosophers argue that we should all donate all of our income to the poor up until we are only marginally better off than they, and that further giving would not increase their lot more than it would immiserate ourselves. Maybe those philosophers are right, and we really should do this. For most people though, myself included, this would be like starting to squat with an 800lbs weight – used to our lives of comfort, most people would not even attempt the feat, knowing they would be crushed. My fuzzy memories of that MacAskill-Harris conversation recall them discussing the idea that if we set a bar so high that no one will even attempt to reach it, we are only setting ourselves up for failure in our goal to relieve the suffering of others. It would be better, rather than aiming at first for perfection, to set a goal that pushes us beyond what we’re currently doing, and yet is not so distant that we would never attempt to achieve it.
Today, I finally decided to step up to that bar, as I officially became pledge # 6337 at Giving What We Can. The pledge involves donating at least 10% of your lifetime earnings to an effective charity. The vast majority of my donations will go to the Against Malaria Foundation, one of Give Well’s top-rated charities, with a few smaller donations related to other causes I believe in. However, I am just one man, and even if I were to donate 100% of the income above what I need for bare survival to charity, that would only be so much. When Sam Harris announced he would make the pledge, many people, now including myself, followed in his footsteps, ultimately donating much more than Sam could ever donat himself. Likewise, I hope that writing this blog post will inspire you to join me in the pledge and multiply my own impact. Further once you have made the pledge, I ask you too to spread the word, like the world’s most benign chain letter, multiplying the impact of the pledge with each additional person whom the message reached.
And so, I ask you, dear reader, to join me in taking up the 45lbs bar of helping others and sign the Giving What We Can pledge, and promise to donate 10% of your lifetime income to an effective charity:
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