4 ms·

"How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached." Chances are,

"How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached." Chances are, you ain't alleviating suffering around the world by putting in overtime at your shitty startup job. So feel free to pack up at 5PM.

gjm11 13y ago
I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to be less productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea, my employer is more likely to be successful and make my options worth something), so the starving billions get more money from me. I don't think this situation is all that unusual. Charitable giving that's a fixed fraction of income is common practice in many religions (which have a whole lot of members) and among the "effective altruism" community (which is small but I bet it's overrepresented among HN types), and is a natural enough thing to do that I bet lots of other people do it. (Ideally I wouldn't need to say these things explicitly, but I will anyway: Of course working harder is not always a good idea; as I said above, it's very much possible to work harder and merely make yourself tired and therefore less effective. And of course working harder, whether it makes you more effective or less, is no guarantee of getting paid more; plenty of employers are quite unresponsive to their employees' commitment and productivity. If anything I've said above looks as if it's denying those things then I expressed myself badly and I apologize.)
- normloman 13y ago
  Giving money to charity is good. But if you worked less, you'd have more time to volunteer. I'd say that's more valuable.
  - tedks 13y ago
    Being a developer is a very valuable skill. Presumably, working for eight hours as a developer can pay for a number of volunteering efforts, so it's strictly more valuable. If a charitable organization needed some software written, volunteering to write it would certainly be helpful, but this still requires you to be a domain expert in two things, rather than one. Unless you mean "valuable" in the sense of "makes you feel more fuzzy," in which case you are killing people and I advise you to stop.
  - gjm11 13y ago
    I think current best estimates are that the most efficient charitable donations you can make save about one life per $2000 donated. If you're a decently but not extravagantly paid US software developer (I'm not, but the money is in the right ballpark) then maybe your salary is $100k/year; let's say you donate 5% of that before tax, or $5k/year; that's 2.5 lives saved per year. Most things you could do by volunteering full time probably do less good than that. (Of course "lives saved" is an unsatisfactory metric; something like QALYs would be better. But the lives-saved figure is the one I happen to remember.)

gjm11 13y ago

I can't speak for com2kid, but I am alleviating suffering around the world by working hard at my (not particularly shitty) startup job. The amount of money I give to charity is an approximately-constant fraction of my income. If I work harder I'm more likely to get paid more (and, unless I work so hard as to be less productive overall, which is certainly possible and a very bad idea, my employer is more likely to be successful and make my options worth something), so the starving billions get more money from me. I don't think this situation is all that unusual. Charitable giving that's a fixed fraction of income is common practice in many religions (which have a whole lot of members) and among the "effective altruism" community (which is small but I bet it's overrepresented among HN types), and is a natural enough thing to do that I bet lots of other people do it. (Ideally I wouldn't need to say these things explicitly, but I will anyway: Of course working harder is not always a good idea; as I said above, it's very much possible to work harder and merely make yourself tired and therefore less effective. And of course working harder, whether it makes you more effective or less, is no guarantee of getting paid more; plenty of employers are quite unresponsive to their employees' commitment and productivity. If anything I've said above looks as if it's denying those things then I expressed myself badly and I apologize.)

normloman 13y ago
Giving money to charity is good. But if you worked less, you'd have more time to volunteer. I'd say that's more valuable.
- tedks 13y ago
  Being a developer is a very valuable skill. Presumably, working for eight hours as a developer can pay for a number of volunteering efforts, so it's strictly more valuable. If a charitable organization needed some software written, volunteering to write it would certainly be helpful, but this still requires you to be a domain expert in two things, rather than one. Unless you mean "valuable" in the sense of "makes you feel more fuzzy," in which case you are killing people and I advise you to stop.
- gjm11 13y ago
  I think current best estimates are that the most efficient charitable donations you can make save about one life per $2000 donated. If you're a decently but not extravagantly paid US software developer (I'm not, but the money is in the right ballpark) then maybe your salary is $100k/year; let's say you donate 5% of that before tax, or $5k/year; that's 2.5 lives saved per year. Most things you could do by volunteering full time probably do less good than that. (Of course "lives saved" is an unsatisfactory metric; something like QALYs would be better. But the lives-saved figure is the one I happen to remember.)