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Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate?

Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate? Is making $40K/yr doing something "meaningful" better than making $100K/yr doing something "meaningless" and donating $60k/yr to meaningful causes?

wpietri 11y ago
Have you tried this? I know a lot of people, but nobody who has done this sustainably. I've definitely seen people start out on that road. But either they eventually quit and find jobs with meaning or they gradually end up not caring about meaning and spend the money on creature comforts.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Bill Gates is the most prominent public example. I also know a number of folks at Google who are very charitably active despite working big-corp jobs. Usually they compartmentalize very drastically, though, so I never heard about their charitable activities at work and only learned about them second-hand, through chance encounters with mutual acquaintances.
  - rifung 11y ago
    Is Bill Gates really an example of what the person described? Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think his motivation for working or making money was to donate it. It seems like he decided after accumulating his wealth that he should use it for good. It seems important to note the difference because I don't find it hard to imagine how a person whose motivation is to help the public good might not be passionate about a job which doesn't inherently do "good".
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      It's hard to speak of motivation unless you're the person in question. Most people do things for a number of different motivations. Hence the adage "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior." I suspect that as far as Bill Gates is concerned, he considers it all a game and just wants to win. For the first half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he makes. For the second half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he donates. This is all just suspicion, though.
      - wpietri 11y ago
        Did Gates ever speak of this? If not, it's a terrible example. Plenty of rich people, after spending their lives in business, eventually switch to philanthropy. Presumably because they discover, like the OP, that they value doing something more meaningful than stacking up money. But that's entirely different than somebody who has that realization young and does corporate stuff as a way of extracting cash, which is what alwaysdoit was suggesting.
nmrm2 11y ago
Doesn't that entirely depend upon whether you think you'll be more effective than some other person making 60k/yr? In other words, if you're a "10x" malaria killer and if 10xers are rare in the malaria killing business, then probably it's better for everyone (except you) that you kill malaria for a living. Rather than paying someone 60k to take your place (esp. if that other person is a 1xer or -10xer.)
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate? That's a great thing to do. It doesn't directly address the problem of insufficient talent being directed to those projects, though of course the money might allow the people running those projects to offer more to talent, which might deal with the problem. Of course, choosing to work on the project yourself deals with that issue more directly.
lefler 11y ago
It doesn't have to be either/or. Will Chan is donating 20% of his income to charity. He has done that whether he was in DC with us or at Google. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13pddzpwn30d5ozb04cffrj2kvgwpiayp40k https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13pddzpwn30d5ozb04... I support the idea of effective altruism, but at this exact moment, I believe that technical people donating time goes further than technical people donating money.

wpietri 11y ago

Have you tried this? I know a lot of people, but nobody who has done this sustainably. I've definitely seen people start out on that road. But either they eventually quit and find jobs with meaning or they gradually end up not caring about meaning and spend the money on creature comforts.

nostrademons 11y ago
Bill Gates is the most prominent public example. I also know a number of folks at Google who are very charitably active despite working big-corp jobs. Usually they compartmentalize very drastically, though, so I never heard about their charitable activities at work and only learned about them second-hand, through chance encounters with mutual acquaintances.
- rifung 11y ago
  Is Bill Gates really an example of what the person described? Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think his motivation for working or making money was to donate it. It seems like he decided after accumulating his wealth that he should use it for good. It seems important to note the difference because I don't find it hard to imagine how a person whose motivation is to help the public good might not be passionate about a job which doesn't inherently do "good".
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    It's hard to speak of motivation unless you're the person in question. Most people do things for a number of different motivations. Hence the adage "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior." I suspect that as far as Bill Gates is concerned, he considers it all a game and just wants to win. For the first half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he makes. For the second half of his life, the game was maximizing the money he donates. This is all just suspicion, though.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      Did Gates ever speak of this? If not, it's a terrible example. Plenty of rich people, after spending their lives in business, eventually switch to philanthropy. Presumably because they discover, like the OP, that they value doing something more meaningful than stacking up money. But that's entirely different than somebody who has that realization young and does corporate stuff as a way of extracting cash, which is what alwaysdoit was suggesting.

nmrm2 11y ago

Doesn't that entirely depend upon whether you think you'll be more effective than some other person making 60k/yr? In other words, if you're a "10x" malaria killer and if 10xers are rare in the malaria killing business, then probably it's better for everyone (except you) that you kill malaria for a living. Rather than paying someone 60k to take your place (esp. if that other person is a 1xer or -10xer.)

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate? That's a great thing to do. It doesn't directly address the problem of insufficient talent being directed to those projects, though of course the money might allow the people running those projects to offer more to talent, which might deal with the problem. Of course, choosing to work on the project yourself deals with that issue more directly.

lefler 11y ago

It doesn't have to be either/or. Will Chan is donating 20% of his income to charity. He has done that whether he was in DC with us or at Google. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13pddzpwn30d5ozb04cffrj2kvgwpiayp40k https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13pddzpwn30d5ozb04... I support the idea of effective altruism, but at this exact moment, I believe that technical people donating time goes further than technical people donating money.