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I think you're spot on with the importance of signalling. Personal sacrifice is a strong signal that you believe in something and are serious about it. This is more inspiring and influential to others.

Donating $10,000 to an animal welfare charity is not good proof of personal sacrifice because $10,000 might be basically nothing for a very rich person. Unless people know how rich you are they can't interpret much from this.

Going vegan, however, is a similar level of inconvenience across most wealth levels. Whether you're on Struggle St or you're Bill Gates, giving up eggs and cheese sucks to a similar degree. So when people see that you're vegan they see personal sacrifice and serious commitment.

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Henry Howard🔸

Jul 8

In practice people aren't able to figure out the the nuances a person's net wealth and income and expenses are and how much of a sacrifice giving 10k really means to them. So they're forced to make a judgement quickly based on limited information. Being vegan is a less noisy signal of personal commitment than giving 10k to charity, so people will take this more seriously, whether that's fair or not.

Tobias HäberliJul 8*6

I've thought about this a bit, and I don’t think I fully understand the point you're making.

Surely, absent more context, a 10k donation is a strong signal? It only becomes weaker if you assume the donor is very rich (e.g. "it's <5% of their income"). But in the effective altruism community, that assumption would often be wrong.

Being vegan is a less noisy signal of personal commitment than giving 10k to charity, so people will take this more seriously, whether that's fair or not.

I don't know whether this is correct on average, but it likely depends a lot... (read more)

Henry Howard🔸

Jul 8

I intentionally said "similar", not "the same". It's slightly easier for Gates to be vegan than me but much much easier for him to give $10k than me

See in context

Buying your way out of personal ethics

by escapealert

Jul 52 min read 28

54

Animal welfarePhilosophyDietary changeMoral offsetting

Frontpage

Buying your way out of personal ethics

First-Order Utilitarianism Can Justify Harm

Second-Order Effects: Ethics Become a Privilege for the Wealthy

Personal Sacrifice and Offsetting Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

Veganisms Signalling Effect: The Power of Visible Ethical Action

28 comments

I’ve noticed a recurring argument in EA spaces around veganism: “If I donate enough money to effective animal charities, I’ll save more animals than I would by going vegan. So, I don’t need to personally stop consuming animal products.” While this may sound compelling on the surface, I believe it fails for several reasons—both ethically and practically.

First-Order Utilitarianism Can Justify Harm

This argument relies on a pure first-order utilitarian outlook, where harm is permissible as long as it’s “offset” by a greater good. Taken to its logical extreme, this reasoning leads to absurd conclusions: “If I donate $10,000 to save two lives, I’m morally justified in taking one life because it’s convenient or enjoyable.”

Second-Order Effects: Ethics Become a Privilege for the Wealthy

A system where individuals can buy their way out of ethical harm creates an inequitable moral landscape:

The Wealthy: Can offset harm without personal sacrifice, effectively “paying to win” the ethical game.
The Poor: Are left to shoulder a disproportionate moral burden. If they can’t afford to offset their consumption, they are unfairly judged as less ethical.

This framework commodifies morality, allowing wealth to shield individuals from accountability while punishing those without means. Ethics should not be reduced to a transactional system where only those with resources can be “good people.”

Personal Sacrifice and Offsetting Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

Another flaw in this argument is the assumption that personal sacrifices and wealth-based offsetting are mutually exclusive. They’re not. You can—and should—strive to minimise harm to the greatest degree you can while simultaneously leveraging your resources to maximise positive impact.

Veganisms Signalling Effect: The Power of Visible Ethical Action

Veganism also carries a unique advantage that’s often overlooked: its signalling power. It’s perceived by society as requiring a significant sacrifice—effort, consistency, and energy—when, in reality, it’s far simpler than people think.

Correcting the record is important, but this perception creates a surprising benefit: visible ethical actions inspire others. Seeing someone willingly make personal sacrifices for the sake of morality encourages others to act ethically, too.

Social Influence: This is the same principle behind actions like picking up litter. When people observe you doing something altruistic with low cost but high moral visibility, they’re more likely to engage in altruistic behavior themselves.
Societal Impact: Ethical signaling builds cultural momentum. It normalizes the idea that individuals should take personal responsibility to reduce harm, inspiring others to reflect on their actions.

This alone is a compelling reason to adopt veganism, even beyond the core animal ethics. Ethical actions ripple outward—strengthening communities and fostering a more moral society.

While donating to effective animal charities is a powerful way to reduce harm, it doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to minimise the harm we personally cause. Ethical behaviour shouldn’t be commodified or reduced to a transaction where the wealthy can “offset” harm while the less privileged carry the moral burden.

By going vegan, we not only act in alignment with our values but also send a powerful signal that we’re willing to make sacrifices for the greater good. This signaling has real, tangible benefits—encouraging others to take action and fostering a culture where morality isn’t about convenience, but about accountability.

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Richard Y Chappell🔸Jul 535

My main confusion with your argument is that I don't understand why donations don't also count as "personal ethics" or as "visible ethical action" that could likewise "ripple outward" and be replicated by others to good effect. (I also think the section on "equity" fundamentally confuses what ethics should be about. I care about helping beneficiaries, not setting up an "equitable moral landscape" among agents, if the latter involves preventing the rich from pursuing easy moral wins because this would be "unfair" to those who can't afford to donate.)

One more specific point I want to highlight:

...where harm is permissible as long as it’s “offset” by a greater good

fwiw, my argument does not have this feature. I instead argue that:

(1) Purchasing meat isn’t justified: the moral interests of farmed animals straightforwardly outweigh our interest in eating them. So buying a cheeseburger constitutes a moral and practical mistake. And yet:
(2) It would be an even greater moral and practical mistake to invest your efforts into correcting this minor mistake if you could instead get far greater moral payoffs by directing your efforts elsewhere (e.g. donations).

ClimateDocJul 106

Out of interest, what is it you consider so effortful about becoming vegan that it would so substantially reduce the effort you could put towards other causes? Do you think it is knock-on effects of enjoying food less, effort required to learn to change your meals, effects from finding it harder socially, or something else?

The actual effort to change to a vegan diet isn't that high in my view, at least if you have access to a decent supermarket (having done it) - it's just learning to make some different foods and remembering to buy some multivitamins once in a while (or at least B12). Once you've done the learning, it's not really an ongoing extra effort (like there's not really an ongoing effort in knowing how to cook omni food), and the benefits accrue over time.

I wonder if people overestimate the effect on enjoyment. First, if you find vegan alternatives that you enjoy, then you don't lose out a lot. Second, I think most EAs are probably familiar with hedonic adaptation, and how your happiness levels seem to be pretty resilient to lifestyle changes in the long-term (hence making donating money seem like less of a big deal) - so switching food also seems unlikely to really make you emotionally worse off. Third, we probably spend less than an hour per day with food in our mouths - it doesn't seem like it should be that important to overall wellbeing - I recall Daniel Kahnemann making a point that we overestimate the impact of certain things because we imagine the effect when we are doing them but not the lack of effect during all the time we are not doing them.

Social is quite situation-dependent. But if it's just that you have friends who take you to restaurants with no decent vegan option, it doesn't prevent being vegan in other meals. Shared meals with family who won't accept vegan food would seem trickier, but again there are surely some meals where a person could normally be independent.

Edit - or I guess worries about health could be another reason? Well, I don't know of good evidence that being vegan with a varied, not-heavily-processed diet whilst taking extras of certain vitamins has substantial negative effects (and if anything physical health seems to be better than with typical omni diets).

Richard Y Chappell🔸Jul 103

Mostly just changing old habits, plus some anticipated missing of distinctive desired tastes. It's not an unreasonable ask or anything, but I'd much rather just donate more. (In general, I suspect there's insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes, which also shouldn't be "so effortful", and we likely overestimate the personal value we get from marginal spending on ourselves.)

XylixJul 112

(In general, I suspect there's insufficient social pressure on people to increase our donations to good causes

I think in general if we agree to a ballpark of "10% donations is enough to satisfice some goodness thresholds", and also to "It would be good for social pressure to exist for everyone to do at least threshold amount of good", I think it raises various considerations.

10% makes sense to me as a schelling point (and I think the tables that scale by income bracket are also sensible).

But if the threshold amount of good would be "Donate 10%, aim for an impactful career, become vegan" (which is what I feel the social pressure inside EA is pointing towards), I think that is already a significant ask for many people.

I think it is also important to note that some people are more motivated by trying to maximize impact and offset harm, and some people more motivated by minimizing harm and satisficing for impact. (Of course a standard total utilitarian model would output that whatever maximizes your net impact is best, but human value systems aren't perfectly utilitarian.)

How do "donate 10%, become vegan, aim for an impactful", and "donate 30%", and "donate 20%, aim for an impactful career" compare in effectiveness as norms? I think this is pretty hard to estimate.

What kind of social pressure are you pointing here? Is it more in the direction of "donate 30%" or "donate as much as you can and aim for an impactful career?" Or do you mean social pressure in the wider society, and not within the EA community?

(Fwiw I think people underestimate the value of effective marginal spending on themselves, when considering areas of spending where there is space for significant extra value (Like purchasing more free time.). People plausibly overestimate the value on some other things, especially if one doesn't do spending introspectiont.)

ClimateDocJul 110

What do you think it is about going vegan that would prevent you from donating more? I'm still not sure of the causal link.

Richard Y Chappell🔸Jul 122

It's mostly not anything specific to going vegan. Just the general truism that effort used for one purpose could be used for something else instead. (Plus I sometimes donate extra precisely for the purpose of "offsetting", which I wouldn't otherwise be motivated to do.)

Jacob Watts🔸Jul 55

I agree with 1, but I think the framing feels forced for point #2.

I don't think it's obvious that these actions would be strongly in tension with each other. Donating to effective animal charities would correlate quite strongly with being vegan.

Homo economicus deciding what to eat for dinner or something lol.

I actually totally agree that donations are an important part of personal ethics! Also, I am all aboard for the social ripple effects theory of change for effective donation. Hell yes to both of those points. I might have missed it, but I don't know that OP really argues against those contentions? I guess they don't frame it like that though.

Richard Y Chappell🔸Jul 56

I don't understand the relevance of the correlation claim. People who care nothing for animals won't do either. But that doesn't show that there aren't tradeoffs in how to use one's moral efforts on the margins. (Perhaps you're thinking of each choice as a binary: "donate some" Y/N + "go vegan" Y/N? But donating isn't binary. What matters is how much you donate, and my suggestion is that any significant effort spent towards adopting a vegan diet might be better spent on further increasing one's donations. It depends on the details, of course. If you find adopting veganism super easy, like near-zero effort required, then great! Not much opportunity cost, then. But others may find that it requires more effort, which could be better used elsewhere.)

Jacob Watts🔸Jul 54

Ya, idk, I am just saying that the tradeoff framing feels unnatural. Or, like, maybe that's one lens, but I don't actually generally think in terms of tradeoffs b/w my moral efforts.

Like, I get tired of various things ofc, but it's not usually just cleanly fungible b/w different ethical actions I might plausibly take like that. To the extent it really does work this way for you or people you know on this particular tradeoff, then yep; I would say power to ya for the scope sensitivity.

I agree that the quantitative aspect of donation pushes towards even marginal internal tradeoffs here mattering and I don't think I was really thinking about it as necessarily binary.

LarksJul 516

I’ve noticed a recurring argument in EA spaces around veganism: “If I donate enough money to effective animal charities, I’ll save more animals than I would by going vegan. So, I don’t need to personally stop consuming animal products.”

You put this argument in double quotation markets, suggesting it is a verbatim quote - did someone make precisely this argument? The reason I ask is because I think you are presenting something of a strawman, and the typical argument presented - namely that our charity is finite, and both we and animals would prefer donations over abstinence - is much more plausible.

This argument relies on a pure first-order utilitarian outlook, where harm is permissible as long as it’s “offset” by a greater good. Taken to its logical extreme, this reasoning leads to absurd conclusions: “If I donate $10,000 to save two lives, I’m morally justified in taking one life because it’s convenient or enjoyable.”

This seems wrong to me. Typically 'pure' utilitarianism isn't taken to have a concept of 'permissible' - you should do the thing that causes the most good. Permissibility and supererogation are weakening of utilitarianism to incorporate other moral intuitions.

Joseph MillerJul 613

FWIW I have personally said something close to “If I donate enough money to effective animal charities, I’ll save more animals than I would by going vegan. So, I don’t need to personally stop consuming animal products.”

And after reading this article, I still stand by that position.

Henry Howard🔸Jul 62

utilitarianism isn't taken to have a concept of 'permissible'

Don't understand this point. OP is comparing giving $10,000 while killing 2 people to doing neither. Or being vegan to not being vegan while giving $$$ to animal welfare. Clearly by "permissible" they mean "higher utility than the alternative"

LarksJul 74

"permissible" and "higher utility than the alternative" are two very different things. Shooting one person at a bus stop is higher utility than shooting four, but that doesn't make it permissible, because you should shoot zero people. Pure utilitarianism says you should always do the best thing, and that means higher utility than all alternatives, not just some alternatives.

Danny Lipsitz 🔸 🌱Jul 51

Yes, agreed.

I don't believe it to be utilitarian to arbitrarily link two unrelated actions (donating money and, separately, taking a life).

The reason for taking the life would never be because it's enjoyable or convenient, it would only be if it is in direct service of saving the other lives.

Henry Howard🔸Jul 615

Tobias HäberliJul 79

Whether you're on Struggle St or you're Bill Gates, giving up eggs and cheese sucks to a similar degree.

Disagree, giving up eggs and cheese is easier when you are rich (e.g. because you can buy fancy replacement products) and much easier when you’re super rich (e.g. you can have world class private chefs, go to the best vegan restaurants in the world, etc.).

JasonJul 76

Sure, but it's still broadly "similar" in a way in a way donations are not. Even if going vegan is 5x easier for Bill Gates, that is much more similar than the difference in difficulty of making donations.

Tobias HäberliJul 7*2

I just don't think it's good proof of personal sacrifice in all cases and was arguing against this specific argument.

In general I'd argue against overly general statements about how much personal sacrifice something is. You'll often need to understand & trust someone a bit before you can really judge this.

Examples:

My guess is that long-term veganism correlates strongly with not perceiving it as a large sacrifice.
Some people see choosing an EA-aligned career as a major personal cost, while others would have made similar choices anyway.
One billionaire might see donating $1 million as a small gesture ("just 1/2000 of my net worth"), another might see it as a big deal ("that’s $1 million of my money").

Henry Howard🔸Jul 84

Being vegan is a less noisy signal of personal commitment than giving 10k to charity, so people will take this more seriously, whether that's fair or not.

Tobias HäberliJul 8*6

I've thought about this a bit, and I don’t think I fully understand the point you're making.

Being vegan is a less noisy signal of personal commitment than giving 10k to charity, so people will take this more seriously, whether that's fair or not.

I don't know whether this is correct on average, but it likely depends a lot on context. For example, being vegan in Hollywood might be seen as trend-following or health-related, while being vegan at a university might come across as principled and self-sacrificing.

Also, I don’t think it’s true that most of the people you're trying to signal to don't have important information about you. If you're telling friends you donated 10k, they likely know whether that’s a major sacrifice for you. And if a news story says “doctor donates 10% of her salary”, most readers will grasp the significance.

I'm not sure it's true that people generally see a 10k donation as less of a personal sacrifice than going vegan. But even if they did, I doubt the effect is especially important?

Henry Howard🔸Jul 85

I intentionally said "similar", not "the same".

It's slightly easier for Gates to be vegan than me but much much easier for him to give $10k than me

NickLaingJul 5*10

Thanks for posting - I think it's pretty brave of you here to make this your first post where I imagine most will disagree.

Im drawn to your moral burden for the poor argument. I would be especially interested to hear people's arguments here against the creation of an inequitable moral landscape, which I think can often be the case. When I was studying in England I was shocked how many educated people took the moral high ground and derided poor brexit voters, even though many of them thought they were voting for what was best for them, same as the liberal elite were. I was really uncomfortable with the decision.

One argument against I can think of is that people who donate might not actually morally claim to be better than their who can't afford it. Perhaps our moral status is partly tied to our privelege and wealth "to whom much is given, much is expected". Maybe donating to offset with our riches doesn't put us "above" poorer people who can't afford to.

But the perception and signals could be bad regardless.

Also yes, as a straightforward point sacrifice and moral offsetting aren't exclusive - sometimes arguments here on the forum might seem to make it seem that way, but I dont think it's people's intention most of the time.

David_R 🔸Jul 9*7

I think you make a lot of good points even though I ended up disagreeing with your conclusion. For now I'll reply to just one argument, since no one will probably even read this one:

"Seeing someone willingly make personal sacrifices for the sake of morality encourages others to act ethically, too."

I think that striving for veganism actually discourages most people from acting ethically about animals i.e. offsetting their footprint with donations, because it's adding a hurdle in the path to helping animals.

It's like demanding people do handstands before entering the gym.

It would be cool if everyone could handstands but not everyone is ready for that. And it's not even needed to be in good shape i.e. have a positive overall impact on animal welfare.

It also reminds me of oil companies pressuring people to do their part by turning off the lights when not using them and shortening showers. It seems like a trivial distraction from the systematic change, and the funding and broad public support, that is really needed.

LarksJul 153

Having thought about it a bit more, I realize you're making an important equivocation here:

This argument relies on a pure first-order utilitarian outlook

Ethics should not be reduced to a transactional system where only those with resources can be “good people.”

Pure first-order utilitarian systems do not have a native conception of 'good people'. It just says, for each person, what they should do. There is no direct comparison between the goodness of different people. It can answer related questions - like if two people are stuck in a burning building, which should you save - but moral offsetting doesn't make sense without a threshold of moral acceptability, which pure utilitarianism doesn't have. And if you're supplementing your utilitarianism with aspects from some other moral theory, why not supplement it with side constraints that say no murdering people?

Denis Jul 102

I love this post. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but I love that you are willing to say something provocative, to stick your neck on the line and say what probably a lot of people are thinking.

I am in exaclty this situation. I am not a vegan, and I donate to a great charity, FarmKind. I believe that my net impact on animal welfare is positive. But I also agree that this is largely part of my privilege of being able to donate without much hardship.

This post, more than anything else I've read or seen on this topic, made me pause and question my own ethics. Any post that has that effect is a good post, we can all do with having our ethical assumptions challenged every now and then.

There are complex arguments about the value and necessity of being vegan, I am not expert enough to add new value to that debate.

My one observation, from someone living in a world where if you mention EA, people respond "what's that?" - if they've heard of it, it's because of SBF. And in this world, especially in Europe, veganism is sometimes seen (absolutely without justification!) as something that people do to impress others, rather than necessarily as virtuous. (look at all the jokes about vegans). So I'm not sure how much the showing virtue argument works outside areas where veganism is already popular. But it surely doesn't hurt - more vegans will lead to even more vegans ...

So thanks for a great post !!

PS I really hope the people to gave it an X also replied or commented, I think when someone presents a coherent argument, and you disagree with it enough to give it an X, you should explain what exactly you disagree with.

RichieJul 92

"If I donate $10,000 to save two lives, I’m morally justified in taking one life because it’s convenient or enjoyable."

I see your point here, but it would more accurate to say (in the vegan offsetting case)

"If I donate $20 to save hundreds of lives, I’m morally justified in taking a dozen lives because it’s convenient or enjoyable."

Whilst the logic does change, the magnitude does, and I feel like that's important here.

"Seeing someone willingly make personal sacrifices for the sake of morality encourages others to act ethically, too."

This makes sense in theory, I am not sure it's correct in the case of veganism. Do many vegans here actually experience this? I definitely don't. I'm willing to bet most vegans experience orders of magnitude more stigma, defensiveness and abuse than moral admiration.

Stijn Bruers 🔸Jul 91

My arguments why meat offsetting is impermissible (and hence personal veganism is a moral duty): https://stijnbruers.wordpress.com/2019/08/22/carbon-offsetting-versus-meat-offsetting/

Vasco Grilo🔸Jul 9-4

Thanks for the post! I would be curious to know your thoughts on my estimation that animal farming increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails hugely more than it decreases that of farmed animals. I think the best way to increase animal welfare throught diet is eating beef, which I estimate decreases the living time of soil animals by 89.3 M animal-year/$.