This is a belated (and rough/short!) post for Effective Giving Spotlight week. The post isn’t meant to be a criticism of GWWC or of people who have taken the pledge[1] — just me sharing my thoughts in the hope that they’re useful to others or that I’ll get useful suggestions. Also, since I drafted this, there’s been a related discussion here.
I donate, and I’ve sometimes thought about taking a GWWC pledge, but haven’t taken one yet and don’t currently think I should. The TL;DR is that I’m worried about (1) runway and (2) my life changing in the future, such that donating more would be unsustainable or would trade off in bad-from-the-POV-of-my-EA-values with direct work.
Longer notes/thoughts
I’m currently prioritizing “direct work”. That doesn’t mean that I can’t donate (and in fact I do and enjoy doing it when I do), but I’m worried about committing to donating in a way that would lead me to make poor tradeoffs in the future. Signing the pledge seems like a serious commitment.
In particular, I’m thinking about:
1. Having enough runway[2]
- Runway seems important (and has been discussed a fair bit before, see e.g. here and more recently).
- … for potentially starting something on my own, or taking a poorly paid (or unpaid) opportunity to upskill
- E.g. going into a Master’s program, taking a sabbatical to see if I can build up a new idea, etc.
- … for epistemics & independence
- E.g. if I was worried about EV/CEA/the usefulness of my work, I can imagine leaving without another opportunity lined up, so I’m relatively free to consider what’s wrong at EV/CEA (otherwise this would be really stressful to think about). If I had no runway at all, I’d have a much harder time thinking about leaving. [Edit: see an elaboration on this point in this comment.]
- … for potentially starting something on my own, or taking a poorly paid (or unpaid) opportunity to upskill
- To the extent that donations trade off building runway, I should factor that in.
- I.e. if the alternative to donations right now is saving money, and I’m below where I should be for having enough runway, that means donations are in some sense more costly. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t donate in any situation until I've hit my runway target, just that the bar is probably higher for me right now.
- How much runway someone should have (i.e. the shape of the “usefulness of runway” curve[3]) is confusing to me — I’d be interested in hearing what others think.
2. My life changing in the future, such that donating more would be unsustainable or would trade off in bad-from-the-POV-of-my-EA-values with direct work
- I have a family that I may need to support in some circumstances. I’ve thought about (not-too-unlikely) scenarios in the coming years where I might face a choice between having drastically less time for my work, spending significant amounts of money, or not fulfilling my family obligations in a way that I think is bad. (Being there for my family is one of my core values/goals.)
- And I probably want kids. If I have a child (or multiple children), I think there are many worlds where it would be better for me to be able to do something like hire a part-time nanny or pay for other services that would allow me to work more. (See this recent post!)
- Not committing to donating a certain amount every year might mean I can make better tradeoffs in situations like these.
3. Some worries about my thinking
- My reasoning might be motivated: I might be fooling myself into thinking that I shouldn’t take the pledge because that would be less stressful for me.
- Value drift: I’m worried that my future self might not donate for reasons that I don’t endorse. But I’m not too worried about that right now.
- ^
I'm really grateful to (and impressed by) the folks who've taken a donation pledge and who donate a lot.
- ^
Runway is less specifically related to the question of whether to take a pledge, vs. just the choice of whether I should donate at any given point, but it’s something I’m thinking about as I think about whether I should take a pledge.
- ^
Here's a sketch of what I mean:
I’m also not sure I’m even tracking the considerations that might be most important for determining this curve for myself or in general.
Thanks for writing this - it definitely makes sense to me and resonates with another discussion we had in the Berlin EA office recently on what counts as "disposable income".
I would just note three things:
And then relatedly:
And then finally, and a minor point:
In each scenario you mention, I think the correct trade off is "is the security for me not to suffer X more important than the benefit of donating this money?". So when it comes to caring for your family, I think it's fair enough to prioritise that pretty highly. But in this scenario, you could just carry on working at CEA while you do your job search, and I think it's pretty indulgent to say "the ability to resign immediately rather than do my job and look for other jobs on the side is worth more than the value of donating money to help people in extreme poverty". People become disillusioned in their jobs and start applying for other ones all the time, and I think you could do this as well, without undue hardship :-)
One potential crux here is: in what percentage of potential universes should my runway be long enough? 100 percent is impossible, and 99.999999 percent is impossible too, with a possible exception for HNW individuals.
One potential diagnostic here (in general, not commenting on anyone's particular situation): if someone concludes that they need a very high coverage runway, how much of their current income are they devoting to getting there?
If I conclude that I needed 99 percent coverage, the risk of the runway not being complete when I needed it would be si... (read more)