I absolutely love this @Thomas Kwa. Something along these lines of thinking has been a deep part of my Christian tradition, from the parable of the widow's mite

"Just then he looked up and saw the rich people dropping offerings in the collection plate. Then he saw a poor widow put in two pennies. He said, “The plain truth is that this widow has given by far the largest offering today. All these others made offerings that they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all!”

Obviously this is a bit more "deontological" and "heart focused" reasoning but agrees in practise with your comment "one should obviously give up more utility if beneficiaries gain more per unit you sacrifice"

I used to argue that someone who earns 100k and gives 10% has in a non-utilitarian sense might have  given "more" than someone who earns $200,000 and gives half away. But I think I almost like your "sliding scale" more as there's some nuance there.

"This is weird because if the even the pessimistic numbers were accurate, Open Phil on its own could have almost wiped out malaria and an EA sympathetic org like the Gates foundation definitely could have."

This statement is completely untrue. There is no amount of money right now which could "wipe out" malaria. If there were even a decent chance of this, non-EA funders would have poured 10s of billions to make it hapen.

I like this post and I think most of the arguments you make are good. But there's a big problem here which might make thus idea hard to pull off.

Most companies get successful and big largely because of driven founders and investors who push the business forward through greed and power-hungriness. 

I think this your plan is worth a try, but it's easy to underrate how much greed and thirst for personal gain drive success in business. I wish altruism could be as strong a driver.

Greed and power can corrupt people along the way too. There's some evidence for this in the AI race. companies started as "non profits" but then were slowly corrupted and morphed into profit making companies for individuals.

I'm not saying it can't work, but I in think it takes really special kind of good person to drive and run a business that makes money truly for the good of others, AND don't get corrupted by greed and power over time if the company becomes successful. I'm not sure there are many of those people around.

I agree that most EAs probably don't think biodiversity is good in and of itself. I'm in the minority that do - I'm not just a hedonistic utilitatian. Also to reassure people

Its OK to be an EA and not just believe the only thing that matters in this universe is how much well-being there is.

I think the OP has a very good point, and with this much money moving around, biodiversity funding might well be an interesting area for some people to look into.



 

This comment doesn't make much sense to me. 

"Once you factor in wild fishing, then it's even more clear. And the method of slaughter for sea fish (suffocating or crushed to death in a pile) does not seem meaningfully better to me than a factory farm slaughterhouse, so the connotation still applies imo."

First seacaught fish are not farmed. The simple fact that some fish are farmed illustrates the difference. Estimates I can find are between 1 and 2 trillion fish killed while fishing, about 10x the number of total farmed animals. This means excluding invertebrates using your farmed animal numbers maybe 10% of the animals we kill are factory farmed (excluding wild animal stuff), which is quite different from 99%

I also disagree that "the method of slaughter for sea fish (suffocating or crushed to death in a pile) does not seem meaningfully better to me than a factory farm slaughterhouse, so the connotation still applies imo." Yes the death might be bad or worse, but most suffering at a factory farm comes from a badly lived life, not a bad death. Many might disagree and I'm very uncertain, but its very possible that many fish that we kill after catching (yes with a bad death) have net positive lives. I find it hard to believe their suffering is on the same scale as a factory farmed chicken or pig.
 

That 12 people agreed with such a clearly false statement concerns me on what is usually a pretty rational forum. If we include sea fishing plus (maybe) all the insects we kill through spraying, not even close to 99 percent of animals we kill are factory farmed. It might even be under half.

Also this line... "Dwarfs all human problems (including throughout history)" might be true, but it's extremely uncertain and a great way to turn people off the cause and make people less likely to donate. 

over 99 percent of the world doesn't work on factory farming, and this at least appears to make it sound like you think their work is unimportant. 

I think the animal welfare movement still has a big a motivation/messaging problem which doesn't help on the donation front. I think there's a lot to learn from examples like the masterful Lewis Bollard TED talk here which still claims factory farming is the biggest moral problem of our time, while not alienating and showing a lot of empathy for regular people.

https://youtu.be/dvLnIecUNL8?si=VyvYqWjIp701j_MB

Animal welfare corporate campaigns often are adversarial to some extent, heavily EA funded. AI safety stuff sometimes is too.

true man long live the King!