Not many people these days openly call themselves effective philanthropists. You can mostly thank convicted felon Sam Bankman-Fried for single-handedly making sure that more people hear “functional altruism” and think “cryptocurrency scam” instead of “donating a lot of money to a good cause.”

But there is still much work to be done in line with the Effective Altruism (EA) worldview and related principles: combating lead poisoning, working against factory farming based on efficiently finding the best pressure points to improve animal welfare, diseases that still Major killer in poor countries, US works to reform kidney policy, works to ensure advanced AI development.

I think talking to a lot of people this development — EA’s downplaying, if not EA’s cause — is all for the best. Does it ever really make sense to put all these things under one umbrella? Even if all these people have the advantage of learning from each other, collaborating closely, moving between roles and sharing a lot of ideas behind the scenes, what’s the point of advertising umbrellas instead of advertising achievements?

(Disclosure: In August 2022, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded a grant to Vox’s Future Perfect for its 2023 reporting project. That project has been canceled.)

But some things fall by the wayside if you stop talking about effective altruism in favor of just talking about the specifics that the movement leans toward. One of those things? The innovation is called “Earning to Give”.

Earnings must be paid Controversial effective philanthropy concepts A good way to make the world a better place is to take a job where you make a lot of money and donate most of that money to important, less meaningful causes. (To be clear, no high-paying job would be fine, but industries like tech and finance are generally considered fine.)

This is a sharp contrast to the more common idea that if you want to do well with your career, you should avoid the temptation of a high-paying corporate job in favor of working directly at a nonprofit organization.

Earnings to donate is an idea that can be salvaged

There are obviously problems with the naive formulation of earnings to give, which would amount to “work the highest paying job you can get and donate money.”

Some jobs certainly cause enough direct harm that, by working at them, you probably won’t achieve anything good by donating your salary. From the beginning, effective philanthropists have argued not whether there is a line—clearly there is—but where to draw it. Marketing Addictive Cigarettes? Probably not acceptable. Working on advanced AI systems? Well, it depends on what you think they will do to social harm on the net.

(And hopefully it goes without saying that founding a cryptocurrency startup is best for the admittedly good reason of making lots of money to donate to charity. It’s only a good idea if you’re very careful not to alienate your customers with your connected hedge fund trade. ‘ Money

A problem here, of course, is that people who make a lot of money generally find it easier to lie about the social harms of their high-paying professions. And in many cases, the way to do good in the world is to do it directly, not to pay someone else to do it—especially if you’re a person with rare and in-demand skills.

Over the years, many people I know who have made money have switched to working directly on important issues. That makes sense. If you’re a skilled tech or finance person, someone who can earn a really high salary, there are probably many important jobs that would benefit from your skills, not just your checkbook.

But I always pay for the earnings I got in some valuable and important cases. It goes like this: There’s a lot of important work that needs funding, and an individual family donation — my wife and I give about $50,000 a year — can make a huge difference in doing some of that important work. Billionaire foundations will never cover it all, and organizations are better off funded by motivated individuals than billionaire foundations anyway. It distorts their priorities less, it’s a lot less politically awkward, and committed individuals can make bets that foundations can’t or won’t.

I also like Earn for his unabashed friendliness to capitalism, a rare quality for the good left. I believe that the last century has made the world much, much better for the vast majority of people, and targeted scientific innovation is a huge part of the story, another huge part of the story is The astonishing success of the market economy. Why did the world become better? Valuable things are done by most people, often for selfish and financial reasons.

Not every big-dollar job is ethical, and I’d encourage you to think hard about what you do specifically and whether it makes the world a better place. But I generally think participating in the economy is a fundamentally good and admirable thing to do, even though many progressives see it as morally negative.

And I want to have a vision for fixing our world that proceeds from this foundation Abundance is goodThat wealth is good, that “increasing the pie” is good, that The trade off is realAnd to make those trade-offs more bearable we need to create new things and create new resources. These convictions have always seemed to me to be a stronger basis for fixing the world than their ideological rivals.

Capitalism is actually good

As much as I love earning to pay for these causes, many people hate paying all the time Exactly the same reason. Donated earnings says that you can do a lot of moral good by actively participating in our capitalist system, trying to make a lot of money, and then buying whatever you want (research, bednets, wealth redistribution, you name it) with the money you earn. . This is a capitalist ideology.

It makes a lot of sense to me that people who think capitalism is a dirty word aren’t enthusiastic about the idea of ​​using it in the name of altruism – and that lack of enthusiasm is shared by many of my fellow travelers in their efforts to make the world a better place. But if you think capitalism is a net good, like me, I think you should be enthusiastic about the possibility of earning to give. You can see it as one of many ways to do good, but also a specific strategy that the world could use a lot more of.

And if, like my family, you are wealthy and have a high-paying job, I would strongly encourage you to consider making a large annuity donation. I won’t claim it’s easy. This makes budgeting more difficult and delays home renovations that we want to complete. But that’s the amount of money a high-income American family can afford to spend without providing essentials Enough money to accomplish a great deal in the world.

We are the beneficiaries of the richest society in human history. We live in material abundance unimaginable by our ancestors. We can use it to put some of it aside and do things for the world.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect Newsletter. Sign up here!

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