The reason to make lots of money to give it away is elaborated on here, in the paragraph about the lawyer who wants to clean up the beach.
Summary version: More charities are funding-limited than volunteer-limited, and if you are making a sufficient amount of money, working one extra hour and donating the proceeds from that hour gets more done, saves more people, than using that hour to volunteer. The important part is to actually save people.
Saving people is far more important than giving consistently (If the best way to save people is to give each month, I want to give each month, if the best way to save people is to donate large chunks infrequently, I want to donate large chunks infrequently), saving people is far more important than having a good attitude towards giving (If having a good attitude towards giving makes me donate more, I want to have a good attitude towards giving, if having a selfish attitude towards giving makes me donate more, I want to have a selfish attitude), and saving people is far more important than spiritually developing in the process (I trust you can complete the pattern). I’m not saying these things are bad, it’s just that they are subgoals of the thing you are trying to accomplish, which is doing the most good. Making a great deal to give it away, and making sure you don’t backslide into selfishness are things to do to ensure that the most people can be saved. Regular giving is secondary in importance.
The goal is not fitting conventional patterns of giving, the goal is to help as many people as possible. To try to get a high score in the LIVES IMPROVED statistics column of the game of life. If something helps in this quest, do it, if it doesn’t help, stop doing it.
This seems terribly inefficient and dependent you a great deal of personal sacrifice to achieve a goal. I guess I do t understand why someone would completely change their lifestyle just to help as many people as possible. If the goal is saving people in a large way it seems to me that aligning oneself with the people and organizations doing that work and regularly supplying them with the needed resources is far better than this system. I would say that the best way to live in this manner would be to position oneself as a donor to be called upon at a moments notice to fill a gap at a certain level. Working just to give money just isn’t mindful of the commitment, the stress, and the need for self care. In order for you to be at your best you have to be well yourself. If you are living in a small apartment eating ramen while the beach is pristine that would not be optimal in my mind.
I think there’s an important distinction to be made between the different levels of earning to give. Really, there’s a spectrum between “donate 5 percent of income” at one end, and “devote existence to resolving issue” at the other end. For humans trying to do the best they can, in fact, trying to scale up too fast can lead to severe burnout. So caring for yourself and having a good life and low stress is a good idea because it guards against burnout. It is better to donate a thousand dollars a month to resolve an issue than three thousand with an 80% chance of burnout. Slowly build up to higher points on the spectrum that don’t give up quality of life.
Remember, the goal is to do that which works, not to win a “I’m way more hardcore about charity than you!” contest. If that which works leads to sacrifice and you can handle it without burnout risk, then sacrifice. If self-sacrifice doesn’t work for solving the issue, then don’t do it. And yes, aligning oneself with the people working on it and supplying them with resources is pretty much exactly what is required in many cases. Earning to give comes from the fact that the “supplying them with resources” step works much better with more resources, and working at high paying jobs is a good way to get resources.
And finally, about not understanding why someone would completely change their lifestyle to help as many as people as possible… Lifestyle changes tend to look really intimidating from the outside, not from the inside. In college, as an example, going “I’m taking >20 credits” makes people mightily impressed and worried about your inevitable lack of a social life, but once you actually start doing it, it doesn’t feel extraordinary or hard from the inside. Dropping annual expenses from 60k to 15k is another thing that sounds intimidating, but from the inside, it isn’t that difficult, and quality of life doesn’t significantly change.
So that’s one part of it, that it doesn’t take as much of a sacrifice as you think. The second part of it is that if there is anything at all that you value more than the thing you would spend the money on instead, moving the money to the more highly valued thing is inevitable if you don’t compartmentalize. I value ten lives more highly than purchasing a shiny new car, and I suspect that most people would agree with this. It’s just a matter of acting on preexisting values and desires.
I value ten lives more highly than purchasing a shiny new car, and I suspect that most people would agree with this.
I am pretty sure “most people” value having a shiny new car more highly than the lives of ten unknowns somewhere far away. Revealed preferences are revealed.
Being a man, I’m very good at compartmentalizing thing so I view giving and charity in its own box of things that I do. I hold what I do around charity and giving and this kind of thing in extremely high esteem especially because I work within myself, within my soul, within subtle realms, and this kind of thing. However, while I guess that is a method of giving I think living a good life and having sufficient resources to invest in oneself is a far safer bet than giving away as much money as possible. You really have to think of yourself in order not to become a charity case yourself. Doing that which is fulfilling and making you a better person has a duplicative effect and amplifies all that you do without the burnout or poverty stricken state that I think this system leads to. I agree that to the person doing it its not as hard as it might seem. I live on very little an most people think that I’m crazy or that its so hard but its not. However, there are moments like when my car needs something done or there is an event I’d like to go to that I really wish I had those resources to just pick up and go do that thing. I guess in that way I don’t see this extreme sacrifice method of giving is conducive to a good life. Does that make sense?
“You really have to think of yourself in order not to become a charity case yourself. Doing that which is fulfilling and making you a better person has a duplicative effect and amplifies all that you do without the burnout or poverty stricken state that I think this system leads to.”
This is a good argument against donating too much, but you can still keep enough for yourself to avoid poverty and burnout while earning to give. For example, of what my wife and I earn this year we’ll be dividing the money up like:
50% donations
23% taxes
21% saving
6% spending
You can see we’re saving several times our annual spending, which gives us a good safety margin in case something goes wrong. Part of why we’re able to have a budget like this is that we (me, wife, daughter) live frugally, and part of it is that we’ve tried to earn more so we can give more.
Good for you then for finding this lifestyle and creating a way to make it happen. I’ll admit I would probably do the same thing differently in different ways in a more spiritual sense of things.
Define “burnout”. It sounds like this means “has a psychological aversion to continuing to give”—but if that’s what it means, then someone who gives ten dollars a year and is psychologically unwilling to increase this amount could be described as already burned out at higher values, which I’m pretty sure is not your intention.
I’d read it as a loss of motivation to the extent of making it hard or impossible to keep doing that demanding, high-paying job that you’re doing so you can have more to give. Happens to plenty of people in demanding jobs even if they’re giving nothing.
The reason to make lots of money to give it away is elaborated on here, in the paragraph about the lawyer who wants to clean up the beach.
Summary version: More charities are funding-limited than volunteer-limited, and if you are making a sufficient amount of money, working one extra hour and donating the proceeds from that hour gets more done, saves more people, than using that hour to volunteer. The important part is to actually save people.
Saving people is far more important than giving consistently (If the best way to save people is to give each month, I want to give each month, if the best way to save people is to donate large chunks infrequently, I want to donate large chunks infrequently), saving people is far more important than having a good attitude towards giving (If having a good attitude towards giving makes me donate more, I want to have a good attitude towards giving, if having a selfish attitude towards giving makes me donate more, I want to have a selfish attitude), and saving people is far more important than spiritually developing in the process (I trust you can complete the pattern). I’m not saying these things are bad, it’s just that they are subgoals of the thing you are trying to accomplish, which is doing the most good. Making a great deal to give it away, and making sure you don’t backslide into selfishness are things to do to ensure that the most people can be saved. Regular giving is secondary in importance.
The goal is not fitting conventional patterns of giving, the goal is to help as many people as possible. To try to get a high score in the LIVES IMPROVED statistics column of the game of life. If something helps in this quest, do it, if it doesn’t help, stop doing it.
This seems terribly inefficient and dependent you a great deal of personal sacrifice to achieve a goal. I guess I do t understand why someone would completely change their lifestyle just to help as many people as possible. If the goal is saving people in a large way it seems to me that aligning oneself with the people and organizations doing that work and regularly supplying them with the needed resources is far better than this system. I would say that the best way to live in this manner would be to position oneself as a donor to be called upon at a moments notice to fill a gap at a certain level. Working just to give money just isn’t mindful of the commitment, the stress, and the need for self care. In order for you to be at your best you have to be well yourself. If you are living in a small apartment eating ramen while the beach is pristine that would not be optimal in my mind.
I think there’s an important distinction to be made between the different levels of earning to give. Really, there’s a spectrum between “donate 5 percent of income” at one end, and “devote existence to resolving issue” at the other end. For humans trying to do the best they can, in fact, trying to scale up too fast can lead to severe burnout. So caring for yourself and having a good life and low stress is a good idea because it guards against burnout. It is better to donate a thousand dollars a month to resolve an issue than three thousand with an 80% chance of burnout. Slowly build up to higher points on the spectrum that don’t give up quality of life.
Remember, the goal is to do that which works, not to win a “I’m way more hardcore about charity than you!” contest. If that which works leads to sacrifice and you can handle it without burnout risk, then sacrifice. If self-sacrifice doesn’t work for solving the issue, then don’t do it. And yes, aligning oneself with the people working on it and supplying them with resources is pretty much exactly what is required in many cases. Earning to give comes from the fact that the “supplying them with resources” step works much better with more resources, and working at high paying jobs is a good way to get resources.
And finally, about not understanding why someone would completely change their lifestyle to help as many as people as possible… Lifestyle changes tend to look really intimidating from the outside, not from the inside. In college, as an example, going “I’m taking >20 credits” makes people mightily impressed and worried about your inevitable lack of a social life, but once you actually start doing it, it doesn’t feel extraordinary or hard from the inside. Dropping annual expenses from 60k to 15k is another thing that sounds intimidating, but from the inside, it isn’t that difficult, and quality of life doesn’t significantly change.
So that’s one part of it, that it doesn’t take as much of a sacrifice as you think. The second part of it is that if there is anything at all that you value more than the thing you would spend the money on instead, moving the money to the more highly valued thing is inevitable if you don’t compartmentalize. I value ten lives more highly than purchasing a shiny new car, and I suspect that most people would agree with this. It’s just a matter of acting on preexisting values and desires.
I am pretty sure “most people” value having a shiny new car more highly than the lives of ten unknowns somewhere far away. Revealed preferences are revealed.
Being a man, I’m very good at compartmentalizing thing so I view giving and charity in its own box of things that I do. I hold what I do around charity and giving and this kind of thing in extremely high esteem especially because I work within myself, within my soul, within subtle realms, and this kind of thing. However, while I guess that is a method of giving I think living a good life and having sufficient resources to invest in oneself is a far safer bet than giving away as much money as possible. You really have to think of yourself in order not to become a charity case yourself. Doing that which is fulfilling and making you a better person has a duplicative effect and amplifies all that you do without the burnout or poverty stricken state that I think this system leads to. I agree that to the person doing it its not as hard as it might seem. I live on very little an most people think that I’m crazy or that its so hard but its not. However, there are moments like when my car needs something done or there is an event I’d like to go to that I really wish I had those resources to just pick up and go do that thing. I guess in that way I don’t see this extreme sacrifice method of giving is conducive to a good life. Does that make sense?
“You really have to think of yourself in order not to become a charity case yourself. Doing that which is fulfilling and making you a better person has a duplicative effect and amplifies all that you do without the burnout or poverty stricken state that I think this system leads to.”
This is a good argument against donating too much, but you can still keep enough for yourself to avoid poverty and burnout while earning to give. For example, of what my wife and I earn this year we’ll be dividing the money up like:
You can see we’re saving several times our annual spending, which gives us a good safety margin in case something goes wrong. Part of why we’re able to have a budget like this is that we (me, wife, daughter) live frugally, and part of it is that we’ve tried to earn more so we can give more.
Good for you then for finding this lifestyle and creating a way to make it happen. I’ll admit I would probably do the same thing differently in different ways in a more spiritual sense of things.
Define “burnout”. It sounds like this means “has a psychological aversion to continuing to give”—but if that’s what it means, then someone who gives ten dollars a year and is psychologically unwilling to increase this amount could be described as already burned out at higher values, which I’m pretty sure is not your intention.
I’d read it as a loss of motivation to the extent of making it hard or impossible to keep doing that demanding, high-paying job that you’re doing so you can have more to give. Happens to plenty of people in demanding jobs even if they’re giving nothing.