An interesting difference between the drowning child situation and the “could donate to effective charity to save children’s lives” situation is that the person who happens to be walking by that pond has a non-transferable opportunity to save a child’s life for $500 (or whatever the cost of the clothes are, plus some time cost, and the inconvenience of getting wet and muddy). In the case of effective charity, even if one declines to donate, other people will still have the same opportunity. In the case of the drowning child, the fact that you are the only one who can act makes jumping in to save the child somehow seem more urgent. If you don’t save the child, then you’d be somehow “wasting” a valuable opportunity. For a mostly selfish person who values all lives other than their own at less than $500, the opportunity would be valuable to others but useless for themselves.
If the going rate is $1000 to save a child through effective charity, then a mostly altruistic person would be willing to pay a mostly selfish person $600 to compensate for the costs of their clothes. There would have to be some “honour” involved, since the selfish person couldn’t exactly unsave the child after the fact. If they could make the deal work anyway, then the mostly selfish person would have succeeded in selling non-transferable opportunity for $100, and it would be worthwhile for them to save the drowning child.
I would like to distinguish between money burnt and money transferred. The $500 are burnt, assuming you handpicked homegrown cotton and knitted it into clothes. The $1000 are also burnt, assuming that nobody extracts rent on saving children. The $600 are merely transferred, and so the altruist may be willing to pay more even than $1000, if he expects the profits spent in ways he still moderately endorses.
An interesting difference between the drowning child situation and the “could donate to effective charity to save children’s lives” situation is that the person who happens to be walking by that pond has a non-transferable opportunity to save a child’s life for $500 (or whatever the cost of the clothes are, plus some time cost, and the inconvenience of getting wet and muddy). In the case of effective charity, even if one declines to donate, other people will still have the same opportunity. In the case of the drowning child, the fact that you are the only one who can act makes jumping in to save the child somehow seem more urgent. If you don’t save the child, then you’d be somehow “wasting” a valuable opportunity. For a mostly selfish person who values all lives other than their own at less than $500, the opportunity would be valuable to others but useless for themselves.
If the going rate is $1000 to save a child through effective charity, then a mostly altruistic person would be willing to pay a mostly selfish person $600 to compensate for the costs of their clothes. There would have to be some “honour” involved, since the selfish person couldn’t exactly unsave the child after the fact. If they could make the deal work anyway, then the mostly selfish person would have succeeded in selling non-transferable opportunity for $100, and it would be worthwhile for them to save the drowning child.
I would like to distinguish between money burnt and money transferred. The $500 are burnt, assuming you handpicked homegrown cotton and knitted it into clothes. The $1000 are also burnt, assuming that nobody extracts rent on saving children. The $600 are merely transferred, and so the altruist may be willing to pay more even than $1000, if he expects the profits spent in ways he still moderately endorses.