Is there any discussion of lines of work which tend to make people’s lives better, while not formally being philanthropic? For example, there might be money to be made in making sanitation in hospitals easier and cheaper.
Certainly lots of people are trying for obvious ways to help lots of people—e.g. a cure for cancer. But it’s a good point that there may be unsexy areas, like sanitation, with lower-hanging fruit.
(Further disclaimer: I’m not a spokesperson for 80 000 hours, so this isn’t the party line—take what you find on the website over me if we disagree).
Not that I’m aware of, although given a lot of 80ks message is about how ‘formally’ or ‘commonly considered’ philanthropy is not as good as more counter-intuitive means, I (and I’d guess most other folks at 80k) would be pretty sympathetic to it. I guess the closest analogue on the site would be discussion of ‘high impact PAs’. (http://80000hours.org/blog/54-the-high-impact-pa-how-anyone-can-bring-about-ground-breaking-research)
Is there any discussion of lines of work which tend to make people’s lives better, while not formally being philanthropic? For example, there might be money to be made in making sanitation in hospitals easier and cheaper.
Certainly lots of people are trying for obvious ways to help lots of people—e.g. a cure for cancer. But it’s a good point that there may be unsexy areas, like sanitation, with lower-hanging fruit.
(Further disclaimer: I’m not a spokesperson for 80 000 hours, so this isn’t the party line—take what you find on the website over me if we disagree).
Not that I’m aware of, although given a lot of 80ks message is about how ‘formally’ or ‘commonly considered’ philanthropy is not as good as more counter-intuitive means, I (and I’d guess most other folks at 80k) would be pretty sympathetic to it. I guess the closest analogue on the site would be discussion of ‘high impact PAs’. (http://80000hours.org/blog/54-the-high-impact-pa-how-anyone-can-bring-about-ground-breaking-research)