A professional philanthropist is, typically, someone whose full-time job it is to figure out how to give away their money.
This isn’t how 80,000 Hours uses the term. I found it confusing, so I asked them and they said they meant “devoting your life to earning money and giving it away.” Not that someone spends 40 hours a week thinking about how to give their money—that seems excessive. If you’re really that good at charity research, you might as well work for GiveWell and share your findings. Or, better yet, work another job and fund whatever’s best (which might be charity research).
If not donating surplus money is morally equivalent to causing whatever bad outcome the donation would prevent, you are now twice as guilty.
This is why I prefer to think of it in consequentialist terms. If I give 10% of a larger salary, fewer people suffer—so that’s good. But of course, a better outcome would result if I both pursue a higher-paying job and donate a higher percentage. Where I eventually draw the line depends on my willpower, how utilitarian I am, and my estimation of what may cause me to burn out.
If I give 10% of a larger salary, fewer people suffer—so that’s good. But of course, a better outcome would result if I both pursue a higher-paying job and donate a higher percentage.
This is exactly it, and it’s something that people seem to misunderstand about Singer. He is merely stating that if donating more money will help, then it’s obligatory.
In the event that spending your money in other ways will help more, or that working so hard will burn you out, then the antecedent doesn’t hold.
I’m glad you wrote this.
This isn’t how 80,000 Hours uses the term. I found it confusing, so I asked them and they said they meant “devoting your life to earning money and giving it away.” Not that someone spends 40 hours a week thinking about how to give their money—that seems excessive. If you’re really that good at charity research, you might as well work for GiveWell and share your findings. Or, better yet, work another job and fund whatever’s best (which might be charity research).
This is why I prefer to think of it in consequentialist terms. If I give 10% of a larger salary, fewer people suffer—so that’s good. But of course, a better outcome would result if I both pursue a higher-paying job and donate a higher percentage. Where I eventually draw the line depends on my willpower, how utilitarian I am, and my estimation of what may cause me to burn out.
This is exactly it, and it’s something that people seem to misunderstand about Singer. He is merely stating that if donating more money will help, then it’s obligatory.
In the event that spending your money in other ways will help more, or that working so hard will burn you out, then the antecedent doesn’t hold.