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Emile comments on Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others... - Less Wrong
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Comments (318)
The points made here are sound. I was particularly awakened by calling out the rule about overhead as wrong, since that has been a major factor in my charitiable giving in the past.
However, if we imagine everyone behaving according to these rules, we wind up with very few (incompetent) people running a few charities with piles of cash. If no lawyers take time off and contribute their expertise to a charity, then how do charities protect themselves from lawsuits, for example? The optimal charity solution is not for everyone to follow your guidelines, but for almost everyone to follow your guidelines, and a few people to deviate. Yet, how do we know whether we should be the ones who deviate?
If the choice is between charities making antimalarial drugs run by competent people, and charities making (more useful) mosquito nets run by incompetent people, then yes on the short term you might see incompetent people with loads of cash, but then other charities will probably pop up making malarial nets with low overhead, and then they'll get the most donarions.
Or if you're concerned about competent people all getting a "real" job and donating money: it's only rational to do so when the marginal utility of volunteering is less than the marginal utility of working and donating. If that's the case now (too many volunteers, not enough money), that doesn't mean that all volunteers should stop and go get a job.