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irrational comments on What's the right way to think about how much to give to charity? - Less Wrong
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I didn't say anything about trying to maximise your investment. I strongly suspect that the people behind Endaga, for example, could get more money by operating in a more conventional business environment. Entrepreneurship in the third world is emphatically not thoroughly picked over, but it is just not as profitable as selling to rich Americans. If you are willing to pay that opportunity cost, you can have a big effect.
Secondly, effective altruism is a result, not a process. If the most effective way of helping the world is to give nothing to charity and set up businesses instead, then effective altruism would say set up the businesses. I am precisely questioning the assumption that effective altruism == charitable giving.
In that case your example of bike rides is pretty bad. It's a strawman. The comparison is bed nets or deworming.
This thread is interesting, but off-topic. There is lots of useful discussion on the most effective ways to give, but that wasn't my question.
To forestall an objection: I think investing with a goal of improving the world as opposed to maximizing income, is basically the same as giving, so that comes into the category of how to spend, not how much money to allocate for it. If you were investing rather than giving, and had income from it, you'd simply allocate it back into the category.