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banx comments on Open thread, Apr. 01 - Apr. 05, 2015 - Less Wrong
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What do folks here think about blood donation? Is the consensus that it's not an efficient way to help people?
Sure it is, if you are in the vicinity of a donation site on a regular basis anyway. Pop in, donate, read while doing so, pop out again. Warm fuzzies during pleasure reading time.
Warning, my opinion on this may be influenced rather heavily by the fact that I essentially don't notice the donation, nor do I mind needles.
Maybe it's not, but it's super-conspicuous and might be useful for reputation-building. Also, if you want to practice dealing with blood draws in a not-being-sick context it could be useful. (I haven't donated yet though because age restrictions.)
I don't think it's efficient. If you work for the amount of time you'd be spending giving blood and donate the money, you'd do much more good.
Possible, conditional on your income. Assuming we need blood, unless your work creates an efficient blood replacement alternative, someone must donate blood. Less Wrong's readership skews young with a lot of college students, who presumably have low income. If you're reading this, you are probably someone who has a comparative advantage in donating blood rather than money.
Someone needs to donate blood. Someone needs to donate mosquito nets. But there are already enough people donating blood. We still need more mosquito nets.
Just because you have a comparative advantage in donating blood doesn't mean it's worth it. It just means that it's not a bad idea by as many orders of magnitude.
Citation?
It costs $130 to $150 for a pint of blood. You have about ten pints, so even if you needed to replace all of your blood, that would still only be $1,400 or so. If it was life-or-death, people would be willing to pay far more than that.
I don't see what's the inefficiency in it. Currently it's the easiest way to obtain an otherwise irreplaceable resource.
It might not be an "efficient way to help people" in the sense of having high marginal value. It's still a positive pro-social activity that addresses an important problem which isn't easily solved by other means.
It may not be an effective way to help people but it sure as hell helps you up to do it up to three times a year. All hail longevity! I regret I am in a rush so I can't link but I believe RomeoSteverns' post on optimising your health has the references.
This is RomeoSteverns' post on optimising your health. See the section under "blood donation". Note that this advice only applies to males.
In response to that I started donating blood once a year (thus by now twice).