Comment on Taking Effective Altruism Seriously

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 01:53:49 GMT

The rate of return on the stock market is around 10%. This is much faster than the rate of growth of sub-Saharan economies. Actually foreign aid might have a negative rate of return since most of the transfers are consumed rather than reinvested. Which isn't a problem per say - eventually you have to convert capital into QALYs even if that means you stop growing it (if you are an effective altruist). The question is how much, and when?

I didn't actually come up with the argument that investing now and donating later is more efficient. Robin Hanson did, and there has been some back and forth there which I highly recommend (so as not to retread over old arguments).

I believe the price of saving a QALY has been increasing much faster than the growth of capital. (Does anyone have a source?) This means it is most effective to donate money now.

Even if QALYs per dollar decrease exponentially and faster than the growth of capital (which you've asserted without argument - I simply think that no one knows), there is still the issue of whether investment followed by donation (to high marginal QALY causes), is more effective than direct donation. Its a very difficult optimization problem and while I don't know the answer to it, I'm disappointed by how overconfident people are that they know the answer.

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