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Metus comments on How valuable is volunteering? - Less Wrong Discussion
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A rough rule of thumb is that if the task at hand is low-skill, better to donate so that people can be paid to do the job. When the task at hand is high-skill, better to volunteer.
Examples for the former are soup kitchen or picking up trash. Examples for the latter are mentoring or open source projects.
Oh if you do open source projects, please have the decency to write a proper documentation in case you die or otherwise abandon the project.
I think picking up trash is quite often something that's useful, if you see some laying around and it would be easy to get rid of it. The transaction costs to hire someone to do 1 minute worth of picking up trash are pretty high.
This is not about picking up after one self - which I advocate - but about systematic efforts like cleaning up a neighbourhood.
For systematic effort I think you are right. At the same time I think it makes sense to feel responsible for the world around you in a way that goes beyond "picking up after one self".
Just because you didn't cause a problem doesn't mean that you are not responsible for fixing it.
It does not seem like we are really disagreeing here in principle, only in degree. I fix trivial things like paper cups in some shared space, reprimanding people I witness littering, but I won't go out of my way to pick up every cigarette butt on the street nor do I devote my life to ending poverty.
Basically I live according to the principle to fix my own yard for a somewhat arbitrarily extended definition of "yard".
I would agree with that.