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dspeyer comments on Open thread, September 15-21, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: gjm 15 September 2014 12:24PM

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Comment author: Jodika 16 September 2014 06:25:48PM 5 points [-]

I have yet to find any thoughts on Effective Altruism that do not assume vast amounts of disposable income on the part of the reader. What I am currently trying to determine are things like 'at what point does it make sense to give away some of your income versus the utility of having decent quality of life yourself and insuring against the risk that you end up consuming charitable resources because something happened and you didn't have an emergency fund'. Does anyone know of any posts or similar that tackle the effective utilitarian use of resources when you don't have a lot of resources to begin with?

Comment author: dspeyer 18 September 2014 04:36:03AM 2 points [-]

I don't have a link, but I suspect cutting this fine is not very valuable. That last $10k would be a lot to you, but that wouldn't make it more than any other $10k to a charity. Instead, ask how you could come to have a vast amount of disposable income. Including whether it makes sense to spend some money toward that end. You may be able to get a very high rate of return investing in yourself.