After hearing Rich Roll speak at the Boston Veg Fest, I decided to look into his podcast. I enjoy hearing Rich Roll speak; he’s authentic, humorous, unguarded and has a great laugh. Listening to his podcast is like hanging out with some wiser, more relaxed friend who doesn’t judge you but has tons of interesting things to say which inspire you to be a better person.
The first podcast I chose to listen to was episode 178: Doing Good Better: William MacAskill on ‘Effective Altruism; & How to Maximize Positive Global Impact’.
It was incredible. William MacAskill, a research fellow at Cambridge University, addresses the question of how we can most effectively help others. He discusses how data can help determine a charity’s effectiveness, how “administrative costs” are not always a bad thing if they increase a charity’s effectiveness, and thoughts on choosing a career if your motivation is to make a difference.
This was a thought-provoking, fascinating, and motivating podcast. If you donate any of your time or money, you may enjoy listening to this podcast episode, reading William MacAskill’s book “Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help you Make a Difference” or going to one of the websites referenced in the podcast:
Resources for Effective Giving:
GiveWell is a nonprofit website that evaluates the effectiveness of charities and helps donors decide where to give
80,000 Hours is a compilation of research and advice that helps you decide how to make the biggest difference you can through your career.
Giving What We Can encourages people to donate at least 10% of their income to charities; it’s a community you can join for additional support, and has recommendations of top charities to donate to, as well as information about effective giving.
Some questions MacAskill addresses:
Are charities tackling the right problems? Before listening to this podcast, I had no idea that there’s a more positive impact on literacy rates in poor areas of Africa if you give money to de-worming charities than if you donate used books. Kids are missing time in school because they have parasites, and the books being sent aren’t solving the real problem.
Are we doing the good we think we are with our “ethical” purchases? MacAskill has some controversial but logical concerns about Fair Trade (many of the poorest farmers in the world cannot afford Fair Trade certification, and would do better if you bought regularly priced coffee from their countries and donated the price difference) and campaigns to boycott sweatshop goods (we should elevate the standards of living in those areas so people aren’t willing to work in those conditions, not remove the viable income opportunities they have).
How much does it cost to save a life? I hadn’t thought about putting a price on a life-saved, but MacAskill estimated that if you take the percentage of malaria cases that cause death, and the percentage of malaria cases you can reduce with mosquito nets, you can actually calculate the number of mosquito nets need to be purchased to actually save a life. He put the cost of saving a life with mosquito nets at $3,500. That’s much different than claiming that one inexpensive net “could” save a life.
Yes, that’s a high number, and perhaps it makes us feel a little less happy about sending $100 for mosquito nets. But it also means we can actually calculate our difference. If you donated even 2% of your take-home income over the next 10 years, how many lives would you very likely save? Exciting, isn’t it.
What this means for us:
How could saving lives change our life? We can make an effective difference with our money, and moreover, we can measure much of the difference we’re making. As MacAskill alludes to in the podcast, it would be harder to hit middle age and think “what is it all for?” if you have a little number in your head of the number of lives you’ve managed to save throughout your working career.
Food for thought, as the holidays approach and the tradition of giving begins. Perhaps a good time of year to give thanks as effectively as we can.
This is GOOD news: This isn’t a post to make us feel guilty about what we haven’t given. This is a post to make us excited about how much good we can do with our money if we give as effectively as possible, and how wonderful it is that these organizations are doing the leg-work for us to measure how we can make the biggest difference. That’s awesome.
Happy Halloween!
In other news, Happy Halloween! We had a wonderful day; the boys loved picking out their pumpkins (if you can lift it, you can bring it home!) and we helped carve the faces based on pictures they drew. We toasted the pumpkin seeds, went trick-or-treating, and finished the evening with my favorite book of Halloween poems by Jack Prelutsky.
I hope you had a wonderful Halloween!
Note: This is the first post for #NaBloPoMo – a “blog per day” initiative based on the popular NaNoWriMo in which people write a novel during the month of November. I’ll be publishing a blog post every day this month (many of them shorter!) so check back for daily posts containing information, inspiration, and thoughts on living a good running life.