Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices about Giving Back

A chapter or two into this book, I was already thinking about people I could recommend it to. To begin with, he discusses an exciting idea for pumping water from the ground in developing countries – the PlayPump – a kind of roundabout that kids could play on and pump water at the same time. It didn’t work out in the end and MacAskill uses it as an illustration for his central premise: that we need to evaluate ideas, conduct studies, and examine data before we donate huge amounts of money to any cause. In other words, that we need to be better at quantifying the benefit of money that we donate to charities (or any time or money that we use to do good). Then he introduces some stats on income – if you earn more than ,000, the typical income in the US, you’re in the richest 5% of the world’s population, and ,000 puts you in the 1% globally. Since 20% of the world’s population earn less than 0 per year (.50 per day), a small portion of your income would make a much bigger impact in their lives than it would in your own.

That only covers the intro and the first chapter, and I feel that the book was interesting for a while after that but then went steadily downhill. MacAskill is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University, but I was surprised that most of his book is based on economics, and it’s strange that it lacks both the wider and deeper perspective that I would have expected based on his chosen field. But then, he got his PhD barely three years ago. In short, he attempts to reduce everything to a number – how much difference do you make by donating to one charity versus another. I’m a scientist – I believe in objective evaluation of data to reach a conclusion. But MacAskill’s book has several problems. Maybe it’s better if I go through them as a list.

1. His calculations are extremely rough – some of them are built on so many assumptions that the conclusions are almost meaningless (GIGO, as one reviewer put it). I cringed a bit while reading his attempts to calculate how much good (in dollars) a student may do if she becomes prime minister or an MP, versus the odds of it happening. It’s not without some value to see him try to work this out but really, the book is about quantifying good – he needs to step it up a bit.

2. It lacks a broader perspective. His calculations on lives saved versus dollars spent leads to a very short list of specific charities that he recommends. You can see these at givewell.org. The top one supplies bed nets to repel mosquitos in Africa. There’s no doubt that bed nets save lives. However, the book I happened to pick up next, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa gave the example that distribution of free nets by charity organizations has put some African net makers out of business. Perhaps a better way would be for charities to buy from local net makers and then distribute these nets, or to subsidize costs for local net makers. There are pros and cons of both approaches, but MacAskill doesn’t address them. He’s a philosopher, not an economist, and yet he reduces everything to dollar values, and says very little about other values and issues.

3. By attempting to be surprising or interesting, he ends up being very misleading on certain issues. I was looking forward to chapter 8 since it covers ethical consumerism, but when I saw the chapter heading, “The moral case for sweatshop goods,” my heart dropped a little. MacAskill is trying so hard to write a book that surprises people by challenging their assumptions (in a Malcolm Gladwell kind of way) that he ends up making some statements that are extremely unbalanced and misleading. He makes the point that sweatshop jobs are sought after since they provide much needed income and therefore he quotes some bloke who said the problem is “not that there are too many sweatshops but that there are too few.” Nice job – you succeeded in shocking us. It’s only as almost an afterthought that he mentions that we could buy clothing from companies that have higher labor standards (People Tree, Indigenous, Kuyichi) but he doesn’t want to detract too much from the shock value of his chapter by spending more than a sentence to mention that conditions in sweatshops can be improved in response to consumer choice. Then, just in case you are thinking of looking into clothing companies that have better worker conditions, he follows the statement about higher labor standards with the sweeping statement that “I’m not so sure that ‘ethical consumerism’ works as intended.” He then goes on to say that the Fairtrade system is not useful – most of his references for this trace back to the same source, ignoring the wealth of evidence that Fairtrade and direct trade, although not perfect, are beneficial to farmers and communities. He then goes on to almost mock the idea of saving energy at home when you can just buy carbon credits to offset your emissions. Offsetting emissions is fine, but the idea of not making any changes in your own life is a problem I’ll address in the next point. A casual reader could easily get these messages: buy sweatshop clothes without any discernment, avoid buying products that claim to be fair or direct trade, and don’t bother saving energy.

4. Where will all of this lead us? MacAskill devotes a lot of space to the idea of “earning to give,” looking at a case study where a doctor can do more good by earning a high salary in the West, rather than working directly in Africa, as long as they donate a good portion of their salary to effective charities (e.g. mosquito nets). This idea is economically sound. Chapter 9, entitled “Don’t follow your passion” (Woah! I’m shocked!) explains that you should not attempt to have a career in your dream area (let’s say sports or music) because very few succeed in these areas. You should choose something lucrative like management consulting or marketing, and then “earn to give” and save more lives that way. Again, the (associate) professor’s logic is sound – as far as numbers go. My concern (which increased with my progress in the book) is that the whole premise, the quantification of lives and accounting of “good” purely on dollars, could lead us astray if we’re not careful. The practice has some value – we do need to evaluate whether charitable work or altruistic action is effective. But there is short-term accounting and then there is long-term growth. Let’s say I join a marketing firm in order to “earn to give,” ignore my impact as a consumer, ignore my energy use (but offset it with carbon credits), and donate some of my earnings to a charity that supplies mosquito nets in Africa. The possible dangers that I can see here are that I am taking almost no responsibility for my immediate actions, except for the grand gesture of offsetting them with my donations – is there any real possibility of personal growth here? Will I end up reducing (or abandoning) my donations to maintain the life I’m now accustomed to as I adjust to the ethos of my workplace? Is there any real improvement of global conditions if we express no preference for the corporations that we support as consumers (or employees)? And are we really just maintaining dependence of African nations (and others) on Western aid? Don’t get me wrong – we should do some good with our money. But whatever we do needs to empower people and also improve the social and environmental impact of the corporations that control most of the commerce (i.e., distribution of money) on the planet.

To some extent I’m playing devil’s advocate in this review. But I think it’s needed because MacAskill often chooses shock-value over balance. I’m not sorry I read the book, but I think some of his ideas are short-sighted. As a specialist in philosophy I’m sure he understands that our character determines the world we live in, our global macrocosm is a reflection of the individual microcosm. To make compromises in the ethics of our personal lives in order to serve a greater good is a dangerous game. (Check out his blog post: “Working for a hedge fund could be the most charitable thing you do.” In fact, you’ll get the gist of the book if you check out williammacaskill.com, givewell.org and 80000hours.org) I’m pretty sure that he means well, but sometimes I get the feeling that his Oxford-Cambridge background has perpetrated a kind of imperialist attitude to the rest of the world. The end does not always justify the means.

MacAskill takes us through the process of analyzing our altruistic based choices, from selecting which charities to support, to career choices, and more. First, he explains why the outlook he takes (that the good that a charity actually provides) is more important than the commonly used factor of “how much of the donated money does this charity use for purposes other than overhead and fund-raising”. Though the proportion of money used for actual charity work may seem important, if that work actually ends up providing little or no actual benefit to someone, then it is money wasted.

CH 1 – You Are the 1 Percent: Just how much can you achieve? – This chapter offers an eye opening look at world income inequality. Some shocking facts, “If you earn more than ,000 per year, then, speaking globally, you are the 1 percent… Even someone living below the US poverty line, earning just ,000 per year, is still richer than 85 percent of people in the world.” Because of this, donations to charities working on social issues in Third World areas have the potential to do much more good per dollar. MacAskill calls this effect the 100x Multiplier. Because of the disparity between what can buy in this country, and what it can buy in the Third World, that dollar can provide much more benefit overseas. Lest you think that the problem is so great and your dollar is so small, that you need not bother, MacAskill points out, it’s not the size of the bucket that matters, it’s the size of the drop you are putting in the bucket. That drop actually matters to real people in need.

CH 2 – Hard Trade-Offs: Question #1: How many people benefit, and by how much? – This chapter compares ‘buying’ charity services to buying groceries. MacAskill points out how if you were shopping for groceries, you would want to know exactly what benefit your money was getting for you. Likewise, when you spend charity dollars, it would be best to know exactly what benefit you are “buying.” This introduces the concept of QALYs. That is, quality-adjusted life years, which is an estimate of the actual benefit. By using QALYs, you can compare how many QALYs per dollar your donation “buys” at different charities. MacAskill argues that your own sense of personal connection is immaterial; that only the amount of benefit matters. I question this, if only because if someone doesn’t feel a personal connection, they are likely to cease donating at all. Still, this really doesn’t diminish the value of this book, as you, ultimately, are the one who decides who to donate to.

CH 3 – How You Can Save Hundreds of Lifes: Question 2: Is this the most effective thing you can do? – This chapter looks at fat-tailed distributions. That is, distributions that are strong skewed toward one end of the chart (as opposed to, say, a bell curve). Because of fat-tailed distributions, donations to some causes provide MUCH more benefit than donations to others.

CH 4 – Why You Shouldn’t Donate to Disaster Relief: Question #3: Is this area neglected? – Here, MacAskill looks at how the concept of diminishing returns often means that donations to neglected causes offer more benefit for the dollar.

CH 5 – The Best Person Who Ever Lived is an Unknown Ukranian Man: Question #4: What would have happened otherwise? – This chapter looks at the concept that, “The good I do is not a matter of the direct benefits I cause. Rather, it is the difference I make.” That is, if whatever benefits you caused to happen would have happened anyways, your resources (time, money) are better spent elsewhere. Part of this chapter looks at this concept in regards to career choice, especially as regards doing work that benefits a cause directly, versus earning a lot a money and donating a high percentage of that.

CH 6 – Why Voting Is Like Donating Thousands of Dollars to Charity: Question #5: What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? – MacAskill examines the benefits of things which are unlikely to happen, but have a large effect when they do happen. Voting is an important example, but this chapter looks beyond that, as well.

CH 7 – Overhead Costs, CEO Pay, and Other Confusions: Which charities make the most difference? – Overheads costs, including CEO costs, aren’t the main factor in deciding which charities are best. What matters is the amount of benefit achieved per dollar donated, not the percentages of were those dollars are spent. In determining benefit, MacAskill looks at 5 questions: 1) What does this charity do? 2) How cost-effective is each program area? 3) How robust is the evidence behind each program? 4) How well is each program implemented? 5) Does the charity need additional funds? The book than looks at some of the charities that do very well when looked at using these parameters. I was happy to see one of my own favorites, GiveDirectly, on this list.

CH 8 – The Moral Case for Sweatshop Goods: How can consumers make the most difference? – Sometimes something that looks to be beneficial may actually be harmful. In this chapter, sweatshops, fair-trade, low-carbon living, and vegetarianism are looked at, to examine aspects of “doing good” that may actually do harm instead. A very important chapter, as rather than your dollar doing less good that it could do elsewhere (as in the topics discusses in other chapters), your dollar may actually be doing harm. Not a happy thought.

CH 9 – Don’t “Follow Your Passion”: Which careers make the most difference? – MacAskill looks at some unintuitive aspects of career choice for those interested in doing altruistic work. Factors looked at include personal fit (what makes a job a good fit may not be what you think it is), your impact on the job (how much benefit would you provide), and impact later in life. The conclusion is that the best career choices include direct work for a highly effective organization, earning to give, and building your skills. Some high potential long shots include entrepreneurship, research, politics and advocacy. This chapter also takes a quick look at volunteering.

CH 10 – Poverty Versus Climate Change Versus…: Which causes are most important? – Unlike most of the other chapters, which give more concrete advice, along with insights, this chapter offers a “framework for thinking about the question” and then uses that framework to suggest causes that should be given high priority, but acknowledges that there is much room for differences of opinion. This framework looks at the causes based on scale (magnitude) of the problem, neglectedness, tractability, and personal fit (when considering spending time rather than money on the cause). Case studies used are the US criminal justice reform, international labor mobility (the page and a half devoted to this is really worth reading – so much insight in so little space), factory farming (this cause is near & dear to me), 2 to 4C climate change, catastrophic climate change, and other global catastrophic risks.

Very highly recommended. Your dollars and time can do SO MUCH MORE if you spend them well and Doing Good Better offers to opportunity to make good choices. I’m so impressed that I’m adding William MacAskill to my Amazon list of authors I am “following” as I don’t want to miss what comes next! Well, rats, Amazon isn’t offering that option right now. Come on Amazon!