[jjoonathan]

> Economists like to talk about "utility" and the common good with their theories, but they tend to only measure money

Yeah, that's the problem. The economic notion of value weights according to wealth while the moral notion of value does not. It's absolutely scandalous that we let economists conflate the two.

Feed a starving kid in Africa? Zero economic value. The kid doesn't have money. Figure out how to merge together a bunch of megacorps to build a monopoly, raise prices, reduce quality, and make the lives of millions strictly worse? The market will ejaculate capital all over your value-creating endeavor.

[renewiltord]

This is nonsense. It's not The Market™ or The System™. It turns out starving kids in Africa are of no value to anyone except to their parents, who have no means to provide commensurate to the child's value to them.

The blunt truth is that arbitrary lives are probably nearly valueless and certainly worth less than $1000. I have tested this hypothesis by describing GiveWell's mathematics to people at varying stages before they would spend money similar to that: in every case, people choose to spend the money rather than save arbitrary life.

I have tested this hypothesis on myself and it turns out that a pair of Zipp 606 carbon fibre wheels are worth way more to me than two African children.

The "moral notion of value" is a nonsensical concept invented to reinforce the notion of self-worth while not contributing to anything. Test it on yourself each time you spend: is a human life worth more to you than a hundred burritos? a set of car tyres? the higher trim on your car? The magic of this method is that it's memoryless. Irrespective of whether you give a million dollars a year or ten, the question applies to the next one thousand.

Your spending habits will prove it. No. Arbitrary life is valueless to you. And if you disagree, it should be easy to prove since GiveWell can save one arbitrary life per thousand dollars. Show me your spending and I will construct a way you could save a life by giving up non-essential parts of life.

[jjoonathan]

> It turns out starving kids in Africa are of no value to anyone

Listen to yourself. This isn't normal, but on markets, it is.

> The "moral notion of value" is a nonsensical concept

No, it's the fundamental concept. Economic value should aspire to approximate it if we want the market to be a force for collective good. To the extent that economic value fails to approximate moral value, the economy fails to serve our collective interests.

In CS terms: greedy algorithms fail hard in predictable ways.

> [So why don't you give more through GiveWell?]

Because I'm stuck in a system that's designed to punish me for doing so above and beyond the intrinsic cost of providing for the kid. Here's a counter-proposal: I'd absolutely sign up for a wealth-proportional share of a tax for ending world hunger. I'm not poor, even by HN standards, so this isn't cheating, but the fact that this formulation of the solution wasn't obvious to you demonstrates how thoroughly you've been trained to see the world through the circus-house lens of wealth-weighted utility, and just how perversely that lens distorts the world.

[imtringued]

>>It turns out starving kids in Africa are of no value to anyone >Listen to yourself. This isn't normal, but on markets, it is.

If you treat starving kids as important then you will have more starving kids. If you treat starving kids as unimportant or undesirable you will try your best to prevent them from being created in the first place.

The vast majority of necessary policies that you need to change in the relevant countries have absolutely nothing to do with individual charity. A lot of what is needed is simple infrastructure projects. People waste their time acquiring water on foot instead of getting a water truck delivery. You can drive a water truck for 600 miles and it's still more economical than walking. The problem is often that there are no roads suitable for 20 ton trucks. You'll get stuck on the dirt roads so no delivery happens at all.

People think of complicated solutions like drone delivery of medicine because the government fails to maintain or set up basic infrastructure. It all boils down to government corruption and people's desire to work around it. It's not going to work out.

[buran77]

> If you treat starving kids as important then you will have more starving kids

If you care about cancer patients you will have more cancer patients? This is nonsense because you framed it wrong. Caring about [something] isn't necessarily about perpetuating or creating more [something], it's about solving (on of) the problem(s) behind it. And this can have solid economic value. On top of it you can have a layer of humanity where you do something purely for the the well being of another.

To the point, "caring about starving kids" means "caring about solving starvation". This has plenty of implications, not the least of which are that you developed tech that can be applied elsewhere, or that you just created a new market where the participants have a chance of actually paying because they have a chance at a disposable income. You "created" new valuable members of society capable of producing and consuming your products or services.

The reason starving kids don't pull that much attention is that "solving" starvation has a shaky business case, far from guaranteed success, and very unclear timeline. Things most businesses shy away from.

Why do you think Facebook is investing in internet in India or Africa? It's not because they care about people with no internet so by your reasoning they'll create more people with no internet. It's because they are untapped markets that need to be brought up just to the point where they become profitable. You have to spend money to make money. So far the case for solving world hunger has that threshold too high for today's "make money now" stock price driven business models.

[renewiltord]

Let me be honest: promises you make that take effect when highly unlikely events transpire do not convince me of your intentions. They are fairly typical of most proponents of this variant of "morality", since after all, their behaviour contradicts their stated intentions.

[winston_smith]

> I'd absolutely sign up for a wealth-proportional share of a tax

Very gracious of you to be willing to help but only if all of society signs up to do it with you.

> system that's designed to punish me for doing so above and beyond the intrinsic cost of providing for the kid

Bullshit. Nobody's going to punish you for giving to charity.

[Dylan16807]

> Very gracious of you to be willing to help but only if all of society signs up to do it with you.

Or in other words: being willing to help if it will make a significant difference.

Negotiated collective action is a good tool.

[renewiltord]

Ah, since $1000 will save a life, and you believe that giving $1000 will not make a significant difference, then one must logically conclude that it is untrue that saving a life is making a significant difference. From there, it does not take very much to conclude that human lives are not significant to you either.

[Dylan16807]

Or you could opt not to be super pedantic just to score points against me.

When it comes to ridding the world of severe poverty, donating enough to help one person is not _________. If you object to the term "significant", then go ahead and pick a better term.

[SantalBlush]

You describe pretty well here just one reason why economists study markets: They tell us what people actually value, and how much, not just what they claim to value. It turns out, there can be a large disparity between the two.

Most people would say they place a high value on human life, but we don't know how true that is until we see what costs they're willing to incur in the name of helping others.

[imtringued]

>The blunt truth is that arbitrary lives are probably nearly valueless and certainly worth less than $1000. I have tested this hypothesis by describing GiveWell's mathematics to people at varying stages before they would spend money similar to that: in every case, people choose to spend the money rather than save arbitrary life.

Yeah it is pretty obvious that the value doesn't lie in the person but rather the relationships. In that context a job is just a beneficial relationship between an employee and employer. Parents and children form a strong relationship. Same with friends.

The idea that you value your own life and thus it gains inherent worth doesn't work out because how are you going to pay for that value if not from a currently ongoing or previous relationship? Are billionaires really a million times more productive than the average worker? Did they really do everything themselves?

[morelisp]

I live nude in a barrel by a river, all I do is trade cryptocurrency on my phone collecting over 8 figures annually, and everything I don't spend on potatoes I donate to GiveWell. How could I save more lives?

[naniwaduni]

If you wore clothes, you would probably increase your lifetime earnings by extending your useful lifetime by reduced risk of malnutrition, thus directing more money toward life-saving!

[renewiltord]

Presumably by spending less time on HN and more time on your crypto trading. I kid I kid. You are an inspiration to us all.

[imtringued]

Fight against government corruption. It'll save billions.

[hengri]

You are an inspiration to the rest of us

[gowld]

You are pushing a bit too far. GiveWell does raise many millions of dollars for those lives. It just doesn't raise all (or even nearly all) the money it would if people actually held the Communist or Utilitarian ideals they may half-profess.

[renewiltord]

The fact that they do raise money but not as much as they would if people adhered to these ideals indicates to me that the utility function is different. i.e. that it isn't just the life that is being paid for.

And that's fine. I think people should spend their money as they see fit.

It's the bit where people make arguments from fictional moral authority that needs some push back. It's just nonsensical outrage - the opium of the partly-informed.

[astrange]

It does seem to me that the rationalist/effective altruist position here reduces your ability to help in the future, not to mention your political power.

For instance, if you're the town treasurer and you donate all the town's funds to buy mosquito nets in Africa, the townspeople might have you killed, which would prevent you from buying more mosquito nets in the future.

[renewiltord]

Certainly that is true if all spend improved one's ability to help in the future. But I think if we all honestly looked within our monthly spending statements we would find ourselves hard-pressed to make that claim.

Even accounting for second-order effects I do not believe people act in a manner consistent with arbitrary human lives being valued above some small number (less than $1000).

But there's no reason for me to convince you. You may act according to a different model of mankind and I shall act according to this model and whichever one predicts behaviour better is better.

[astrange]

Donating/tithing 10% of your income seems to have a lot of historical support. Well, if you want to spend it on mosquito nets depends on if you think saving a life from malaria is the best thing anyone could do.

[QuesnayJr]

I am an economist, and I have no idea what you're talking about.

[nmfisher]

I think parent is saying there's no economic incentive to save starving kids in Africa.

[astrange]

Note that Nigerian-Americans are one of the highest earning and most successful immigrant groups in America, and I'm sure some more countries will follow. So there probably is one if you're selfish, because their kids can be your doctor in a few decades.

[QuesnayJr]

But it doesn't make sense to blame economists for this. Economists take economic development in Africa seriously. The 2019 econ Nobel was for research in how to fight poverty in Africa.

[ajb]

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

[renewiltord]

It is also difficult to get a man to understand something when you are not familiar enough with the subject. I suspect that is the more common failure mode.

[SantalBlush]

This HN cliché notwithstanding, economists actually do understand a lot more about the study of economics.

[imtringued]

It's just the general strawman. People only see economists when they fail so they think all economists fail even though it is only a subset.