[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.

[renewiltord]

I don't object to the term. I think any thing that fills in the gap that implies value will lead to the same conclusion. I don't think that's surprising since the evidence is really strong in favour of that conclusion: arbitrary human life has very little value. It is certainly true that almost all individuals behave in a manner consistent with this being true, at least.

I personally believe it is nearer zero, but it is clearly less valuable than whatever value most individuals ascribe to ten hundred dollar bills.

[Dylan16807]

The value depends on context. The punishment for hurting someone is much higher than the amount it takes to help someone. And spending a thousand dollars to help an anonymous person, who is in a sea of people not getting help, and will fall back into that sea soon enough, feels like tossing it into a black hole when the donation is all by itself. But if there's enough donations together, they feel more meaningful.

You're measuring value in just about the weakest possible context.

People want to make a difference that's visible when looking at the entire problem.