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Comment by silicon2401 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a charitable person (I'm only concerned with caring for myself and my loved ones), but even then I never understand this kind of mentality. At $100k income (assuming no tax), 10% is $10,000. How much does that come out to over 10, 20, 30, even 50 years? Even if I were charitable I'd still rather save and invest everything, so that that money can grow and I can donate more later. Instead of a lump sum of 10k today, why not have an amount of wealth that can provide a continuous supply of funds from interest?

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Because the benefits individuals receive today compound.

Consider how much of a health cost there is to being sick with malaria? Preventing a case of malaria is likely to have a much more positive effects (compounded into the far future) than doubling the donation in the future. Especially that malaria is a transmittable disease: lower the population of those carrying malaria, you have fewer malaria cases in the future.

Prevention often costs far less than curing. Look at the positive effects of smallpox eradication!

Yes, and this is even more relevant now in the pandemic. Many countries have agreed to ensure access to COVID vaccines for third world, yet they are still getting pretty much none, while Europe is already full of scandals with celebrities and rich people skipping priority lines and getting vaccinated

> Because the benefits individuals receive today compound.

The benefits I could give tomorrow after saving and investing my charity money would be greater than what I have today, plus the appreciation, and then the impact would be enormously more significant after that compounds, too.

To use your example of malaria: "The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced three grants totaling $258.3 million for advanced development of a malaria vaccine" [1]. The BAMGF is able to benefit more people and benefit them more because of their wealth. If they had immediately given every dollar they'd made in their lives to the local homeless person/community, the impact would've been far less positive to humanity.

1: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/...

You claim that the benefits you could give tomorrow "would be greater" but what's the argument? The argument is that tomorrow you would have "$258.3 million"?

Let's assume you can double your money over the course of 7 years. AMF (Against Malaria Foundation) protects whole villages with anti-malaria bed nets, often resulting in a drop of around 50% of incidences of malaria over the course of a year or two. This also results in preventing some deaths.

While you wait your 7 years to provide double the money to this charity, many people will needlessly die. And with higher prevalence of malaria, more people will be infected than you can prevent later.

In your example you compare Bill Gates's donation to malaria eradication with giving money to the homeless. How is this the right comparison? And also, bringing Bill Gates into the discussion is irrelevant, unless you're in possession of MILLIONS of dollars you are planning to donate. Are you?

Your comments come off to me as bad faith interpretations of my comment due to an apparently hostile tone and emotional arguments (eg implying that waiting 7 years will let people needlessly die, totally ignoring my point that it is necessary to allow for helping more people later). Sorry, but I'm not interested in continuing this exchange.

Not hostile at all. Just pointing out that delaying helping now means many people will suffer now. And just like money wisely and luckily invested will compound to result in more money later, harms now compound to result in more harms later.

A child sick with parasitic worms will have lower educational attainment and lower income later in life. Whatever effects you hope to bring about in the future through a larger donation better be magnificently larger - to offset all the negative effects of not helping now.

I still disagree with your premise that the compounding effects of $1 today are more impactful over time than the compounding effects of $1000 or $10000 in 50 years, and that there will necessarily be compounding effects of helping today, let alone at the level of compounding interest. I'm not worried about a kid with worms today, because I'd rather help 100 or 1000 kids with worms in 50 years

If the world is getting better, then opportunities to do good will diminish over time. If in 50 years the world is much better than it is now, the impact of $1 given will be much less.

I think neither of us should have 100% certainty that our point of view is right, unless our point of view is "this is likely better". I was just trying to point out to you that your point of view isn't "case closed" type of argument - and that there are other dimensions to think about.

Please consider reading these two great starter resources:

80,000 Hours: https://80000hours.org/articles/should-you-wait/ - Should you wait to make a difference?

Effective Altruism: https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/concepts/timing-of-ph... - Timing of Philanthropy

Not OP but I'll answer for myself:

The short answer here is because people need money/help now. People in crisis can't wait 10/20/30/50 years for you to donate.

This is not a judgment, I respect your choices, but many of us donate out of a sense of urgency, and we understand the tradeoffs and the sacrifices involved.

I'd rather give now and help now, even if that means I don't come out as far ahead in the end, than wait to see if I can give (and/or keep) more later.

That said, what you propose certainly works too, and every effort to help is a good effort, but it has it's own drawbacks.

The biggest drawback is that you may have the intention of giving money in the future, but you end up never doing it. Unless you put it into some guaranteed-for-charity vehicle like a Donor Advised Fund.

Giving now, even if you are also putting some off to give later, is the better course of action.

A good read: https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/concepts/timing-of-ph...

> giving now creates a habit of giving, and removes the temptation to spend savings which were originally intended to be donations.

I completely agree with you.. Your point in the other thread about the compound benefits of giving now articulated much better what I was also trying to say :-)

> giving now creates a habit of giving, and removes the temptation to spend savings which were originally intended to be donations.

I've donated money, it didn't become a habit

> The biggest drawback is that you may have the intention of giving money in the future, but you end up never doing it. Unless you put it into some guaranteed-for-charity vehicle like a Donor Advised Fund.

This is a personal point whereas I was coming at it from just a numerical point.

> Unless you put it into some guaranteed-for-charity vehicle like a Donor Advised Fund.

Not familiar with this, but if it's a way to invest money while forcing the money to only be used for charity, then yes I'd consider that the optimal choice for anyone who for some reason is charitable but wouldn't want to give charity down the road

I respect your choice as well, thanks for the civility. Maybe it's just a personal difference. My view is, there will always be people in crisis. Why are the ones suffering today more important than the ones suffering in 50 or 100 years? To me that's basically telling a suffering person "sorry, I could've saved and invested to give you $1,000 today, but the other guy beat you by 50 years so I gave him the $10 I had at the time."

All I can say to that is I can't predict the future, so I choose to act today. The "ones suffering in 50 years" are theoretical, the ones suffering today are real people.

Also, perhaps the people I help today will go on to ensure that we don't need to help as many people in 50 years.

As others have said, and perhaps in terms that will resonate with you, investing today provides compounding returns in the future.

And that applies to aid just as much as it does to money.

Let's take your example to a bit of an extreme, for argument's sake:

I make regular charitable donations, and plan to continue to do so for X years (X being decades), therefore helping any number of people for those X years, potentially saving many lives.

I am now standing in front of a burning building, and I see a person through the window unconscious on the floor.

I can:

(A) Put my life potentially at risk and go into the burning building to drag that one person out and save their life. If I die while trying to save that person, then that means my charitable giving stops.

Or I can (B) definitely not risk my life to save that person, therefore guaranteeing - at least for now - that I can continue to make charitable donations into the future, possibly saving a much larger number of lives.

If you take a detached/theoretical view of this situation, then (B) seems like the better choice in the long run. I will benefit more people.

But it also means I make the choice to stand there and watch that real person die when I could have done something about it.

And I wouldn't be able to do that.

> The "ones suffering in 50 years" are theoretical, the ones suffering today are real people.

Not sure what you mean by this. Are you actually suggesting that you think nobody will be in need or crisis in 50 years? What exactly is theoretical about that? I would say compounding from helping someone today is theoretical: it takes no effort at all to find examples of someone being helped just to throw it away, self-sabotage, refuse to participate. If you like charity just for the idea of helping, then I can understand that. But the claim that aid will always be effective, let alone compound, is imo much more of a stretch than claiming that there will still be people needing help in 50 or 100 years (I'd wager for as long as humans exist)

Of course I'm not suggesting people won't be suffering in 50 years, but again that is in the future, it's not today, and that suffering does not yet exist, even if we know it will.

Meanwhile, real humans - not statistics or "examples" as you put it - need help now.

As for the compounding aspect of charitable work, I guess all I can say there is you should do your own research if you want to realize how wrong you are.

Listen I'm not trying to convince you here, you've made clear in your first message that you don't care about anyone other than yourself and your loved ones, and that's your choice to make, but perhaps acknowledge that as a result of this choice, you don't really know much about charitable giving and the work that happens as a result of it.

Yet here you are confidently speculating about it all. It's starting to feel a bit Dunning-Kruger if I'm totally honest about it.. perhaps an opportunity for self-reflection?

You're not making any relevant arguments, just stating your personal position and with a condescending tone at that.

> (A) Put my life potentially at risk and go into the burning building to drag that one person out and save their life. If I die while trying to save that person, then that means my charitable giving stops.

> Or I can (B) definitely not risk my life to save that person, therefore guaranteeing - at least for now - that I can continue to make charitable donations into the future, possibly saving a much larger number of lives.

> If you take a detached/theoretical view of this situation, then (B) seems like the better choice in the long run. I will benefit more people.

> But it also means I make the choice to stand there and watch that real person die when I could have done something about it.

> And I wouldn't be able to do that.

I would do A every day of the week and sleep like a baby every following night, knowing that I'll be safe and sound tomorrow to support my loved ones. You're welcome to do B if you want to, but you yourself acknowledged that it's not the choice that benefits more people in the long run, i.e. the more emotional rather than logically optimal choice. Hence why I said you're not making relevant arguments, just stating that you would do things differently and that you do so out of emotion rather than a logical reason. If you have a logical reason why giving money today is better than letting it compound and then giving more tomorrow, then I'd be interested in hearing it. But if I'm the kind of person to go with A 10/10 times, I think you can imagine I'm not very interested in emotional appeals.

There are two things to consider: your discount factor and how quickly the utils you generate compound compared to your money.

Let's say your discount factor is 3%/year. That means you have no preference between generating 100 utils today or 103 utils next year. If your money compounds more slowly than 3%, it doesn't make sense to save.

Second, the utils you generate probably compound too. Contrary to what many would have you believe, the world is actually getting better at an exponential rate. Since 1981, the conditions of the world's poorest have been getting better and better. It's not totally clear, but it seems plausible that there's an exponential feedback loop involved here. Maybe an extremely poor person in a developing country has $100 of assets, and is able to increase his net worth this year by $5. With that $5, he can get a pen with some chickens or something, which will increase his net worth by $10. With that $10, he can get a radio that will allow him to hear the weather report and better tend his crops, letting him increase his net worth by $15 the next year. If you donated $30 to him, he could jump-start this process and immediately get all these gains and more, instead of having to toil for years for them.

That's a somewhat farscial example, but I think it may resemble reality. Economic growth tends to be exponential, and if you artificially grow the economy by infusing it with cash, that extra boost may compound forever just like the money in your savings account would.

If that's the best use of your donation, then the charity you donate to can invest the money themselves and make use of the continuous supply of funds from interest. University endowments for example (even if they are only technically 'charities').

This assumes you trust charities or any 3rd party to invest it wisely, let alone use the money exactly how you want it. I don't, which is why I would manage it myself until I felt like using or donating it

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