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Comment by yboris | Hacker News Reader

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!

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> 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

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

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