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Comment by cgag | Hacker News Reader

It's more like "with the same effort you could save thousands of starfish, just not the ones right in front of you" than "what difference can you make". Which is certainly something worth considering.

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Can you? If we took the money donated to Watsi, let these people suffer/die instead, and used it all to solve an "underlying problem" - would it help more people?

Without a lot of research that answer seems difficult to get to. I think in the interim, helping these people is a fine use of some people's disposable income.

Also, consider that money going to Watsi does not necessarily stop money going to a different/more effective cause. Many people donating to this may not donate to a different idea, and vice versa.

I'm not necessarily talking about solving underlying problems like lack of good healthcare, I was actually just thinking about the idea that if you have 1000 dollars to give, it's worth considering the trade offs between giving it to one person for a surgery, or buy 200 bed nets to protect people from malaria or protect 200 kids from developmental problems caused by parasitic worms: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities.

It actually seems to be a fairly close call. It seems that bed nets prevent about 1 death from malaria for every $2000 or so [1], whereas the quality of life of some of the Watsi patients can be significantly improved for $500 to $1000 [see 2]. So the question is what the relative value of each is, and while I think the balance weighs in favor of malaria prevention, it's not a clear-cut decision.

[1] http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/ins...

[2] https://watsi.org/profile/8d8d49907cc9-hussein

The world's systemic problems are almost entirely political in nature. Unless you want to try mass bribery, your monetary donations aren't going to fix those.

This isn't exactly what I meant, but it's not infeasible either. I have a friend whos working on a charity to help people give conditional donations to political campaigns, like only giving money to a politician on the condition they vote yes on bill x, or having your donation divided equally among people who voted against marijuana prohibitions. In which case, it might be more effective to do something like this than to donate to a defense fund for people accused of weed related crimes.

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