I am currently interning at an economic consultancy firm in London. Some of my colleagues are aware that I'm involved in Effective Altruism and I've briefly tried to explain EA to some of them. Consequently, I've been asked by my manager to make some proposals about how the firm could use its work to do good.
The firm has previously conducted pro bono work in civil liberties cases in the US, and every year donates money to multiple charities. However the charities have to be US or UK focused and all pro bono work I'm aware of has been US focused.
I want to make suggestions that would be as effective as possible and also somewhat likely to be followed through on by the firm. I was wondering if anyone would have any suggestions?
For more background, the firm primarily produces expert reports for court for the defence of companies in litigation. Most of the staff are Econ graduates or Econ PhDs. My first thought would be doing economic analysis for effective charities however I'm unsure how to recommend the firm could go about doing this.
Any ideas or guidance is much appreciated, thank you.
I think you might be mistaken on several counts:
1) not all taxes are paternalistic (e.g. pigouvian taxes), but tobacco taxes almost definitely are. wikipedia:
rather, the debate is about whether or not paternalism is justified (in this instance). In both this comment and the grandparent I've implicitly assumed that paternalism can be justified, but you're right that there are libertarian arguments that paternalism is essentially always wrong.
You might also enjoy Robin's recent writing on paternalism, though it doesn't directly bare on this argument; unsurprisingly he concludes it is primarily about status.
2) People don't have to be fully rational for their decisions to have information about welfare. If full rationality were required then no decision ever would satisfy! While it seems clear that humans are not 100% rational, there is still some logic to people's actions. Indeed, models of rational addiction have been around for decades; it is definitely not true to say that addiction invalidates any inference about consumer welfare. See for example Becker and Murphy (1988).
3) 'truly knows the health effects' is again not required. For example, if people had noisy but unbiased estimates of the health impacts, some would over-consume and some would under-consume, and on average, tobacco taxation would not be welfare enhancing. If lack of knowledge is the issue, the appropriate response is to provide the information, not to tax it.
4) Consumer surplus should be taken into account for everyone regardless of whether or not on the whole smoking is optimal. It is an element in the cost-benefit calculation (probably the largest on one side of the equation). It might be larger or smaller for different people, in different circumstances, etc., but that is something that must be estimated and taken into account, not simply ignored.