In thinking about what it means to lead a good life, people often struggle with the question of how much is enough: how much does our morality demand of us? People have given a wide range of answers to this question, but effective altruism has historically used "giving 10%". Yes, it's better if you donate a larger fraction, switch to a job where you can earn more, or put your career to use directly, but if you're giving 10% to effective charity you're doing your share, you've met the bar to consider yourself an EA, and we're happy to have you on board.
I say "historically", because it feels like this is changing; I think EAs would generally still agree with my paragraph above, but while in 2014 it would have been uncontroversial now I think some would disagree and others would have to think for a while.
EA started out as a funding-constrained movement. Whether you looked at global poverty, existential risk, animal advocacy, or movement building, many excellent people were working as volunteers or well below what they could earn because there just wasn't the money to offer competitive pay. Every year GiveWell's total room for more funding was a multiple of their money moved. In this environment, the importance of donations was clear.
EA has been pretty successful in raising money, however, and the primary constraint has shifted from money to people. In 2015, 80k made a strong case for focusing on what people can do directly, not mediated by donations, and this case is even stronger today. Personally, I've found this pretty convincing, though in 2017 I decided to return to earning to give because it still seemed like the best fit for me.
What this means, however, is that we are now trying to build a different sort of movement than we were ten years ago. While people who've dedicated their careers toward the most critical things have made up the core of the movement all along, the ratio of impact has changed.
Imagine you have a group of people donating 10% to the typical mix of EA causes. You are given the option to convince one of them to start working on one of 80k's priority areas, but in doing so N others will get discouraged and stop donating. This is a bit of a false dilemma, since ideally these would not be in conflict, but let's stick with this for a bit because I think it is illustrative. In 2012 I would have put a pretty low number for N, perhaps ~3, partly because we were low on money, but also because we were starting a movement. In 2015 I would have put N at ~30: a factor of 6 because of the difference between 10% and the most that people in typical earning to give roles can generally donate (~60%) and a factor of 5 because of the considerations in Why you should focus more on talent gaps, not funding gaps. With the large recent increases in EA-influenced spending I'd roughly put N at ~300 [1], though I'd be interested in better estimates.
Unfortunately, a norm of "10% and you're doing your part" combines very poorly with the reality of 100% of someone's career having ~300x more impact than 10%. This makes EA feel much more demanding than it used to: instead of saying "look at the impact you can have by donating 10%", we're now generally saying "look at the impact you can have by building your entire career around work on an important problem."
(This has not applied evenly. People who were already planning to make EA central to their career are generally experiencing EA as less demanding: pay in EA organizations has gone up, there is less stress around fundraising, and there is less of a focus on frugality or other forms of personal sacrifice. In some cases these changes mean that if someone does decide to shift their career it is less of a sacrifice than it would've been, though that does depend on how the field you enter is funded.)
While not everyone is motivated by a sense that they should be doing their part (see: excited vs. obligatory altruism), I do think this is a major motivation for many people. Figuring out how to encourage people who would thrive in an EA-motivated career to go in that direction without discouraging and losing people for which that would be too large a sacrifice seems really important, and I don't see how to solve it.
Inspired by conversations with Alex Gordon-Brown, Denise Melchin, and others.
[1] I expect people working in EA movement building have an estimate
(a) the value of a GWWC
pledge and (b) the value of a similar person going into an 80k
priority area, and this is essentially the ratio of these. I did a
small amount of looking, however, and didn't see public estimates. I
guessed ~$10k/y for (a) and ~$3M/y for (b), giving N=~300. Part of
why I have (b) this high is that I think it's now difficult to turn
additional money into good work on the most important areas. If you
would give a much higher number for (b), my guess is that you are
imagining someone much stronger than the typical person donating 10%.
Thank you for this post that touches on the important point of demandingness. Personally, I can see it in two ways.
On a global level giving 10% to effective causes is relatively rare. Giving What We Can has grown impressively but still, less than 1 in every 50.000[1] of the world's high-income population have taken it. 10% is higher than the average donations that are below 2% of GDP. Even in the EA survey, only 1/3 have said to donate at least this amount. While some of the top areas in EA seem less funding constraint, there is still much room for spending until for example GiveDirectly can't give away any more money. In that sense, I'm very grateful to anyone who is able and willing to commit to giving 10% or more of their income and would not want to exclude them from seeing themselves as Effective Altruists. If we've funded everything that is equivalent to GiveDirectly's impact or we have at least 50 Mio. people donating 10+% then I'd revisit this but currently, there is still enough to do.
On a personal level, the concept of demandingness has no limit. 10% is just a Schelling point, something that is easy to communicate for people new to the movement, a goal to be reached. Doing good better doesn't stop there and it doesn't stop at thinking about donations. I like the framing of excited altruism better or altruism as a central purpose. Another framing could be that of aiming higher: Continuously stretching for ways to have more impact while taking care of oneself. Each of these framings will have its supporters and I would encourage anyone to select the one that motivates them best. At the same time, the community and its support structure are very important to keep people healthy and motivated when they feel they are failing at their self-set goals.
Taking the number of 500 Mio. high-income people in the world and 8500 GWWC members