All of Andreas Schneider's Comments + Replies
A larger development cooperation budget implies additional taxes or cuts from other budget items in Zurich.
I notice that the post does not attempt to compare this cost to the benefits of the ballot initiative.
The EA common sense analysis is that a marginal dollar donated to global development does more good than a marginal dollar donated to charity in wealthy countries. But this intervention is pretty different from a typical donation decision (because it potentially relies on increasing taxes, and so depends on one's views on taxation). Does the EAF team have any thoughts on this issue?
Thanks for the input!
Because modeling this involves several judgment calls and would make the analysis much more complex (and harder to understand), we decided it's better not to include it in the quantitative model and instead just mention it in the text.
I also think this is unlikely to change the numbers by more than 10%. I think it would take several fairly strong assumptions to change that, such as you think that Zurich's marginal budget is used effectively in an important cause area such as global catastrophic risk research funding.
Some brai...
A larger development cooperation budget implies additional taxes or cuts from other budget items in Zurich.
I notice that the post does not attempt to compare this cost to the benefits of the ballot initiative.
The EA common sense analysis is that a marginal dollar donated to global development does more good than a marginal dollar donated to charity in wealthy countries. But this intervention is pretty different from a typical donation decision (because it potentially relies on increasing taxes, and so depends on one's views on taxation). Does the EAF team have any thoughts on this issue?
Hi Jonas, I appreciate the response.
This would make sense if we model the result of the ballot initiative as a move by nature and treat all humans symmetrically. However, when the decision is made by a mechanism that can be influenced (such as a legislative body), then under a variety of moral views, it matters v
... (read more)Right, a non-consequentialist analysis might lead to different conclusions in this case. Thanks for pointing that out!
I think there's still a pretty strong case to be made that in the case of development cooperation, it's not quite as straightforward because developed countries have harmed developing countries in many ways (colonialism, tax havens, agricultural export subsidies, etc.). Thomas Pogge has argued along these lines IIRC, so one could look at his views on this.
More generally, we live in a highly globalized world, we routinely interact ... (read more)