All of belitre's Comments + Replies

Thanks a lot for the responses, I agree that giving the same salary to everyone is probably not a good idea, and you are right that if some one pay you higher it's is because he estimate you provide him more value. Of course the interest of the one that pays you may not be correlated to the global interest but I better understand the logical at saying that the best effective way to do good can be to earn as much as we can in order to give more, and it doesn't imply that what we do in our work is necessarily the best for the society in itself.

I am... (read more)

So if I consider that as an Effective Altruist I have some power to judge which use of money is more important, asking for a higher salary seems in a certain way to be asking for more power to judge what is more important.

Of course the rest of the society is not forced to give me more money and I agree that in practice I may have a better use of that money but still theoretically I have the impression that asking for a better salary it is saying that what I do is more important that what others do and that I can judge better than them what we can do we tha... (read more)

2
kbog
5y
Yes, and it is more important, and you can do better - because you're on the EA forum and they're not. If you're employed by an EA organization then feel free to take a low salary. Higher paying jobs do tend to provide more value to employers and customers, that's why they are willing to pay for the salaries. It's true that this can be distorted because of wealth inequalities and other issues, but giving everyone the same salary wouldn't necessarily be any more accurate - it's not the case that everyone contributes equally to society either.

Hi here,

Sorry I'm new to this forum and to effective altruism so I will probably just raise questions you have seen thousand of times.

Moreover I'm not a native english speaker so I'm not sure all my words will make sense.

Still I think I can benefit from your thoughts or maybe you can point to me some other threads that deals with my questions.

I have the feeling that if I get paid more from the same job, the extra money doesn't appear from nothing. I get it from the community and it means there is less for the others.

And even if I give a... (read more)

3
kbog
5y
Yes the basic idea here is that you, as an Effective Altruist, have some power and knowledge to judge which use of money is more important. Your employers/customers... or a charity of your choice. That's what income taxes are. People vote for governments to impose taxes on everyone. This is easier than convincing people to give up their own money. Income taxes are usually progressive, which means the rich pay more % of their income than the poor and it reduces inequality. Tax money usually stays in the same country rather than going to the global poor, but that's no different from people agreeing to take a lower salary, because your customers and employees are probably going to be from your own country anyway.