I agree with your statement in its entirety (even the "fitting comeuppance" bit), but I don't like the tone because it feels a little vindictive and mean to me. FarmKind were genuinely trying to help animals here, maybe messed up and I think you could perhaps be a little nicer while making your well articulated, very good point.

I wish that was the case too, but I think if like FarmKind you need to work with a lot of animal activists (that are often more ideological than utilitarian) while telling the general public its better donate than stop eating meat, then it probably helps to be vegan. Its not the easiest position to be in but I think Farmkind do it very well (besides this campaign).

I don't have "expectations" here, but I'm talking about what puts you in a better position running an org.

I don't expect people to be vegan to run pro-animal campaigns at all (I didn't say that) and I don't think you would have to be vegan to run FarmKind. 

thanks for this great analysis. I'm impressed by FarmKind's quick response to this. Knowing the reasoning behind helps me understand better what you were trying to do. Although i still think it wasn't a good campaign, I think it's good that you are trying innovative approaches to both capturing media attention and communicating about the best ways to help animals.

I think it matters and signals integrity that you are both vegan too. this should help more hard love animal rights campaigners realize that you are really in their side and not trying to undermine them.

All the best for future campaigns, don't let this scare you off staying bold and innovative in future :😊!

I absolutely love this @Thomas Kwa. Something along these lines of thinking has been a deep part of my Christian tradition, from the parable of the widow's mite

"Just then he looked up and saw the rich people dropping offerings in the collection plate. Then he saw a poor widow put in two pennies. He said, “The plain truth is that this widow has given by far the largest offering today. All these others made offerings that they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all!”

Obviously this is a bit more "deontological" and "heart focused" reasoning but agrees in practise with your comment "one should obviously give up more utility if beneficiaries gain more per unit you sacrifice"

I used to argue that someone who earns 100k and gives 10% has in a non-utilitarian sense might have  given "more" than someone who earns $200,000 and gives half away. But I think I almost like your "sliding scale" more as there's some nuance there.

"This is weird because if the even the pessimistic numbers were accurate, Open Phil on its own could have almost wiped out malaria and an EA sympathetic org like the Gates foundation definitely could have."

This statement is incorrect. There is no amount of money right now which could "wipe out" malaria, even a perfect vaccine rollout will reduce prevalence by under 50%. If there were even a decent chance of wiping out malaria, non-EA funders would have poured billions to make it happen.

For example Polio as of now is not a public health problem at all with only a few cases every year. But the potential benefits of eradicating it are so large that something a billion dollars a year is spent on eradication efforts.
 

I like this post and I think most of the arguments you make are good. But there's a big problem here which might make thus idea hard to pull off.

Most companies get successful and big largely because of driven founders and investors who push the business forward through greed and power-hungriness. 

I think this your plan is worth a try, but it's easy to underrate how much greed and thirst for personal gain drive success in business. I wish altruism could be as strong a driver.

Greed and power can corrupt people along the way too. There's some evidence for this in the AI race. companies started as "non profits" but then were slowly corrupted and morphed into profit making companies for individuals.

I'm not saying it can't work, but I in think it takes really special kind of good person to drive and run a business that makes money truly for the good of others, AND don't get corrupted by greed and power over time if the company becomes successful. I'm not sure there are many of those people around.

I agree that most EAs probably don't think biodiversity is good in and of itself. I'm in the minority that do - I'm not just a hedonistic utilitatian. Also to reassure people

Its OK to be an EA and not just believe the only thing that matters in this universe is how much well-being there is.

I think the OP has a very good point, and with this much money moving around, biodiversity funding might well be an interesting area for some people to look into.



 

This comment doesn't make much sense to me. 

"Once you factor in wild fishing, then it's even more clear. And the method of slaughter for sea fish (suffocating or crushed to death in a pile) does not seem meaningfully better to me than a factory farm slaughterhouse, so the connotation still applies imo."

First seacaught fish are not farmed. The simple fact that some fish are farmed illustrates the difference. Estimates I can find are between 1 and 2 trillion fish killed while fishing, about 10x the number of total farmed animals. This means excluding invertebrates using your farmed animal numbers maybe 10% of the animals we kill are factory farmed (excluding wild animal stuff), which is quite different from 99%

I also disagree that "the method of slaughter for sea fish (suffocating or crushed to death in a pile) does not seem meaningfully better to me than a factory farm slaughterhouse, so the connotation still applies imo." Yes the death might be bad or worse, but most suffering at a factory farm comes from a badly lived life, not a bad death. Many might disagree and I'm very uncertain, but its very possible that many fish that we kill after catching (yes with a bad death) have net positive lives. I find it hard to believe their suffering is on the same scale as a factory farmed chicken or pig.