Recommended - a great view of non-profit and in particular, how to measure impact through QALY - quality assisted life years - ( )

MacAskill aims for something big in this book: convincing people to consider his logical argument when they are making emotional decisions.

*Doing Good Better* is a manifesto of sorts, aimed at launching the idea of Effective Altruism. He defines the term as "asking, 'How can I make the biggest difference I can?' and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer." (p 11)

The first half of the book is dedicated to exploring five key questions: How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would happen otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be? The second half of the book is about using these questions in specific ways to figure out which organizations one should contribute to, how one should live, and what types of career options one should pursue.

His argument is very convincing, and he makes a compelling point. He might even have convinced me to rethink where I send my charitable donations. But, though he has a solid grasp of classic economics, he gives very little consideration to behavioral economics. He acknowledges that people want to give themselves to organizations that are dear to them. "If a family member died of cancer, isn't it natural to want to direct your energies to fighting cancer?" (pp 40-41) But, he argues, we shouldn't. Instead, "we should focus that motivation on preventing death and improving lives, rather than preventing death and improving lives in one very specific way. Any other decision would be unfair to those whom we could have helped more." (p 42)

In the second half of the book he argues that being a high-paid stockbroker could actually be more effective at saving lives than being a foreign aid worker, in that having more disposable income and donating large amounts of money to the right organizations (several of which he lists) does more for the world than any individual working in the trenches.

He might be right. but there's a larger problem: Most people feel better about themselves by being face to face with the people they are helping than by writing a check and mailing it off. Most people feel more strongly about problems that affect them directly than about abstract concepts on the other side of the world.

MacAskill acknowledges this problem, but basically believes we should just over-ride these impulses and logically evaluate all of our options. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, "If you would persuade you must appeal to interest rather than intellect."

]Until he can figure out a way to appeal to our interest (emotional or otherwise) instead of just our intellect, MacAskill might have trouble getting Effective Altruism accepted by most of the world. ( )

Overall, it is a good book. I enjoyed reading slowly through most sections of it with occasional skimming through a few pages. After a first few initial chapters, the ideas seem repetitive (intentional, perhaps?) until the part with discussions on choosing an effective career comes in. That's the part I enjoyed most, more so because I am at a career stage where slight clarity goes a long way.

As for the facts and figures in the book, statements seem to be well sourced and cited. There's a long list of references at the end of the book for the curious. I find the analogies weak but palatable.

An appendix section summarizing the major conclusions of the book is quite handy.

4/5 ( )

I find it hard to rate this book. It has a lot of good points, but I also find myself disagreeing with a few of their recommendations, or at least thinking that they are overlooking specific aspects.

The general idea of "donate your money to the most effective charity in the area you are interested in" obviously has merit, and the book disabused me of some of my preconceived notions about charitable organizations. There are some truly surprising stories and anecdotes about which interventions are positive, neutral and even negative, and the differences in effectiveness of some interventions (appearantly, some actions can get you a factor of 10 to 100 more effect for the same money than other, still good, interventions in the same area).

MacAskill also discusses if you should work in an area with high direct positive impact (like working in an effective nonprofit), or if you should get a "normal" job that pays much better and donate heavily. The idea of "earning to give" (get a job that pays twice as much as NGO work, then donate 10 % of your earnings) is interesting, but this is where my main gripe lies: It does not factor in externalities of the job you are doing. If I, hypothetically, work as a lobbyist for an arms manufacturer and try to convince governments to buy nuclear weapons from my company, then the net effect I am having on the world may be negative, even if I donate 20% of my earnings to an NGO that works in nuclear disarmament. This may be an extreme example, but there are many jobs that have hidden externalities that may lead to you having a bad impact on the world through your actions (building applications that assist judges in finding a sentence for a perpetrator may inadvertently reinforce racial biases in the criminal justice system. Working at Facebook may have you assisting in creating more effective filter bubbles. etc.)

The second point I found hard to stomach was the argument for buying products produced in sweat shops. Appearantly, sweatshops are considered a good intermediate step for a country on the way to becoming an industrialized nation. In fact, factories in europe had sweatshop-like conditions for many decades. So, economists argue that sweatshops are actually good for the countries they are situated in. Additionally, sweatshop jobs are actually considered the *good jobs* in many of these countries, as the alternatives are even worse. So, (or so the authors argue), stopping to buy sweatshop-produced items and buying products that are produced in the US, Germany, France etc. will actually harm the people you try to help.

The argument the authors gives against buying from producers that have their factories in sweatshop countries but pay better wages is that only a small percentage of the price hike this means for you will end up actually reaching the people that are producing them. The same is appearantly true for fair trade products (I did not fact check this, but the book does give sources for all of these claims), where fair trade producers are sometimes even paid less than the people producing non-fair products. The author argues that this means you are better off buying the cheaper products from non-fair production, and then (crucially) donating the difference to an effective NGO, where the same amount of money will do more good.

Again, I am not sure what I think about this approach. I have a few problems with these 100% statistics-based approaches: First off, they make it easy to rationalize objectionable behaviour on the grounds that "the money will do more good somewhere else." Second, they seem to imply a centralization of funding - if everyone started working on the basis of this book, we would have very few, very effective, very well funded NGOs. But we would also lose other NGOs that do different interventions that may not be as effective directly, but provide other benefits. It may even be that combining the two interventions would have an effect larger than the sum of its parts, but the second intervention will never be funded, as it is not as effective on its own as the first. It also serves as a "barrier to entry" for new ideas that may be even more effective.

Third and lastly, the book focuses on areas and interventions where the effects are reasonably easy to measure. I am donating to political NGOs, whose effect is hard to quantify, and I am not sure where they would fall in the system. How do you evaluate teaching children about data protection? Is teaching 1000 children about IT Security more or less important than invalidating an unconstitutional surveillance law before the surpreme court? It kind of falls through the cracks, which makes it hard to justify donating to these organizations under the rules of effective altruism. However, I believe that these kinds of NGOs are critical to maintaining a society that is actually worth living in - or, to overstate it: Is it worth saving thousands of africans from malaria if that only means they are around to be subjugated by a newly fascist state, which could have been prevented if political NGOs had been funded properly?

I will say this: The book made me think, and I will reevaluate my donations. However, I do not think I will massively change the current donations I have set up (although I may end up adding a few new organizations that will also receive money from me). If you are altruistically minded, I would recommend reading this book, but reading it with a critical eye, and making up your own mind what you want to incorporate into your own strategies (like donating to the best-in-class charities), and what you may want to leave on the table (like working at am arms manufacturer to be able to fund a peace-loving NGO). Four stars for starting the debate in my head. ( )

Short & sweet. Lots of numbers talk may make you zone out. But it's numbers that I'm glad someone out there is crunching. I found it to be extremely valuable information for deciding on charities to donate to. It seems it would also be a great resource for someone trying to decide on a career; alas, that's a ship that has long since sailed for me. Very well researched with copious endnotes. ( )