Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

I’m using this example because it illustrates why, if we want to have an impact, we should donate to less widely publicised disasters rather than to the ones that make the news. For example, in 2008 an earthquake hit Sichuan, China. You probably haven’t heard of it: I hadn’t before I started writing this book. This earthquake struck fifty miles north-west of Chengdu, right in the centre of China. It killed 87,000 people: five times as many as the Japanese earthquake, and half as many as the Haitian earthquake. Yet it raised only $500 million in international aid – one tenth that of Haiti or Japan. For some reason, it wasn’t as widely publicised as these other earthquakes, so it received less funding. Because it received so much less, donations would have probably made a bigger impact. The law of diminishing returns also explains why, in general, it makes less sense to donate to disaster relief than it does to donate to the best charities that fight poverty. Every day people die from easily preventable diseases like AIDS, malaria, or tuberculosis. This is a disaster far beyond that of Haiti, or Tōhoku, or Sichuan. Every day over 18,000 children – more than the number of people who perished in Tōhoku – die from preventable causes. For every death the Japanese earthquake caused, aid organisations received $330,000 in donations. In contrast, for every person that dies from poverty-related causes worldwide, only $15,000 on average is spent in foreign aid and philanthropy. Partl...