$6.4 Million for What?

Last week I ran the Big Sur Marathon. As I was waiting at the start line, jumping up and down to get warm, the announcer on the P.A. system bragged that the race foundation has given over $6.4 million to the local community. Runners cheered.

I might brag to my friends that last night I had the best dinner ever. I might brag about how beautiful and delicious it was. But imagine bragging that last night I spent $640! Wouldn’t that come across as gauche and, moreover, absurd? Surely you’d wonder what I got for my money.

That’s all perfectly obvious. Why, then, is it apparently so natural to cheer this $6.4 million donation? Why is it apparently so counterintuitive to ask what should be the obvious question: for $6.4 million, what did we buy, and was it any good?

To truly help others, you have to act like you’re helping your friends. I would never congratulate myself for spending $64 on a friend, unless I knew the $64 had bought something useful.

The idea of doing for strangers what you would do for your friends is called effective altruism. Thinking along these lines reveals incredible opportunities to help others, opportunities that less diligent philanthropists have overlooked.

I hope one of these years the announcer will say, “We gave $6.4 million directly to people in need,” or “We spent $6.4 million to provide 1,300,000 children with antimalarial bed nets,” or even “We spent $6.4 million to build an incredible water park on the Big Sur coast.” Any of these would be worth a big cheer!