A Shout Out to "Effective Altruism" from Marginal Revolution

Here is a short blog post with a bunch of good links. "Effective altruism" is the idea that giving or donating to charity should be economically effective in terms of its cost/benefit ratio. Many of the organizations mentioned in the post below do just that. They use high level economic/finance evaluation to make decisions on the best charities to support.

Nerd Altruism is Becoming Cool!

"It’s exciting to see randomized trials, measurement and data science applied to philanthropy. Groups like GiveDirectly, GiveWell and The Center for Effective Altruism are creating a new culture of giving, they are making Nerd Altruism cool. We have a long way to go but it says something when billionaires are mocked for giving millions to Yale. In contrast, entrepreneurs like Dustin Moskovitz, Elon Musk and Bill Gates are making it cool to evaluate charities with the same rigor that business people use to evaluate business investments."

If this type of giving appeals to you, I highly recommend checking out the books The Life You Can Save and The Most Good You Can Do on my further reading page above. You can also check out this the Global Rich List to input your income or wealth (or your parents) to see how you (or your family) stack up against the entire world.