Losing Time Effectively

     Time is money. In this regard, losing money effectively is no different than losing time effectively. I chose to name this blog "losing money effectively" because I think seeing donations as a optimal way to lose money is a funny perspective. Also, I have a finance background and eventually hope to make some contributions to the wider world of effective altruism through this lens.

    The only way to get money is to spend time acquiring it, valuable time that could be spent doing something else. In this sense, donating money could mean something substantial for your time. If you are a billionaire this is not the case, but if you have rigid retirement goals and are not a billionaire, a life of donating 10% of your income per year means something. Maybe you retire later. Or, maybe you spend more time doing tasks that you would not have otherwise (housework instead of hiring a maid, washing car instead of car wash, child care instead of thousands of hours raising children). The less money you have, the more time you would save by acquiring more money. So, why is this important?

    Making a lot of money and donating it, also called earning to give, basically makes the assumption that donating money can be much more valuable than donating time. My point above is that these are not really that distinct, as you are donating time either way. Depending on your situation, you may just be donating your time in a much more effective way. To be clear, I am not sold on utilitarianism. If you are totally sold on the EA philosophy, you could argue that retirement is immoral. If the cost of saving a life is $4,500, then by working another year at a job that pays $45,000, you could save ten lives. Sounds like a potential moral obligation to me. I think utilitarianism is a good lens through which to view the world, especially service work, rather than a hard and fast religious dogma. Instead of working a a soup kitchen in a first world country and making $35,000 at year, maybe the call to make $85,000 as a law clerk and donating $40,000 could be a good trade. You don't get the same pat on the back, but utilitarianism tells you that you shouldn't care about that. This way of thinking feels robotic, but it shouldn't.

    If you are like me, you have already begun to suspect that making money and doing good might be two distinct steps. Maybe you should do each separately, simply due to the difficulty of getting an optimal outcome by pursuing both at the same time. I will keep searching for a career that threads this needle, high pay and high impact, but maybe it is not the worst thing ever if that job does not exist?