Come scegliersi la ONLUS

Come scegliersi la ONLUS

OVERHEAD COSTS, CEO PAY AND OTHER CONFUSIONS Which charities make the most difference? – Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference by William MacAskill

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Problema: hai 100 euro da donare. A chi dai? Come fai la differenza?  Come scegli la tua ONLUS??

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Books for Africa (BFA). BFA’s mission is to improve education by shipping donated books from the USA to the African continent where they are distributed by non-profit partners. Founded in 1988, it has shipped over 28 million books to forty-nine different countries. On its website, the problem and its solution are vividly described: Most African children who attend school have never owned a book of their own. In many classrooms, 10–20 students share one textbook… Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan has personally endorsed BFA, saying, ‘Books for Africa is a simple idea, but its impact is transformative. For us, literacy is quite simply the bridge from misery to hope.’…

Note:PRIMA ONLUS CANDIDATA: EDUCATION. LIBRI.

Development Media International (DMI). Its focus is on preventing deaths of African children under five. It aims to do this by designing and broadcasting radio and TV programmes that provide health education… In the charity’s words: 6.3 million children worldwide die under the age of five every year. In 2013 one in 11 children in sub-Saharan Africa died before their fifth birthday … Many people cannot recognise when their child has a potentially dangerous illness,… DMI currently operates in Burkina Faso, and has plans to run similar programmes in DR Congo, Mozambique and Cameroon….

Note:SECONDA ONLUS: EDUCAZIONE SANITARIA

GiveDirectly. Its programme is simple: it transfers money from donors directly to some of the poorest people in Kenya and Uganda who are then free to use that money however they wish… In their words: Recipients use transfers for whatever is most important to them; we never tell them what to do. An independent evaluation of our work in Kenya by Innovations for Poverty Action found that recipients use transfers for a wide variety of purposes that on average generate large income gains….

Note:TERZA ONLUS: CASH TRANSFER

According to Charity Navigator, ‘Savvy donors know that the financial health of a charity is a strong indicator of the charity’s programmatic performance. They know that in most cause areas, the most efficient charities spend 75% or more of their budget on their programmes and services and less than 25% on fundraising and administrative fees.’

Note:COSTI AMMINISTRATIVI

Books for Africa’s overhead costs are a tiny 0.8% of their total expenditure (which was $24 million in 2013), and their CEO is paid $116,204, which is only 0.47% of that total expenditure. For these reasons, and for their general financial transparency, Charity Navigator has given BFA its highest four-star rating for seven years running.

Note:BOOK FOR AFRICA

GiveDirectly isn’t rated by Charity Navigator, but would also do well by these metrics. So far, of every $1 that’s been donated to GiveDirectly, between 87¢ (in Uganda) and 90¢ (in Kenya) has been transferred to the poor, with the rest spent on enrolment, follow-up and transfer costs.

Note:GIVEDIRECTLY

In contrast, Development Media International’s overheads amount to 44% of its total budget, and there is little financial information on its website. Charity Navigator only evaluates US-based charities, so it does not evaluate DMI, which is based in the UK. However, DMI clearly performs much worse than the two other charities according to Charity Navigator’s metrics.

Note:DMI

think about the logic behind this reasoning if you apply it to personal spending. Suppose you’re deciding whether to buy a Mac or a PC. What factors would you consider? You’d probably think about the design and usability of the two computers, the hardware, the software, and the price. You certainly wouldn’t think about how much Apple and Microsoft each spend on administration.. If we don’t care about financial information when we buy products for ourselves, why should we care about financial information when we buy products for other people?…

Note:LACUNE DELL’APPROCCIO

The first thing to explore is whether there’s high-quality evidence regarding the impact of the programme that the charity implements.

Note:LA PRIMA COSA DA FARE

Given the dearth of instructional materials in schools in Sub-Saharan Africa, it might seem obvious that distributing textbooks will be beneficial to the students that receive them. But, surprisingly, there’s little good evidence in favour of this idea, and some evidence against. Development economists have tested the effect of increasing the number of textbooks in schools in Africa (remember Kremer and Glennerster?) and have found that, in the absence of teacher training, providing textbooks has either no discernible effect

IL BENEFICIO DI UN LIBRO. SCARSA EVIDENZA

What does this charity do?… How cost-effective is each programme area?… How robust is the evidence behind each programme?… How well is each programme implemented?… Does the charity need additional funds?… Does the charity need additional funds?…

Note:5 CRITERI PER GIUDICARE

1. What does this charity do?

This might seem like an obvious question, but often what most people think a charity does is quite different from what it actually does. For example I was surprised to find out that many developed-world medical charities spend only a small fraction of their money on research, with the rest spent on other programmes, even though research is what they emphasise in their marketing and websites.

Note:NON COSÌ OVVIO

2. How cost-effective is each programme area?

We want to estimate what a charity achieves with a given amount of money, so our focus should always be on cost-effectiveness rather than just effectiveness.

Note:COSA FANNO CON UN EURO?

The estimated cost-effectiveness of GiveDirectly’s programmes is very impressive, but the estimated cost-effectiveness of DMI’s programme is even more so. There’s a lot of health knowledge that we have without even realising it. For example we all know that we should wash our hands regularly: it’s a lesson that’s drilled into us from childhood. Moreover, we know to use soap and that just because our hands look clean that doesn’t mean they are clean. In many poor countries, however, people have never been told this, or they regard soap as a precious commodity and are therefore reluctant to use it for hand washing. This can have severe consequences. Diarrhoea is a major problem in the developing world, killing 760,000 children every year, primarily through dehydration. (For comparison, that’s a death toll equivalent to five jumbo jets crashing to the ground every day, killing everyone on board.)

Note:GD VS DIM

3. How robust is the evidence behind each programme?

Often we should prefer a charity that has very good evidence of being fairly cost-effective to a charity that has only weak evidence of being very cost-effective: if the evidence behind an estimate is weak, it’s likely that the estimate is optimistic, and the true cost-effectiveness is much lower. For example, the evidence behind claims made on charities’ websites or marketing materials is often very shaky, and sometimes potentially misleading.

Note:EVIDENZA CROBUSTA DI UN BENE MINIMO E EVIDENZA SUPERFICIALE DI UN GRANDE BENE

Claims of a programme’s effectiveness are more reliable when grounded in academic studies. If there’s been a ‘meta-analysis’ – a study of the studies – that’s even better… it’s even better if the charity has done its own independently audited or peer-reviewed randomised controlled evaluation of its programmes….

Note:METASTUDI E RT

One of the most damning examples of low-quality evidence concerns microcredit (that is, lending small amounts of money to the very poor, a form of microfinance). Intuitively, microcredit seems like it would be very cost-effective, and there were many anecdotes of people who’d received microloans and used them to start businesses that, in turn, helped them escape poverty. But when high-quality studies were conducted, microcredit programmes were shown to have little or no effect on income, consumption, health, or education.

Note:MICROCREDITO

With these warnings at the top of our minds, how should we compare GiveDirectly and DMI? Here, GiveDirectly clearly has the edge. Cash transfers are one of the most well-studied development programmes, having been shown to improve lives in many different countries around the world… Finally, the independent development think-tank Innovations for Poverty Action has run a randomised controlled trial on GiveDirectly, so we can be confident not just about the efficacy of cash transfers in general, but also about cash transfers as implemented by GiveDirectly….

Note:GD VS DIM

Because transferring cash is such a simple idea, and because the evidence in favour of cash transfers is so robust, we could think of them as the ‘index fund’ of giving. Money invested in an index fund grows (or shrinks) at the same rate as the stock market; investing in an index fund is the lowest-fee way to invest in stocks and shares.

Note:INDEX FUND

In the case of mass-media education, we do have a plausible explanation for why it could be more effective than cash transfers: mass-media health education isn’t something individuals can buy, and even if they could, they probably wouldn’t know just how valuable it is. Markets alone cannot provide mass-media health education, so it needs to be funded and implemented by governments or non-profits. However, the mere fact we have a plausible explanation for how mass-media education could be more cost-effective than cash transfers doesn’t show that it is more cost-effective. When we look at the evidence for supporting mass-media education, we find it’s weaker than the evidence for cash transfers.

Note:PROBLEMI DI DIM

The fact that the evidence for the $10/QALY figure is weaker than the evidence for GiveDirectly’s cost-effectiveness estimates provides a reason for preferring GiveDirectly to DMI.

Note:VERDETTO

4. How well is each programme implemented?

Even if a charity has chosen an extremely cost-effective programme with very robust evidence supporting it, it still might implement that programme badly. For example distribution of antimalarial bed nets is an extremely cost-effective programme if implemented correctly, but if recipients of the bed nets don’t believe they’re necessary or don’t believe they’re effective, they may use them for other purposes.

Note:PERICOLO

Both GiveDirectly and DMI seem excellent in terms of the quality of their implementation.

Note:AGD VS DIM

5. Does the charity need additional funds?

Even after finding a charity that works on an extremely cost-effective programme with robust evidence behind it, we still need to ask whether our contribution will make a difference. Many effective programmes are fully funded precisely because they are so effective.

Note:FULLY FUNDED

For example developing-world governments usually fund the costs of vaccination programmes for the cheapest vaccines such as those for tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and measles, providing these vaccines through existing health systems.

Note:ESEMPIO VACCINI

If a charity has recently received a windfall, it might not be able to use additional donations effectively. This may have been true of the Against Malaria Foundation in 2013: GiveWell had named it its top-recommended organisation in 2012, and it received a surge in donations totalling $10 million.

Note:ALLUVIONE DEI FONDI

Both GiveDirectly and DMI are in a good position to use more funding, but GiveDirectly could do more with additional funds than DMI could. GiveDirectly could productively use an additional $25–$30 million of donations in 2015 and expects to receive about $10 million, whereas DMI could productively use $10 million in 2015 and expects to receive $2–4 million.

Note:GD VS DIM

As you may have guessed, I deliberately chose these two charities because the answer is unclear. Of the considerations we’ve canvassed, the most important issues are estimated cost-effectiveness versus robustness of evidence. The estimated cost-effectiveness of DMI is higher than that of GiveDirectly, but the evidence behind that estimate is weaker than the evidence behind the estimate of GiveDirectly’s cost-effectiveness. Which charity one chooses depends crucially on how sceptical one should be of explicit cost-effectiveness estimates, and that depends on your level of optimism or pessimism about this programme.

Note:CONCLUSIONI GD VS DIM

you’ll notice that most of the charities I discuss implement health-based programmes in poor countries… But what about education, or water provision, or economic empowerment? These are all promising areas, but global health stands out for a couple of reasons. First, it has a proven track record: smallpox eradication is the clearest example… In contrast, the link between aid and economic growth is less clear. Second, by its nature the evidence behind health interventions is more robust….

Note:MEGLIO LA SANITÀ

Beneficienza autistica

Aiutare il prossimo è qualcosa di sopravvalutato perché si sottovaluta quanto sia difficile farlo. Troppo speso le buone intenzioni si trasformano in uno spreco di energie che danneggia tutti.

Quando il filosofo William MacAskill aiuta il suo prossimo la cosa che desidera più ardentemente è aiutarlo. Non crediate che sia facile perché la tentazione di limitarsi ad “agire in modo edificante”, a fare qualcosa che si presti al racconto incombe sempre. Bisogna allora ricorrere a mille trucchi, eseguire molti calcoli, fare parecchi confronti per non cascare nella trappola. Tutte fredde operazioni con esiti imprevedibili che potrebbero raffreddare il vostro entusiasmo di benefattori. Tutte operazioni spiegate nel suo libro “Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference”. Sappiate allora che il più grande nemico sono le “buone intenzioni”: che lo si ammetta o meno a molti di noi basta sentirle nel cuore per pacificare la propria coscienza. Oltretutto, se siete generosi col vostro prossimo la cosa si noterà, se fallite nell’aiutarlo concretamente ben pochi saranno interessati a sottolinearlo.

Ecco la storia di un gigantesco fallimento a lungo silenziato, quello delle Playpump:

Until 1989, Trevor Field was a typical middle-aged South African man… he had watched the women of a rural village wait for hours next to a windmill-powered water pump. There had been no wind that day but the women, who had trekked for miles, still needed to bring water… There simply must be a better way to do this, he’d thought. Now he was witnessing a potential solution… The PlayPump, as it was called, utilised the power of children at play to provide a sustainable water supply for the community… In 1995 he secured his first sponsor, Colgate Palmolive, installed the first PlayPump, and quit his job in order to focus full-time on the project,… His first major breakthrough came in 2000, when he beat 3,000 other applicants to win a World Bank Development Marketplace Award, given to ‘innovative, early stage development projects… That award attracted funding and attention, which culminated in a site visit from Steve Case, CEO of internet service provider AOL, and his wife Jean… Steve Case used his internet expertise to pioneer new forms of online fundraising… The PlayPump became the darling of the international media, who leapt at the opportunity to come up with punning headlines like ‘Pumping water is child’s play’ and ‘The magic roundabout’… In an article for Time magazine in 2006, Bill Clinton called the PlayPump a ‘wonderful innovation’… Rapper Jay-Z raised tens of thousands of dollars through his ‘Water for Life’ concert tour in 2006… First Lady Laura Bush, launching a campaign designed to raise $60 million to fund 4,000 PlayPumps across Africa by 2010… Trevor Field was at the centre of it all – a rock star of the charity world… By 2009 his charity had installed 1,800 PlayPumps across South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia… despite the hype and the awards and the millions of dollars spent, no one had really considered the practicalities of the PlayPump… Most playground roundabouts spin freely once they’ve gained sufficient momentum – that’s what makes them fun. But in order to pump water, PlayPumps need constant force, and children playing on them would quickly become exhausted… In one village local children were paid to ‘play’ on the pump… women of the village ended up pushing the roundabout themselves – a task they found tiring, undignified and demeaning… What’s more, no one had asked the local communities if they wanted a PlayPump in the first place… many said they preferred the hand pumps that were previously installed…. hand pump of the same cylinder size as a PlayPump provided 1,300 litres of water per hour – five times the amount of the PlayPump…. The old hand pump was much easier.’… Even when communities welcomed the pumps, they didn’t do so for long. The pumps often broke down within months, but, unlike the Zimbabwe Bush Pump, the mechanism was encased in a metal shell and could not be repaired by the community… The billboards on the storage tanks lay bare: the rural communities were too poor for companies to be interested in paying for advertising… at $14,000 per unit, it cost four times as much… PBS ran a documentary exposing the PlayPump’s many shortcomings…

Da notare: nonostante il loro fallimento acclarato le PlayPump continuano ad essere installate poiché descrivere il loro funzionamento suona talmente bene che la reputazione di chi le sponsorizza non è intaccata nemmeno ora che sappiamo come sono andate le cose.

Yet, despite its fall from grace, the PlayPump lives on. Under the name Roundabout Water Solutions, Field’s non-profit organisation continues to install the same model of PlayPumps across South Africa, with backing from corporations including Ford Motor Company and Colgate Palmolive… good intentions can all too easily lead to bad outcomes…

Michael Kremer e Rachel Glennerster insistono che la cosa migliore da fare per migliorare la nostra beneficienza è studiare i fallimenti. Uno esemplare:

Turkana people are basically nomadic, and various development projects had hoped to improve their quality of life by settling them on the lake, so they built a big factory for fish. They managed to get them to settle and fish in the lake, but then the lake got overfished, and the fish stock collapsed … It was depressing.’…

Kremer e Glennester si sono imbattuti nel caso singolare delle adozioni a distanza: costruire scuole nei paesi poveri, fare volontariato nelle medesime, donare testi scolastici sempre più aggiornati, pagare insegnanti sempre più preparati, comprare lavagne e altri sussidi didattici… si tratta di progetti che destano la nostra ammirazione. Sverminare i bambini invece è un’operazione che non gode di altrettanta aurea. Eppure Kremer scoprì che in certi contesti è di gran lunga la miglior strategia in campo educativo (abbatte il gigantesco assenteismo):

Kremer spoke to Paul Lipeyah, a friend who worked for the Dutch charity International Christian Support (now called Investing in Children and Their Societies, or ICS). ICS’s main programme was child sponsorship, in which a donor paid a regular amount to help an individual child or a small community. ICS had been trying to improve school attendance and test scores… new textbooks, additional teachers, school uniforms and so on… Kremer urged Lipeyah to test his programme using a method known as a randomised controlled trial… Randomised controlled trials are the gold-standard method of testing ideas in other sciences, and for decades pharmaceutical companies have used them… But before Kremer suggested it, the idea was almost unheard of in the development arena… it seemed obvious that providing more textbooks would help students learn. However, when Kremer tested this theory by comparing test scores between schools that received books and those that didn’t, he found no effect… Next, Kremer looked at providing flipcharts. The schoolchildren couldn’t understand the textbooks, but having flipcharts would allow teachers to tailor lessons to the specific needs of the students. Perhaps these would work better? Again, however, no effect…. increasing the number of teachers would? After all, most schools had only one teacher, catering to a large class. But, again, he found no discernible improvement from decreasing class sizes… At that point a friend at the World Bank suggested he test deworming… They aren’t as dramatic as AIDS or cancer or malaria because they don’t kill nearly as many people as those other conditions. But they do make children sick, and can be cured for pennies: off-patent drugs, developed in the fifties, can be distributed through schools and administered by teachers, and will cure children of intestinal worms for a year… The results were striking. ‘We didn’t expect deworming to be as effective as it was,’… Absenteeism is a chronic problem in schools in Kenya, and deworming reduced it by 25%….What’s more, deworming didn’t merely have educational benefits. It had health and economic benefits, too…. when Kremer’s colleagues followed up with the children ten years later, those who had been dewormed were working on average an extra 3.4…

Morale: senza calcoli accurati si è inefficienti. L’emozione ci frega, il cuore è un ostacolo.

… being unreflective often means being ineffective… Trevor Field and everyone who supported him were driven by emotions – the appeal of seeing happy children provide their communities with clean water through the simple act of playing… The Case Foundation, Laura Bush and the Clinton Global Initiative supported the PlayPump not because there was good evidence…

Molti, per esempio, si sono scagliati contro contro i RCT (Random Control Trial): fare confronti implica che fornisci, per esempio, più insegnanti ad un villaggio rispetto ad un altro pur avendo le risorse per non discriminare: molti ritengono tutto cio’ immorale anche se operare in questo modo  accrescere  in la nostra conoscenza e ci fa  programmare più razionalmente l’aiuto futuro.

Quando “aiutiamo noi stessi” la nostra mentalità è molto diversa rispetto a quando “aiutiamo gli altri”: difficile, per esempio, che investiamo i nostri risparmi dando retta a imbonitori incontrati per strada, eppure buona parte della nostra beneficienza la facciamo in questo modo.

Imagine, for example, that you’re walking down your local high street. An attractive and frighteningly enthusiastic young woman leaps in front of you, barring your way. She clasps a tablet and wears a T-shirt that says ‘Dazzling Cosmetics’. You agree to speak to her and she explains that she represents a beauty products company that is looking for investment. She tells you how big the market for beauty products is, and how wonderful the products they sell are, and how, because the company spends over 90% of its money on making the products, and less than 10% on staff, distribution and marketing, the company is extremely efficient and therefore able to generate an impressive return on investment. Would you invest? Of course you wouldn’t…. If you wanted to invest in a company, you would consult experts or investigate different companies and compare… almost no one is foolish enough to invest in a company that is pitched to them on the street…

Quando aiutiamo gli altri ci disinteressiamo poi della loro sorte, dell’utilità del nostro aiuto, cosa che ci guardiamo bene dal fare quando “aiutiamo noi stessi”:

…Because we don’t get useful feedback when we try to help others, we often don’t get a meaningful sense of whether we’re really making a difference… Kremer and Glennerster succeeded in part because they didn’t assume they knew what the most effective way of helping people was… ‘deworming is probably the least sexy development programme there is’…

Il benefattore razionale deve essere onesto e imparziale ma soprattutto deve sapere che almeno il 50% del suo sacrificio consiste nel calcolare le forme del suo aiuto: scoprire il deworming è stato più faticoso che realizzarlo. La mistica del sacrificio potrebbe essere addirittura controproducente.

Kremer and Glennerster exemplify a way of thinking I call effective altruism. Effective altruism is about asking ‘How can I make the biggest difference I can?’… effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what’s best for the world, and a commitment to do what’s best, whatever that turns out to be…Many people believe that altruism should necessarily denote sacrifice, but if you can do good while maintaining a comfortable life for yourself, that’s a bonus…

Ci sono organizzazioni filantropiche cento volte più efficienti di altre:

We discovered that the best charities are hundreds of times more effective at improving lives than merely ‘good’ charities…

Forse il miglior modo per far beneficienza è finanziare quelle organizzazioni che valutano l’efficienza delle organizzazioni filantropiche:

… two New York hedge-fund analysts, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, quit their jobs to start GiveWell, an organisation that conducts extraordinarily in-depth research to calculate which charities do the most good with every dollar they receive…

Ecco le domande che bisogna porsi quando si fa del bene “senza cuore”:

How many people benefit, and by how much? Is this the most effective thing you can do? Is this area neglected? What would have happened otherwise? What are the chances of success, and how good would success be?…

Perché sono domande importanti?

Question 1 helps us to think concretely about how different actions improve people’s lives, so that we don’t squander our time or money on activities that don’t, ultimately, make people better off. Question 2  ensures we try to spend our efforts not on ‘merely good’ activities, but on the very best activities. Question 3 directs us to focus on those areas which receive comparatively little attention, and for which others haven’t taken the outstanding opportunities to make a difference. Question 4 helps us to ensure that we’re not trying to do good works that would happen with or without our involvement. Question 5 helps us to think about uncertainty correctly, so that we can know when to pursue activities that have low odds of success but large potential payoffs instead of activities with guaranteed smaller benefits…

C’ è chi si fa prendere dallo sconforto: ma con il poco che posso donare come farò mai la differenza. Si conclude che in fondo il nostro sforzo è una goccia nell’oceano, e che a questo punto basta il gesto.

Eppure… Eppure bisogna essere consapevoli che la maggioranza di chi leggerà questo libro apparterrà al fatidico 1% della popolazione più ricca del pianeta. Gli altri al 5%. Ora, magari siete anche scesi in strada con i movimenti “occupy…” per gridare il vostro sdegno contro il famigerato 1% di privilegiati multimiliardari. Ma nella questione che trattiamo qui l’ 1% siamo tutti noi! E’ evidente che ci sfuggono i nostri privilegi.  

When the Occupy Wall Street movement gained traction in late 2011, disaffected citizens of the Western world quickly adopted the term ‘the 1%’ to refer to the top 1% of income earners in wealthy nations, primarily the United States…. References to the 1% versus the 99% – i.e. the rest of the population – quickly became shorthand for the income gap in America… These facts can lead those of us who aren’t in that 1% to feel powerless, but this focus on the top income earners in the United States neglects just how much power almost any member of an affluent country has. If people focus exclusively on American inequality, they’re missing an important part of the bigger picture… If you earn above $52,000 (£34,000) per year, then, speaking globally, you are part of the 1%. If you earn at least $28,000 (£18,200) – that’s the typical income for working individuals in the US – you’re in the richest 5% of the world’s population. Even someone living below the US poverty line, earning just $11,000 (£7,000) per year, is still richer than 85% of people in the world…

So già qual è l’obiezione: ma il costo della vita nei paesi poveri è inferiore quindi il nostro privilegio non è ben rappresentato dalla diseguaglianza nei redditi nominali.

Sure,’ you might say, ‘the poor in developing countries might not have much money, but that money can pay for so much more because the cost of living in those places is cheaper.’… When I was in Ethiopia, I ate at one of Addis Ababa’s fanciest restaurants, and the bill came to about $10…

D’altronde, si prosegue, ci sono zone del mondo in cui la gente vive con 5 dollari al giorno, da noi sarebbe impossibile, ergo: il costo della vita è inferiore che da noi: 

You might wonder how anyone can live on so little money. Surely they’d die? And the answer is … they do. At least, they die much more regularly than those of us who live in developed countries…

Ecco, non lasciatevi ingannare dal trucco che c’è dietro: il costo della vita non c’entra (o c’entra relativamente). Chi vive con poco… vive male:  

… In other dimensions, their lives are just as lacking as you’d expect, given their earnings… spending most of their income on food… The majority are underweight and anaemic… Most households own radios but lack electricity, toilets or tap water. Less than 10% of households possess a chair or a table… In the US, because there is no extreme poverty, there is no market for extremely cheap goods. The lowest quality rice you can buy in the US is far better than what you could buy in Ethiopia or India… The room I rented in Ethiopia for $1 a night was far worse than anything I could rent in the US… The very worst housing you can buy in the US is far better than the mud-brick houses typical for those living below the $1.50/day…

Ora dovrebbe essere tutto più chiaro: da noi essere poveri è dura soprattutto perché non ci sono molti poveri e quindi non esiste un mercato dei poveri. E’ vero, In Etiopia potete dormire in albergo pagando 1 euro ma nel letto troverete gli scarafaggi. Da noi prezzi tanto bassi non ci sono non tanto perché il costo della vita è più alto ma per il semplice fatto che siamo tutti abbastanza ricchi da poterci permettere di rifiutare condizioni del genere: se un albergatore le proponesse fallirebbe!

Bene, ora che abbiamo visto che i poveri del mondo sono veramente poveri (e non “finti poveri” con redditi bassi bilanciati da un costo della vita inferiore), ci si para davanti agli occhi “la grande occasione”: le diseguaglianze sono talmente forti che la nostra azione di benefattori puo’ davvero fare molto: 

Because we are comparatively so rich, the amount by which we can benefit others is vastly greater than the amount by which we can benefit ourselves. We can therefore do a huge amount of good at relatively little real cost… we make ourselves $1 poorer and thereby make an Indian farmer living in extreme poverty $1 richer. How much more would that $1 benefit the poor Indian farmer than ourselves? It’s a basic rule of economics that money is less valuable to you the more you have of it…

Pensate solo all’utilità marginale del denaro! E’ vero che i soldi non fanno la felicità ma vi contribuiscono:

Figure 3, which shows the relationship between income and subjective wellbeing both within a country and across countries… Source: Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, ‘Subjective well-being and income’… For someone earning $1,000 per year, a $1,000 pay rise generates the same increase in happiness as a $2,000 pay rise for someone earning $2,000 per year, or an $80,000 pay rise for someone already earning $80,000 per year… Imagine if your boss called you in and told you your salary would double for the next year. You’d be pretty pleased, right?…

Per noi il mondo della beneficienza è un moltiplicatore della felicità, un colossale Happy Hour:

… Imagine a happy hour where you could either buy yourself a beer for $5 or buy someone else a beer for 5¢. If that were the case, we’d probably be pretty… This idea is important enough that I’ve given it a name. I call it The 100x Multiplier…

Non è sempre stato così, per 200.000 anni (fino a 250 anni fa) l’uomo di ogni paese ha avuto un reddito medio giornaliero di 2 dollari al giorno:   

… from the evolution of Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago until the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago – the average income across all countries was the equivalent of $2 per day or less… Even now, over half of the world still lives on $4 per day or less…

Conclusione: una goccia nel mare? No. 

… Sometimes we look at the size of the problems in the world and think, ‘Anything I do would be just a drop in the bucket. So why bother?’ But, in light of the research shown in these graphs, that reasoning doesn’t make any sense…

COMMENTI PERSONALI

Un libro pieno di stimoli che finora su di me ha avuto un solo effetto concreto: non donare nulla per il recente terremoto (ho seguito il principio: “nella tua beneficienza trascura senza sensi di colpa gli eventi che compaiono sui media nelle prime 25 pagine”). Mi chiedo se la beneficienza che non crea comunità abbia un valore così totalizzante: forse il senso di soddisfazione che crea in noi la “generosità tradizionale” non è solo narcisismo o irrazionalismo, forse qualcosa di quel sentimento va salvato, forse non va completamente raschiato via come fa invece la beneficienza spietata di William MacAskill.