Does Capitalism Beat Charity?
Read the original on Astral Codex Ten →
Follow-up reading
↳ Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity — Highlights (companion) · Jan 2024
Summary
Marginal-reasoning take on the 'give to capitalism, not charity' argument. The concrete Instacart-vs-Dispensers-for-Safe-Water per-$1M comparison shows charity wins on first-order effects (50k people clean water + ~1,500 lives vs 2,000 people grocery-delivery deals); Scott then tests each second-order effect (jobs-over-replacement, replaceability, permanence, ROI) and finds none rescue the capitalism claim. Only 'capitalist charities' (development aid, impact investing) are promising, but adverse selection (why hasn't Wall Street funded it?) cautions.
Why this score
Quality 70 · Strong. A clean, useful EA-reasoning essay: the concrete Instacart-vs-water-dispensers marginal comparison sharply punctures the 'capitalism beats charity' intuition by forcing a Near-Mode like-for-like, and the replaceability/adverse-selection points are sharp. Solid Strong, held mid-band because it ends somewhat inconclusively (strategy 3 is 'promising but I don't know a good one').
Claude’s paradigm shift 50 · Moderate. Moderate - the concrete marginal company-vs-charity framing is a fresh, sharp angle on an EA debate; built on standard EA/economics reasoning.
Real-world impact 2 · Minor. 2 - EA-discourse essay; influences giving reasoning but no concrete material reach of its own.