Translator: Sarah Rimmington Reviewer: Denise RQ
If an outsider looked at our world, they’d wonder what on earth we are doing.
We have plenty enough resources to fix all the worst problems,
we’re just not using them right.
This isn’t exactly the fault of particular individuals,
it’s just that our world is driven by systems that maximize values
different from those ones that we actually most care about.
For example, the businesses that dominate the market
are those that are best at maximizing profit.
The politicians we get are those who are best
at maximizing their chances of getting elected.
And the stories we are most likely to see and read in the media
are those that are best at maximizing the likelihood
that people would want to read and share them.
In the long run, this is bad, because values we might care about more,
like the environment, or the welfare of workers in factories,
or our access to true and useful information,
get bulldozed out of the way.
I’m going to tell you about a system that doesn’t do this.
A system that allows us to direct our resources
to exactly what we believe is most important.
And that system is effective charitable giving.
I say effective, because it’s not usually obvious
which charities are actually doing the most good,
and in the usual charity ecosystem, the charities that thrive
are those that are the best at getting people to give them money,
not necessarily the ones that are best at making the world a better place.
However, through research and transparency it is possible to locate charities
that are incredibly good at improving things.
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative doesn’t get a lot of funding
because it’s a weird disease with a long name,
and the 200 million people infected are mostly incredibly poor,
so no-one’s ever heard of it.
But we know reliably that Schistosomiasis Control Initiative
can treat one child for a debilitating parasitic infection for just 50p.
And de-worming doesn’t just improve health.
Surprisingly, it’s much better for improving educational outcomes
than more obvious things like scholarships or giving textbooks to schools.
A £70 donation to SCI will get 150 months of education
for children living in poverty.
Or, you know, you could use that money to buy, what?
Three meals out?
Because we’re so used to this world,
in which hardly any of our resources
are actually invested in the most important things,
it’s astonishing how good charity could be if we just took it more seriously.
If the richest 10% gave 10% of their incomes to charity,
what could we do?
Well, that would be $4 trillion a year.
Jeffery Sachs estimates that it would cost $175 billion a year for two decades
to solve global poverty forever.
That would be less than 5% of the money we’d have.
What would we do with the other 95%?
Well, if 10% gave 10%, this is my quick breakdown
of what spending could look like in the first year.
(Laughter)
In fact, if 10% gave 10%,
the first year would give us enough to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger,
eradicate all neglected tropical diseases and many others besides,
triple medical research,
give everyone secondary education,
permanently save every rainforest in the world,
get us well on the way to fixing climate change,
fund an unparalleled renaissance in the arts,
and have enough left over to launch several manned missions to Mars.
(Applause)
That would be the first year.
(Laughter).
Goodness only knows what we’d do in year two.
How can we make this happen?
Luckily, there are some simple answers:
give more, give more effectively, and encourage others to do the same.
There’s a growing movement called Effective Altruism,
which is about this idea of using the resources available to each one of us
- our time, our skills, our money -
to do as much good in the world as possible.
For example, Givewell undertakes detailed, rigorous research
in order to locate the world’s best charities, like SCI.
I highly recommend you visit Givewell
next time you make any decision about charitable giving.
And another example:
there’s an organization called Giving What We Can.
And this organization has a pledge.
A pledge that over 1,000 people have taken, myself included.
A pledge to give 10% of your lifetime income
to those organizations you believe can most effectively use it
to help improve the lives of others.
When I first heard about this, it seemed like a big, scary commitment to make.
But if I earn a usual graduate starting salary
of £25,000 per year, and give away 10%,
I’ll still be in the richest 5% of the world.
And all the evidence suggests that giving money to charity
makes you happier than spending it on yourself.
I believe we can create a society where giving 10%
isn’t this kind of weird, unusual commitment,
but something that everybody does,
just as part of being a normal, decent person.
Where within a few years,
things like poverty, and illiteracy, and environmental problems
will be things of the past,
and where we have this huge pool of resources
dedicated to fixing any problems that might remain,
that’s a world I’d be proud to live in.
Help me make that world happen.
Thank you.
(Applause)