Why I Don’t Give to Charity

Not everyone matters the same to me (or to anyone else, if they were honest)

Around this part of the Internet you see the concept of “effective altruism” come up pretty frequently. There don’t seem to be a ton of people who actually call themselves “effective altruists,” but the ones who do are fairly loud about it, and most secular people will have some degree of sympathy to the concept. I have always been disdainful of this term for a variety of reasons, but with the caveat that if it could be boiled down to just giving to effective charities instead of ineffective ones, that wouldn’t really be so objectionable.

Even then, I still would not call myself an “effective altruist” (or perhaps an altruist of any sort, but definitely not that one) and would not give anything to charity, not to the sort of charities that effective altruists recommend at least. This brings me to a central consideration that seems to be entirely missing from most discussions around “EA” and charitable giving; the question of whether anyone should be giving any money to charity at all. Not because the charity is effective or ineffective, but simply on the principle of the matter.

Obviously I tend towards the “no” side of that equation, which is clearly a very unintuitive position for many people. I think that anyone has sympathies for “EA” beliefs is probably taking it for granted that giving to charity is obviously a Good Thing and that you should do it. What am I taking into consideration that they’re missing?

Well, quite simply, I’m a father and a husband. This means that every dollar I make is earmarked first and foremost for my wife and child. By definition, any dollar I give to charity is a dollar that will not be given to them.

What about the “effective altruists?” I get the sense that many secular people attracted to this “movement” are single and/or childless (often both) and consider having a family of their own to be an optional endeavor in life. That’s a generalization and I can’t really cite any data to back it up—it’s not like there are any serious academic studies on the demographics of people who call themselves “effective altruists.” Regardless, just by virtue of talking about “effective altruism” more than they talk about family formation, these people are hinting pretty strongly at where their priorities lie.

I therefore find it a bit strange that the “effective altruists” never seem to even try to convince someone like me why this charity or that deserves my money more than my wife or child, or to present me with some kind of coherent case for how much I should be able to spare. Perhaps that is a luxury born of modernity; there are enough childless secular people these days that such people simply feel no need to appeal to family-focused chuds like me. They have plenty of company to keep already.

I suspect that another reason is because the exercise would undermine the entire worldview behind “effective altruism.” Engaging with this objection would require an implicit acknowledgement that there are certain people in the world to whom I am beholden more than others, and that it isn’t a small difference either. Much the opposite, the difference in how much I am beholden to random Africans versus my own flesh and blood is unfathomably large. It’s difficult to imagine how the gulf could possibly be any wider.

Well, can’t you just provide for your family first, and then give what’s left over to charity? That might seem simple enough to someone who has never actually had a family to provide for. The modern world is fraught with uncertainty for people of average wealth and means. I might lose my job, or change jobs, or fail to get as many pay raises as I thought I would. The world might randomly get hit with a pandemic that causes the government to go insane and inflate the currency with tens of trillions in debt spending!

My wife might get hit by a car; I might be diagnosed with a severe disease; or any other endless number of things might happen. It would be terribly irresponsible of me not to keep a rainy day fund for these eventualities, and that fund should probably be as big as I can make it. That’s assuming that our basic financial outlook is already taken care of, which it isn’t for most people. Are you ever going to own a house? Probably need to be saving up for that down payment! What about retirement? Are you planning to live on social security alone? Will social security even be here when I retire 20+ years from now?

You can see how the possibility of giving to charity quickly becomes unreasonable for the average family. I would estimate that I’d want to have all of my family’s personal necessities set up for life (the primary expense here being a house, but also including things like education), that I’d want to have mine and my wife’s retirement completely secure, and then I’d want several million dollars to my name on top of that, bare minimum, before I could ever consider just giving away my money to random strangers. In practice, this probably wouldn’t be enough either—I’d still like to leave money to my kids and even my grandkids and nieces and nephews, after all. Why are random Africans getting my money and not them?

But aren’t those random Africans literally dying, you might ask? Am I not heartless in my disregard for them? Well, the way I see it, either I have an obligation to give money to these people or I don’t. I know that I have an obligation to give money to my family; that is non-negotiable. Starting from there, I then ask myself what the limiting principle for this could possibly be, and I struggle to find any coherent answers. If I can give one dollar to save a life in Africa, should I do it? Well, probably, you might say. What about ten dollars? One hundred? If the price of a life in Africa is one thousand dollars, and I can save twenty Africans at the cost of my life savings, well… should I do it? Am I a bad person if I don’t?

This dilemma has no apparent resolution, but I know with certainty that almost any amount of money spent on my own family will be money well-spent. There is no uncertainty in that regard. Therefore, I conclude that I simply do not have an obligation to give money to save random strangers in Africa; in any amount, for any charity. Not everything in the world is my concern. The notion that everything on Earth is my concern is an obviously non-functional worldview.

This quickly becomes apparent if we attempt to scale up these two competing notions. What if everyone in the world believed and behaved as I did? Well then, everyone in the world would have someone who is specifically beholden to them, someone who they knew owed them exclusive duties of care and provision, and vice versa. Relationships and duties would be clear-cut and unambiguous. What if everyone in the world believed that everyone else in the world was equally beholden to everything in the world, however? How could we function then? Well, we couldn’t. Such a viewpoint would be utter chaos, totally nonsensical and dysfunctional. I can’t possibly care about and provide for 7.99 billion other people all at once, especially given that I’ll only ever know some infinitesimal fraction of them personally.

Ah, but aren’t you a Christian? Didn’t Jesus say to give to the poor? Yes, and yes. I do give money to my church, and I am willing to consider providing aid, both financial and otherwise, to people I know personally who might be struggling. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the Lord might compel me, if I were ever blessed with significant wealth, to expend some portion of that wealth on some endeavor other than my own relatives—but even in that case, the donation would almost certainly go, again, to my church or to some type of institution related to my faith. It is simply never going to go towards mosquito nets in Africa.