Here are some quick thoughts on charity, taken from a post I made:
This is an issue that bothered me for some time. There are lots of people doing charity and world-improving things, at all sorts of levels. Some people donate to their friends who a bit hardoff, or a family that can't send their kids to college, some give money to the mom on welfare, others the homeless man on the street, others the starving families in a faroff country. Assuming we all agreed that objectively the starving families had the lowest standards of living, should we send all our money to them and claim that giving it to anyone else is not "as good" a deed?
Seeing that society's (and my natural) answer seemed to be clearly no, I asked why. I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't the absolute standard of living, or whatever measurement you want to use, it is not the absolute value, but rather the relative one. That is, the increase in happiness/enjoyment of life for the person (and therefore the world in general) is about the same.
So ignoring the side-effects of giving kids a better education, simply improving the quality of life for millions of people is probably worthwhile.
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