Donations 2021
This post describes my thoughts, at the end of 2021, about donating money to make the universe a better place. I remain committed to using at least 10% of what income I earn to do so.
This year is the first time since 2017 that I'm substantially changing my approach to donations. In 2017, I shifted my focus from mainly global poverty/health to a mix of global poverty, animal welfare, long-term future, and meta EA. This year, I'm shifting to a mix of global poverty, animal welfare, and explicitly 'exploratory' categories.
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Perhaps the most important long-term development in effective altruism in 2020 and 2021 has been the crypto boom, which has moved at least $30 billion of wealth to committed effective altruists. (The most widely visible of these is Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX.) I would roughly estimate that the top ~ten self-identifying EAs now have plans to move at least $45 billion of donations to EA causes in the next ~30 years -- even in the