The life you can save

The most important book I’ve read yet.

The main message for me is contained in this syllogism:

1. Suffering and deaths from lack of food, shelter and medical care is bad
2. If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so
3. (added) You can easily know which charities are effective
4. By donating to effective charities, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important

If you don’t donate to effective charities, you are doing something wrong.

This was a dense book and many points left a mark, some of which include:

• By being middle class in a developed country, we are easily in the richest 2-5% worldwide
• We’re not here because we worked hard, we’re here mostly thanks to our social capital (are you pretentious enough to say otherwise, when even Warren Buffer acknowledges it?)
• Giving to the poor is a core precept in monotheistic religions (repeated thousands of times in the Bible, tzedakah in the Talmud, zakat for Muslims)
• There is generally little knowledge and many misconceptions around Extreme Poverty and foreign aid
• Humans have many known biases that go in the way of helping fight Extreme Poverty
• Foreign aid is/was not always as altruistic as I thought, especially in the case of the US
• Most people do not do any research for where they should donate their money (I particularly related with this, I was just swayed to the last request from a friend or a family member)
• Charities now exist to investigate and recommend which charities are effective, it is easy to get informed

This book is freely available online (epub / pdf / audiobook) and I’d be happy to chat about it, to lend you a copy or even buy it for you. There isn’t a single excuse for you not to read it.

This single book has inspired me to base my new theme for the year on it, to get more informed and start the discussions with family, friends and colleagues, and to take a public pledge to donate part of my net income to effective charities.