What We Don't Do by Nick Cooney - a book review
By Rakefet Cohen Ben-Arye 🔸 @ 2025-06-06T02:00 (+10)
Sharing my humble perspective on What We Don't Do by Nick Cooney, it has transformed how I think about effective giving.
Omission bias—focusing on what we don't do—is one of the most common biases we face. We can achieve much more for animals and people if we concentrate on the contributions we can actively make, rather than focusing solely on the bare minimum, avoiding the bad options we passively don't choose.
While we can theorize whether we have a moral duty to help as much as not to harm, the fact remains: one of these attitudes results in hundreds of animals saved per dollar, while the other doesn't.
The book made me think about earning to give, as money is a resource that is even more scarce when it comes to donations to farm animals rather than humans or pets.
There are several ways to earn to give, including (I took the freedom to add a few items):
- Looking for a higher-paid job
- Saving more money
- Spreading the earning-to-give idea so that more people can earn to give
- Optimizing for your donation by giving to effective charities
- Starting a side hustle or having passive income to earn to give
- Redirecting movement donations to effective charities
- Moving to a city where the cost of living is lower
- Asking for a lower salary if you work at a vegan nonprofit
It doesn't sound as appealing as giving your time, but donating your money to specialists who can make the most of your contribution might be the most effective way to support animals.
Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2025-06-06T07:45 (+4)
Thanks for sharing, Rakefet! I think donating more and better is the best strategy to increase impact for the vast majority of people:
- Benjamin Todd thinks “it’s defensible to say that the best of all interventions in an area are about 10 times more effective than [as effective as] the mean, and perhaps as much as 100 times”.
- Donating 10 % more to an organisation 10 to 100 times as cost-effective as one one could join is 10 (= 0.1*10/0.1) to 100 (= 0.1*100/0.1) times as impactful as working there if the alternative hire would be 10 % less impactful.