From “Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices About Giving Back” by William Macaskill
If you’re starting a nonprofit, one good strategy is to focus on a particularly important cause (which we’ll discuss in the next chapter). Another important question is to ask why the problem your new organization is addressing has not been solved already, or won’t be solved in the future. Ask yourself:
- Why hasn’t this problem been solved by markets?
- Why hasn’t this problem been solved by the state?
- Why hasn’t this problem already been solved by philanthropy?
In many cases, the answers to these questions will suggest that the problem is very difficult to solve, in which case it may not be the most effective problem to focus on. In other cases, the answers might suggest that you really can make good progress on the problem. If the beneficiaries of your action don’t participate fully in markets and aren’t governed by a well-functioning state, then there is a clear need for philanthropy. For example, we should expect the interests of future people to be systematically underrepresented because they don’t participate in present-day markets of elections.