Benjamin Todd

Is this problem neglected?

In a previous chapter, we saw that medicine in the US and UK is a relatively crowded problem.

There are already over 850,000 doctors in the US and health spending is high, which makes it hard for an extra person working on health to make a big contribution.

Health in poor countries, however, receives much less attention, and that's one reason why it's possible to save a life for only about $5,000.

The more effort that's already going into a problem, the harder it is for you to be successful and make a meaningful contribution.

This is due to diminishing returns.

When you pick fruit from a tree, you start with those that are easiest to reach, the low-hanging fruit.

When they're gone, it becomes harder and harder to get a meal.

It's the same with social impact.

When few people have worked on a problem, there are generally lots of great opportunities to make progress.

As more and more work is done, it becomes harder and harder to be original and have a big impact.

It looks a bit like this.

There's a diagram here with effort on the x-axis and impact on the y-axis.

There's a line that starts out increasing a little bit, then it begins to increase more rapidly, and then after increasing quite rapidly for a while, it begins to flatten out again.

The problems your friends are talking about and interested in working on are exactly those where everyone else is already focused.

So they're not the neglected problems, and probably not the most urgent.

Rather, the most urgent problems, those where you have the greatest impact, are probably areas you've never thought about working on.

We all know about the fight against cancer, but what about parasitic worms?

It doesn't make for such a good charity music video that these tiny creatures have infected one billion people worldwide with neglected tropical diseases.

These conditions are far easier to treat than cancer, but we never even hear about them because they very rarely affect rich people.