Peter Singer

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866 appearances 5 recordings 3 series first heard Nov 2020 last heard 20 Apr

Peter Singer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Australian Finance Podcast · Making effective donations to charity with Peter Singer · 8 Nov 2020 podcast

the largest cause of preventable blindness in the world.

It's mostly something that occurs in hot, dry, dusty countries where hygiene is poor.

It does exist in Australia, in the north, but much less than, of course, people can get treatment for it.

But in a lot of North African countries and some other countries, it's prevalent and it slowly causes blindness over many years.

So Toby looked at the cost, looked at some articles as to what it costs to prevent that.

And he worked out that if he continued to live modestly while earning an academic salary and going up through the ranks, that he would be able to prevent 80,000 people going blind.

Now, you know, think of that.

You imagine the MCG almost packed with people.

It doesn't happen nowadays, I know, but hopefully it will happen again.

And you could look around that MCG filled with crowds for a grand final or something and you could say, wow, that's how many people I prevented going blind.

And this is not because I'm like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates because I've been a vastly successful wealthy person.

This is because I simply lived modestly while earning decent academic salaries throughout my life.

Yes, I can.

And I think it's, to some extent, I think reassuring for people who are in investment and finance who sometimes get a bit of flack from people who say, oh, you know, you're the bad guys, you're the guys who are running things, you're doing it for your own to get rich yourself and you're causing problems elsewhere in the world.

So it's not an ethical career choice.

But one of the things that effective altruists have suggested in talking about career choice

is that earning to give is a reasonable career choice if you can stick with it.

So I just mentioned that on an academic salary, Toby Ord calculated he could prevent 80,000 people from going blind.

Obviously, if he had been a successful investor and successful in the financial sector, he could have earned a lot more money and could have prevented blindness in a lot more people or could have helped other people in other ways.

So...

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