Perhaps part of it is that local action can often be an order of magnitude more impactful than the “equivalent” action at a distance. If you volunteer in your local community, you not only have fine-grained control over the benefit you bestow, you also know for a fact that you’re doing good. Giving to a charity that addresses an issue on the other side of the world doesn’t afford this level of control, nor this level of certainty. For all you know most of the donation is being embezzled.
I think another part of it is a sort of healthy nativism or in-group preference or whatever you want to call it. It rubs people the wrong way when you say that you care about someone in a different country as much as you care about your neighbors. That’s just…antisocial. Taken to its logical conclusion, a “rationalist” should not only donate all of their disposable income to global charities, they should also find a way to steal as much as possible from their neighbors and donate that, too. After all, those. Holden in Africa need the money much more than their pampered western neighbors.
I think another part of it is a sort of healthy nativism or in-group preference or whatever you want to call it. It rubs people the wrong way when you say that you care about someone in a different country as much as you care about your neighbors. That’s just…antisocial. Taken to its logical conclusion, a “rationalist” should not only donate all of their disposable income to global charities, they should also find a way to steal as much as possible from their neighbors and donate that, too. After all, those. Holden in Africa need the money much more than their pampered western neighbors.