A good framework for looking at careers and figuring out if your best trade-off is to do your occupation as a direct way to make the world a better place or to make your living and then donate money to make the world a better place can be found in the book 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. In many ways, it is the best career planning advice I have ever seen in any book, and I'm applying for myself and encouraging my four children to use the same planning framework.

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Altruism/...

Dear Rich Pineapple:

Congrats on your huge BTC surplus!

To make the biggest difference, consider looking into Effective Altruism[1] (an idea, not a charity) if you haven't already. Their motto is “using reason and evidence to do the most good”.

Perhaps do away with the charity proposal form, and instead choose one or several of the most effective charities as ranked by GiveWell.org[2] (who do rigorous effectiveness analysis). OpenPhilanthropy[3] is a charity that takes the EA perspective.

Unfortunately, seemingly worthy charities are often orders of magnitude less effective than the few most effective causes. Charity evaluators like GiveWell help us find the gems that can leverage our money many times more effectively.

For more info about Effective Altruism, listen to Tim Ferriss[4] and Sam Harris[5] interview the co-founder of Effective Altruism, check out this NYT piece[6], or read Doing Good Better[7].

[1] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/

[2] https://www.givewell.org/

[3] https://www.openphilanthropy.org/

[4] http://tim.blog/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/

[5] https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/being-good-and-doing-...

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/upshot/effective-altruism...

[7] https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Good-Better-Effective-Altruism/...