Livre d'Or

I think this is something else where I've not been exposed to that idea.

Quite, and I've never come across this concept of utilitarianism or efficiency in donation either. (This happens from time to time on your (liv's) blog.)

As far as I'm concerned, I want to help cancer research for purely selfish reasons: so that the cancer I'm statistically not unlikely to get in later life is curable, or at least treatable, by the time I get it. But OTOH I recognise the point about cancer research being prioritised at the expense of other diseases, which is why I give to Alzheimer's research too, thanks to Terry Pratchett's drawing attention to the inequality of funding there.

I don't know how prevalent this argument of utilitarianism is; for me, and probably many people too, the question is not how can I most efficiently give to charity, but what is a sensible amount to give to charity, and how can I best split what I'm giving amongst what I care about?

As you know, Bob, Jewish tradition encourages giving 10% of one's income; but this is complicated for us because we live in a world where a substantial portion of our income is siphoned off by the government through income tax and other taxes, which government then gives a proportion of it to charity.

I wish there was an easy way of knowing how much of the money I give to the government ends up going to charity, so I could calibrate how much I give. (But with different taxes going to different places, and Gift Aid, and GAYE, it's all probably too complicated to work out.)

In about 1990 New Scientist published a piece about the "personal pound"—turning the telephone-figure sums governments deal in into amounts in pounds and pennies for each of the people in the UK. That would be quite useful here too.

Hmmm, I seem to have sidetracked the scope of the discussion somewhat...