There are approximately 43,000 doctors in Sweden. They undeniably do an important job, but since many people are interested in the profession, it becomes more difficult for additional people to make a big difference at the margin. The application pressure for the medical program is high, so if you don’t take the place, someone else who is about as suitable will do it instead. Much of what you want to contribute to will therefore take place regardless of whether you become a doctor or not.
The more resources and effort already put into solving a problem, the more difficult it is for you to contribute in that area. This is due to what in economics is called diminishing marginal returns. If you pick apples from a tree, you start with the ones that hang at the bottom and are easiest to reach. When they are gone, greater effort is required to collect the equivalent amount again. Hence the expression “low-hanging fruit”. One can see similar mechanisms when it comes to world improvement. The more work others put in, the harder it is to contribute to something new. If, on the other hand, the problem receives little attention, there are generally better opportunities for an individual to make significant progress. In poor countries, less resources are spent on healthcare than in Sweden, and that is one of the reasons why it is possible to save a life for approximately 3,000 – 5,000 dollars.
Imagine two equally large problems and that currently SEK 1,000 is spent on solving Problem 1, but only SEK 100 on solving Problem 2. This means that your donation of SEK 10 would correspond to a 1 percent increase in one case and a 10 percent increase in the second. This gives you reason to believe that the donation contributes to greater marginal returns if it goes to Problem 2.
Graphically, it can be illustrated like this:
Source: 80,000 Hours
The problems you read about in the media and discuss with your friends are largely the same ones that many others are also focusing on. Since such issues are rarely overlooked, this is probably not where you can make the biggest difference. Do you know about parasitic worms? They don’t do very well in commercials and very few people in Sweden have any personal connection to them, but globally hundreds of millions of children are in need of treatment (which is also cheap).
If you want to make a really big difference, you should try to identify areas that others systematically miss. It can be about:
Problems that affect overlooked groups, such as animals, people who live far away from us or future generations
Events that have a low probability of occurring, but would have catastrophic consequences
Problems few people know about
Animal suffering in industrial food production is a problem that receives little attention in relation to its scale. Every year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in agonizing conditions, but less than $20 million is spent trying to do something about it. Another overlooked problem is global catastrophic risks – global events that threaten to seriously degrade our living conditions. It could be about nuclear war, risks linked to the development of artificial intelligence or pandemics deadlier than Covid-19.
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Work on a problem that's neglected – article by 80,000 Hours