Aeon Ideas will host a short debate about living high while people die. Check out my essay here.

Excerpt:

I wish people bought fewer luxury goods and gave more. Still, there’s an upside to luxury consumption. GDP/capita in, e.g., South Korea and Taiwan were low in 1970. 45 years later, these are two of the richest countries on Earth. They became rich not because of charity, international aid, or effective altruism, but the way all the other rich countries became rich—they had decent institutions that encouraged markets, and people in those markets produced products other people wanted to buy. Charity is no substitute for, and does little to prompt, sustained economic growth. When we buy luxury goods, we may not thereby intend to feed the poor, but the long-term result is often that we transform the poor into the rich. Don’t take my word for it—go read any standard development economics textbook.[2]

As promised, I donated my honorarium for this post to GiveDirectly.