Marginal charity for other people

Abstract

Marginal charity theorizes that if one optimizes for personal interest rather than charitable impact and the personal interest is smooth at a maximum while the charitable impact is not constant there, then one can achieve arbitrarily high charitable impact per unit of sacrifice by moving slightly from the selfish optimum. Marginal charity as a concept extends to sacrificing one’s own personal interest to prompt others to make slight alterations to their own behavior that would benefit the public good. – AI-generated abstract.