Offset Culture

There's a spectre haunting ethics.

EDIT (20/10/2025): If you want to read good arguments for the exact opposite laid out in this piece check out this lovely article.

Tell me if you have heard the following expressions: “carbon neutral“, “net zero“, “how much does it cost to offset my non vegan diet?“, “I’m doing my part“, etc etc.

It’s this idea that if you do -X utility, your responsibility is (and ends at) making sure you do X utility to bring net utility achieved back to 0.

This is what I call offset culture, and in my opinion it’s poisoning how most people think of ethics.

Part of it is psychological of course, I suspect this is driven by the same human desire that causes us to think of a -0.01% day over day result in the stock market to be more bad compared to 0.01% day over day than we think 0.05% day over day is good compared to a 0.01% day over day.

If you were curious, the cost to “do as much good as going completely vegan“ (thus, “offset“ your diet) is $23/month¹.

Now really think about this, what is special about donating exactly 23 dollars to charity compared to, 20, or 50…?

Universalizability and its consequences

There is basically only one “good“ answer to this question, and it’s that 23 dollars could be seen as a “universalizable” amount. The amount that if everyone made sure to offset what they do, the problem would be solved.² It’s the same kind of logic we employ when we say “leave the room as clean as you found it“

However, I don’t think this is a good answer at all, for the following reasons:

First of all, applied to the non-vegan diet offset, this is tautologically untrue, since factory farming can’t be solved if no one changes their diet.

Second of all, why the fuck would your responsibilities end at “I did the thing that if everyone did it we would all be fine!“???

I suspect the main reason people find this line of thinking so appealing is that, without your responsibilities being limited to the offset, and taking the leap of faith in consequentialism, that we are now to stop at nothing. Every single dollar you spend must now be scrutinized intensely and to be thought of as a share of an african child’s life.

This is of course, based and correct, you should think of money this way.

People don’t like this idea. People in general want to feel ethical, and they don’t like the idea that the bar for ethics is one that would greatly inconvenience them. I think this is why offset culture is so attractive.

My main third critique here is that universalizability ignores the lottery of life (where you are born, IQ, ability to work in high-impact/high-earning roles, money during upbringing, access to education etc…). It’s very obvious these things severely impact your options for a high impact career or earning to give. Therefore, even in this world of universalizability it seems to me quite obvious affluent/lucky people should be giving³ (way) more than non-lucky people.

When it comes to actions that have direct impact, we immediately (intuitively, even) recognize how stupid offset culture is. If someone said “yeah I killed a homeless man with no friends/family in the sixties, they’ll never find the body but I donated enough to save one child living in extreme poverty from malaria so I didn’t feel too bad about it“ ⁴ we would rightly think this person is insane. Sadly you, dear reader, are morally analogous to this person if you engage in offset culture.

My last critique is quite simple, we live in a political climate where the overwhelming majority of people are uninterested in giving any significant amount of their income. Despite this, giving (when I say giving, I mean donating to highly effective charities) remains a very effective way of doing good. This is another argument of why you should do more than merely offset.

After all, the saying is “Make the world a better place“, not “Don’t make the world a worse place“ for a reason.

But isn’t this a slippery slope?

Slippery slope to what motherfucker?

Yes, what you are currently doing is almost never “enough”. It’s extremely cucked to think that by not participating in something yourself, you are “doing enough”.

Wouldn’t it be a little suspicious if what ethics demanded of us what what the majority of people were doing already? Why must a moral truth be something that a ton of people are already doing, isn’t it way more likely that a moral truth would be “unconventional”?

To quote from one of my favorite substacks, “Bentham Bulldog“ (he was talking about shrimp, but the idea can be generalized):

It may seem weird that the best thing to do is helping shrimp, but the world is a weird place. I’d be surprised if we got to heaven, asked God what the highest impact thing that we could have done is, and his answer was “oh, something very normal and within the Overton window.” ⁵

And it takes courage to look this conclusion in the eye and take the consequentialist leap of faith anyway.

Things aren’t less correct because they would be greatly inconvenient to you.

(Almost) all of the above arguments also apply to the idea that vegans can be “vegan“ and be done with it as well.

Ironically, it is the non-EA⁶ militant vegans might be the grossest offenders. The idea that being vegan (X utility) is extremely important, but that giving money to effective animal charities (approximately ((dollars given / 22) * X) utility) is not very important is very silly. People who “want to eat less meat“ “get it“ more in some sense, they just (in my opinion) grossly underestimate the importance of the issue.

How much should I give, then?

When I called it based and correct to think of money as fractions of children deaths I was being a bit hyperbolic. I don’t think it’s utility maximizing to think of money this way because I think it has a high chance of burning you out in the long term. It’s just kinda not something humans can handle.

The amount you should give is the amount that if you gave a dollar more you would go insane. Let me explain.

Your limit for altruism is the one that would allow you to do the most good. I do not think this is spending absolutely 0 dollars on leisure, because the majority of people would simply burn out, and be mentally completely unable to continue working and thus continue giving.

Thus your limit is exactly the line between donating so much that you cannot live/continue to improve your giving in the future.

Just remember.

The goal is not to have there be as much HIV in africa as there would be if you weren’t born, the goal is the eradication of disease.

The goal is not to make sure you “have a net-neutral carbon footprint“. The goal is to end climate change.

The goal is not to just have you “go vegan“. The goal is to end factory farming. Until every cage is empty.

1. Source: https://www.farmkind.giving/donate. It’s under “why aren’t you telling me to go vegan?“ “Just $23/month to effective charities can do as much good as going completely vegan. “

2. I know this amount is marginal anyway, but let’s just ignore that for brevity. It would support my argument to talk about it but I think it muddles things and it’s not necessary to discuss.

3. When I use the word giving here, I mean giving to highly effective charities.

4. ignore second order consequences here, okay, I think the point would still stand for a lot of people.

5. From the excellent article: “The Best Charity isn’t what you think it is“

6. EA, as in, effective altruism