LonelyPersonal struggles are personal. Imagine how many people you could have fed with the 50$ you donated to a ski forum
This is a very interesting topic to debate, I think.
One perspective is to say that people are free to give to the causes that matter to them, it's their money, and like you said what gets you is personal and you should be free to give to what matters to you. People are free to not give a fuck about world hunger but care about Clayton Vila's dog.
Another perspective is to "rank" the causes and determine that it seems unjust from a morality standpoint to have Clayton Vila's get $25k while kids are still dying because they can't eat or whatever. So in this more logical scenario, all the donations would go to problem #1 first, then once that's fixed, go to #2, etc. Needless to say, in this scenario, Clayton's dog will for sure get the needle. But can you even rank causes from a morality standpoint? Not sure, you'd have to make assumptions such as that human life is paramount, it could be a slippery road.
The issue I see with people giving to Clayton's dog is that they do it to feel better, not simply by a sense of duty. They're like "Awww, poor dog" then give him $10 bucks to make themselves feel better that they're helping the poor dog, the most likely scenario being that they have a dog of their own and thought about it as they were clicking the donate button.
So I'm still noodling with this one, but I'm leaning towards it being morally wrong from a Kantian perspective to give to Clayton's dog. But definitely an interesting topic, I find morality questions fascinating.
