I don't object to the idea that "you should do the most good you can with the resources you've got" or "the wealthy and the lucky have an obligation to those who aren't." Regardless of philisophical commitments, those seem like more or less obvious principles.
Where I get a little dubious though is when we try to reduce doing good to metrics like "lives saved per dollar." That's great as far as it goes, but pursuing a first-order utilitarian conception of how we do good risks losing sight of the forest for the trees. If we live in a world with enough to feed everybody, and some of us are overweight and some of us are starving, how much should we be investing in structural political change vs buying bags of charity wheat? When should we be mitigating the consequences of poverty, and when should we be addressing the fact of poverty in the first place?
It's better than doing nothing, but ultimately "Effective Altruism" as technocratic optimization of charity without a commitment to a political project seems limited. Obviously you can walk and chew gum at the same time, and doing what you can inside the system you've got is great, but I don't see a lot of imagination around "the world doesn't have to be this way" inside that community. I'm not a socialist, but I'm sympathetic to a lot of socialist arguments, and I don't see that we should be taking the social systems that organize the wealth and production of the world as inevitable or natural.
But EAs do advocate reforming the system. One of the top careers is going into government. If we care about doing the most good overall, we'll support some systemic reforms, while opposing others.
Maybe this is just my perception as an outsider and the movement takes these issues more seriously that I think it does. I just don't see a lot of GiveWell type money going to political efforts to increase first-world immigration or reduce trade barriers to goods poorer countries could be exporting. That's a criticism of how the movement seems to function in practice rather than how the underlying ideas have to be implemented in theory.
Givewell doesn't, but EAs do push for lots of reforms. Nick Cooney of the humane league is an effective altruist who got McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, General Mills, Costco, Sodexo and many more to adopt cage-free egg policies.
Lincoln Quirk reduced the costs of remittances dramatically, which is valuable given that remittances provide far more money overseas than foreign aid flows
Scott Weathers lobbied for the reach every mother and child act which would allow USAID to look for evidence before spending money overseas
Effective altruists have also pushed for criminal justice reform
The distinction is, unlike other movements we look for systemic reforms that work rather than ones that make us feel cool and radical. I think that EAs haven't pushed for immigration much because that's not very tractable.
I don't object to the idea that "you should do the most good you can with the resources you've got" or "the wealthy and the lucky have an obligation to those who aren't." Regardless of philisophical commitments, those seem like more or less obvious principles.
Where I get a little dubious though is when we try to reduce doing good to metrics like "lives saved per dollar." That's great as far as it goes, but pursuing a first-order utilitarian conception of how we do good risks losing sight of the forest for the trees. If we live in a world with enough to feed everybody, and some of us are overweight and some of us are starving, how much should we be investing in structural political change vs buying bags of charity wheat? When should we be mitigating the consequences of poverty, and when should we be addressing the fact of poverty in the first place?
It's better than doing nothing, but ultimately "Effective Altruism" as technocratic optimization of charity without a commitment to a political project seems limited. Obviously you can walk and chew gum at the same time, and doing what you can inside the system you've got is great, but I don't see a lot of imagination around "the world doesn't have to be this way" inside that community. I'm not a socialist, but I'm sympathetic to a lot of socialist arguments, and I don't see that we should be taking the social systems that organize the wealth and production of the world as inevitable or natural.
But EAs do advocate reforming the system. One of the top careers is going into government. If we care about doing the most good overall, we'll support some systemic reforms, while opposing others.
Maybe this is just my perception as an outsider and the movement takes these issues more seriously that I think it does. I just don't see a lot of GiveWell type money going to political efforts to increase first-world immigration or reduce trade barriers to goods poorer countries could be exporting. That's a criticism of how the movement seems to function in practice rather than how the underlying ideas have to be implemented in theory.
Givewell doesn't, but EAs do push for lots of reforms. Nick Cooney of the humane league is an effective altruist who got McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, General Mills, Costco, Sodexo and many more to adopt cage-free egg policies.
Lincoln Quirk reduced the costs of remittances dramatically, which is valuable given that remittances provide far more money overseas than foreign aid flows
Scott Weathers lobbied for the reach every mother and child act which would allow USAID to look for evidence before spending money overseas
Effective altruists have also pushed for criminal justice reform
The distinction is, unlike other movements we look for systemic reforms that work rather than ones that make us feel cool and radical. I think that EAs haven't pushed for immigration much because that's not very tractable.
That's good to hear - it's great that systemic issues like the one's you mention are getting attention.