Effective altruism is not effective

Unlike allocating charity-dollars, that decision is not marginal but influences the lifetime of a person, and if universalized would significantly reduce the mindshare of people in industries that can make better use of existing wealth, vs industries that are income-producing for the individual.

This is an irony that people from outside EA detect, that financiers which are drawn towards "earning-to-give" are still the lifeblood of institutions that play such an integral part in creating inequality and volatility.

For example, if I donate 1,000 dollars to a person's yearly income. That person purchases capitals to make money or improve standard of living which leads to better fed children who can improve their own lives.

It doesn't only touch that person's live, but the community around them. The community can do more now that certain goods are more available, or that they get better service.

More is always more and always more effective.

So, yes. You only changed a very tiny corner of the world, but each passing year, it becomes more efficient and more effective over time.

The idea of any collective, plural, outside-in action may be something, but not altruism.

For example:

> The most charitable explanation of Singer’s dismissal of political action is that he is trying to sell being an altruist and he thinks a consumer -hero version is the one people are most likely to buy. Singer and other effective altruist philosophers believe that their most likely customers find institutional reform too complicated and political action too impersonal and hit and miss to be attractive.

Interestingly, the author quotes part of Singer providing an argument against the effectiveness of institutional reform, but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." (I think that's far from obvious!) Instead, he jumps straight to accusing Singer of arguing in bad faith. This is actually the opposite of charitable.

For another example, I'm deeply confused about how the author of this piece could cite Will MacAskill and Toby Ord, then write:

> The underlying problem is that effective altruism's distinctive combination of political pessimism and consumer-hero hubris forecloses the consideration of promising possibilities for achieving far more good.

Ord and MacAskill co-founded an organization, 80,000 Hours[1], which advocates mostly not for effective giving (which the author derides as a "consumer hero" approach) but rather for spending your career working on one of the world's most pressing problems; notably including for instance several types of policy change.

EDIT: and I missed this one the first time around:

> One could spend at most a few tens of millions of dollars on anti-mosquito bed nets before returns start dramatically diminishing because everyone who can be helped by them already has one.

A single bednet charity, the Against Malaria Foundation, has literally already raised 10x this amount without substantially diminishing returns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Malaria_Foundation