Effective altruism is not effective

Re:Effective altruism is not effective by cycomanic on Thursday April 15, 2021 @02:49AM (#26816907)

But that assumes that 1. A significant portion of the people who want to get rich to help people actually get rich 2. Once they are rich they actually help 3. The process of getting rich doesn't make others poorer. (example does Bezos donating some portion of his wealth do better than him actually paying people more, or have the part owners of amazon?)

All these points are far from obviously true. In fact I can come up with many examples where they obviously are not.

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Re:Effective altruism is not effective by fighterpilot on Thursday April 15, 2021 @03:01AM (#26816986)

Regarding (1) - Becoming rich isn't part of the premise of EA. Getting a $100k job is often sufficient to have extra cash that can save real lives.

Regarding (2) - There are examples of successful EA in action. See the FTX founder.

Regarding (3) - Getting rich can't make people poorer (on net) unless you're exploiting negative externalities, which we would both agree need to be addressed by government. It can transfer wealth from A to B (e.g., by deprecating one industry and replacing it with another), for sure, but I don't see that as automatically bad.

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Re:Effective altruism is not effective by wizzwizz4 on Thursday April 15, 2021 @05:28AM (#26818176)

> Getting rich can't make people poorer (on net) unless you're exploiting negative externalities,

You mean, the easiest ways to get rich? You have to be pretty principled not to take those.

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