Effective altruism (EA) can be defined as a philosophical and social movement that advocates ‘using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible and taking action on that basis’. Effective altruists who pursue the goals of effective altruism, often choose careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves and donate to charities based on maximising impact. The idea of ‘giving back to the society’ was first propounded by David Ricardo around two centuries ago and became the basis of a new moral philosophy in the last 10 years. The movement developed during the 2000s, but the name ‘effective altruism’ was coined in 2011. EA is promoted by Peter Singer, Toby Ord, William MacAskill, and a vibrant online community of tech-industry rationalists. Now, the EA philosophy has grown into a movement with a cult of passionate and wealthy do-gooders.
As per its website, effective altruism is a broad community of people working on a diverse set of projects with a common goal: doing as much good as possible. It focuses on ‘finding ways of doing good that actually work’. The EA community seeks to bring ‘data-based analyses’ to the charity business, to make donations as effective as possible.
The philosophy of EA gained momentum when Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency trading firm FTX went bankrupt.
Controversy
One of the most prominent cheerleaders and financial supporters of EA, Sam Bankman-Fried, was a junior at MIT when he first encountered William MacAskill. MacAskill persuaded him about the ‘earning to give’ strategy, to make as much money as possible in order to maximise one’s charitable donations. Earlier, on MacAskill’s advice, Bankman-Fried had begun his career trading securities before being hired by the Center for Effective Altruism. The trading firm FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange which had enabled customers to trade digital currencies for other digital currencies or for traditional money. FTX collapsed due to giving loans to its sister foundation, Alameda, from the deposits made by crypto exchange customers. Consequently, Bankman-Fried stepped down as the CEO of FTX, and the company filed for bankruptcy.
Priority Areas of Working
Unlike regular charity, EA embraces statistical reasoning and metrics of efficiency to judge the effectiveness of charity. That’s why effective altruists made meaningful improvements on charity’s status quo: providing unconditional cash transfers to poor people through campaigns such as Give Directly, Give Well, Against Malaria Foundation, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, Deworm the World Initiative, etc.
Besides, the alleviation of global poverty and neglected tropical diseases have also been a focus of some of the earliest and most prominent organisations associated with EA. Improving animal welfare has been a focus of many effective altruist non-profit organisations, that adopted an effective altruist approach towards animal welfare. Effective altruists believe that the welfare of future individuals is just as important as the welfare of currently existing individuals, as the prioritisation of the former is coextensive with the wellness of the latter.
The EA community prioritises causes by selecting for importance, tractability, and negligence. Thus, EA allows very effective ways of improving lives of many people in the low-income countries on a large scale, even to the extent that the EA community directs private philanthropy towards causes that even governmental and international establishments do not or could not support.
Therefore, EA presents a lucrative career choice that could help amass wealth, a sizable amount of which could be given away to society by working with ‘high-impact’ charities.
Criticism of EA
Critics are of the opinion that there is a culture of elitism, narrow-minded focus on large problems, disregard for more-local needs, and insufficient focus on societal change. Some think that helping people in far-away countries because they could be helped more cheaply, means disregard for local or domain-specific problems. EA is also criticised for a lack of diversity in its proponents. EA implores individuals to use their money to procure necessities for the needy, but says nothing about the system that determines how those necessities are produced and distributed in the first place.
Some critics hold that EA furthers the disproportionate influence of wealthy individuals in domains that should be the responsibility of democratic governments and organisations. The Ecologist published an article in 2016 arguing that EA is an apolitical attempt to solve political problems and called EA ‘pseudo-scientific’.
Way Forward
EA can do a lot of good by focusing on foreseeable sustainability. Pandemic prevention, governance of artificial intelligence, limiting cyber warfare, managing climate change, and reducing the risks of large-scale military conflict are hardly near-term issues. Addressing the above issues would benefit both—billions of real people today and generations to come. If EA could inspire our best minds and the deepest pockets to focus on innovative ways of addressing such challenges, it would be more beneficial and practical.
In India’s development, EA offers a thoughtful framework for corporate and individual social responsibilities. The world needs more ideas, fresh thinking, innovative approaches, and new money to enter the social sector. If wealth generators are inspired to give a fraction of their earnings to well-considered altruistic causes, India as a whole would be more prosperous.
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