Reminds me of this EA critique, which among other things argued that helping the wealthy Western countries the EA movement arose out of is high-impact from a long-run utilitarian perspective. I think there is a good argument in here somewhere. EAs already get the logic of why it makes sense to prioritize helping fellow EAs, e.g. with 80K, skillshare.im, etc. It also seems smart to create more of the sort of fertile soil that the EA movement has grown in (do things that will increase the number of wealthy altruistic critical thinkers in the world).
Concrete example: Let’s say the EA movement causes software engineers in Silicon Valley to do less for poor people locally and more for poor people globally. This causes poor people locally to become fed up with Silicon Valley as an industry. Local backlash forces the industry to move elsewhere, destroying the wealth creation engine that was generating the donations in the first place.
Reminds me of this EA critique, which among other things argued that helping the wealthy Western countries the EA movement arose out of is high-impact from a long-run utilitarian perspective. I think there is a good argument in here somewhere. EAs already get the logic of why it makes sense to prioritize helping fellow EAs, e.g. with 80K, skillshare.im, etc. It also seems smart to create more of the sort of fertile soil that the EA movement has grown in (do things that will increase the number of wealthy altruistic critical thinkers in the world).
Concrete example: Let’s say the EA movement causes software engineers in Silicon Valley to do less for poor people locally and more for poor people globally. This causes poor people locally to become fed up with Silicon Valley as an industry. Local backlash forces the industry to move elsewhere, destroying the wealth creation engine that was generating the donations in the first place.