Some wealthy effective altruists argue that by accumulating more wealth, they can ultimately donate more in the long run. While this may initially seem like a value-neutral approach, they reinforce an unequal rather than altruistic distribution of power.
Widening wealth disparities and consolidating power in the hands of a few, further marginalises those who are already disadvantaged. As we know, more money is not inherently valuable. Instead, it is how much someone has relative to others that influences its exchange value, and therefore influence over scarce resources in a zero-sum manner with other market participants, including recipients of charity and their benefactors.
While I agree to the fact that more money is not inherently valuable, I believe that there is a valid case for patient philantropy, which you haven not engaged with in your critism of the concept.
I assume that you refer to distributions of power which maximise welfare impartially by saying altruistic distributions. If this interpretation is incorrect, my disagreement might no longer apply.
Epistemic status from here: I do not have a degree in economics and my knowledge of market dynamics is fairly limited so I might have missed some implicit fact which validates the argument I am commenting on.
I believe that it may be inappropriate to see accumulating money as determining influence over scarce resources in a zero-sum manner since gaining money does not necessarily reduce the influence of any other involved parties over existing resources.
To understand this, we can look at the following scenario:
Alice and Bob both own $100
There are 5 insecticide-treated bet nets which are also owned by Alice
Bob earns $100. He now has twice as much money as Alice.
However, Alice’s 5 bet nets have retained their full effectiveness and she isn’t forced to sell any of them to Bob.
Therefore, Alice has retained her influence over the scarce resource called bet nets even though the relative value of her financial resources decreased.
In the real world Bob could presumably leverage his financial advantage by hiring mercenaries to steal the bet nets from Alice or using other forms of coercion but he does not necessarily do this.
Thus, Alice has lost potential influence but not influence, which is an important distinction because altruists are highly unlikely to use their money for the purpose of actively taking resources from recipients of charity or their benefactors.
Notably, the evaluation would look different if one believed in strong temporal discounting of money since the altruists would then be diminishing the value they are providing through their donations by delaying them, thereby subtracting from the influence of the charities relative to the counterfactual. But in that case the altruist would not have gained any influence, making the sum negative but not zero.
A thought, with low epistemic confidence:
Some wealthy effective altruists argue that by accumulating more wealth, they can ultimately donate more in the long run. While this may initially seem like a value-neutral approach, they reinforce an unequal rather than altruistic distribution of power.
Widening wealth disparities and consolidating power in the hands of a few, further marginalises those who are already disadvantaged. As we know, more money is not inherently valuable. Instead, it is how much someone has relative to others that influences its exchange value, and therefore influence over scarce resources in a zero-sum manner with other market participants, including recipients of charity and their benefactors.
While I agree to the fact that more money is not inherently valuable, I believe that there is a valid case for patient philantropy, which you haven not engaged with in your critism of the concept.
Moreover, I disagree with the statement that unequal distributions of power are conceptually opposed to distributions that maximise welfare impartially in light of the argument that it is likely good to increase the power of agents who are sufficiently benevolent and intelligent.
I assume that you refer to distributions of power which maximise welfare impartially by saying altruistic distributions. If this interpretation is incorrect, my disagreement might no longer apply.
Epistemic status from here: I do not have a degree in economics and my knowledge of market dynamics is fairly limited so I might have missed some implicit fact which validates the argument I am commenting on.
I believe that it may be inappropriate to see accumulating money as determining influence over scarce resources in a zero-sum manner since gaining money does not necessarily reduce the influence of any other involved parties over existing resources.
To understand this, we can look at the following scenario:
Alice and Bob both own $100
There are 5 insecticide-treated bet nets which are also owned by Alice
Bob earns $100. He now has twice as much money as Alice.
However, Alice’s 5 bet nets have retained their full effectiveness and she isn’t forced to sell any of them to Bob.
Therefore, Alice has retained her influence over the scarce resource called bet nets even though the relative value of her financial resources decreased.
In the real world Bob could presumably leverage his financial advantage by hiring mercenaries to steal the bet nets from Alice or using other forms of coercion but he does not necessarily do this.
Thus, Alice has lost potential influence but not influence, which is an important distinction because altruists are highly unlikely to use their money for the purpose of actively taking resources from recipients of charity or their benefactors.
Notably, the evaluation would look different if one believed in strong temporal discounting of money since the altruists would then be diminishing the value they are providing through their donations by delaying them, thereby subtracting from the influence of the charities relative to the counterfactual. But in that case the altruist would not have gained any influence, making the sum negative but not zero.