I’m still relatively new to the large body of historic EA discussion, so I apologize in advance for retreading any ground that the community has already covered.
Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about the idea that individual altruism is simply not a scalable and sustainable model to improve the world. We have to achieve systemic change that re-aligns incentives across society. I sense a little bit of this between the lines of this article.
There really is nothing an individual can do alone in terms of personal sacrifice of resources that will fix the world simply with that transfer of resources. What we need is systems of government that redistribute resources at scale, taking the burden of such choice away from individuals. Besides this being the only way to alleviate human suffering at scale, it’s also the only way to reliably account for externalities.
Imagine an anarchic society that relied solely on individual altruism to help the needy. Would we sit here debating how much individuals should give, or would we be advocating for some sort of government to centralize and formalize the process of resource allocation? Similarly, 10% or 20% is not the issue—it’s about fixing a society that has to rely on individual good will rather than a (better) built-in system of redistribution according to need.
Is the “final form” of EA simply radical, much-more-inclusive democracy?
I agree with this message, but I still think EA has something important to contribute to the mindset of systemic change advocates. E.g. scientific thinking, measuring outcomes, checking the accuracy of our beliefs, etc.
Recognizing the existence of systemic problems is far from enough to solve them. We have to carefully analyze how to apply our resources to that, and to make sure we’re not letting the poor fall between the cracks in the meantime (or the entire world go extinct).
Is the “final form” of EA simply radical, much-more-inclusive democracy?
I don’t think it’s possible to reliably predict now the “final form of EA”, if such a constant limit even exists. But IMO the inability of any currently existing ideology or social movement to solve the world’s problems so far, probably precludes the definition of our aspirations entirely in terms of those.
I’m still relatively new to the large body of historic EA discussion, so I apologize in advance for retreading any ground that the community has already covered.
Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about the idea that individual altruism is simply not a scalable and sustainable model to improve the world. We have to achieve systemic change that re-aligns incentives across society. I sense a little bit of this between the lines of this article.
There really is nothing an individual can do alone in terms of personal sacrifice of resources that will fix the world simply with that transfer of resources. What we need is systems of government that redistribute resources at scale, taking the burden of such choice away from individuals. Besides this being the only way to alleviate human suffering at scale, it’s also the only way to reliably account for externalities.
Imagine an anarchic society that relied solely on individual altruism to help the needy. Would we sit here debating how much individuals should give, or would we be advocating for some sort of government to centralize and formalize the process of resource allocation? Similarly, 10% or 20% is not the issue—it’s about fixing a society that has to rely on individual good will rather than a (better) built-in system of redistribution according to need.
Is the “final form” of EA simply radical, much-more-inclusive democracy?
I agree with this message, but I still think EA has something important to contribute to the mindset of systemic change advocates. E.g. scientific thinking, measuring outcomes, checking the accuracy of our beliefs, etc.
Recognizing the existence of systemic problems is far from enough to solve them. We have to carefully analyze how to apply our resources to that, and to make sure we’re not letting the poor fall between the cracks in the meantime (or the entire world go extinct).
I don’t think it’s possible to reliably predict now the “final form of EA”, if such a constant limit even exists. But IMO the inability of any currently existing ideology or social movement to solve the world’s problems so far, probably precludes the definition of our aspirations entirely in terms of those.