Even when you are trying advance equity, there will be certain charities that are more cost-effective and “efficient”, efficient in the sense that they’ll be successful. Again, if you want to do human rights lobbying, probably doing that in the US would probably be more expensive compared to a relatively globally irrevelant low-income country x where there isn’t much lobbying. Cost-effectiveness isn’t the endpoint of EA, it’s a method that enables you to choosse the best intervention when you have scarce money.
For billionaire philanthropy, there are a lot of moral theories that don’t assume what you assume about democracy or assume billionaires shouldn’t make decisions about public good.Most consequentalists doesn’t assume automatically or a priori that billionaires should be less powerful, their stance on this would be based on more empirical truths but still, this part of your post also has a moral assumption involved in it. Libertarian-ish moral views, prioritarianism, utilitarianism and not a theory but a view called high-stakes instrumentalism are all views that are quite popular and we should integrate into our normative uncertainty model. You can check this blogpost on why some people aren’t against billionaire philanthropy. I personally wouldn’t want state or masses to prevent people from spending their money as they’d like, many people from countries that are experiencing democratic backsliding or have low trust in government too wouldn’t agree with you. In Turkey, it’s really hard to have abortions outside of private hospitals for instance, universal healthcare for the globally disadvantaged people means growing a state that’s usually corrupt and anti-liberal. I’m not saying this is defintiely wrong, we should be less confident of our views when we’re talking about this issue.
Aiming higher in our altruistic goals doesn’t alleviate the requirement of having a theory of change and noticing the skulls, there are many organizations trying to do what you want to do, advance equity, but world and a lot of places these specific charities operate are still quite unequal, they aren’t very successful, vaccines still have patents, what will you do differently this time?
Also I think a probabilistic standpoint is useful, like for instance when equity and health outcomes tradeoff, let’s imagine a parallel universe when universal healthcare will result in slightly worse outcomes and slightly worse wellbeing overall, both for the average and the well-off person. But, it will be equal, variation of health outcomes between wealthy people and poor people will decrease, even though poor people’s health outcomes won’t improve and this will take palce because of wealthy people’s loss of welfare. Do you think still, effective altruists should advance equity? This is a very specific conceptualization of good. I’m not saying equity is unimportant, other things may be important too, that’s why taking normative uncertainty and empirical uncertainty is really important when we’re talking about these issues.
Even when you are trying advance equity, there will be certain charities that are more cost-effective and “efficient”, efficient in the sense that they’ll be successful. Again, if you want to do human rights lobbying, probably doing that in the US would probably be more expensive compared to a relatively globally irrevelant low-income country x where there isn’t much lobbying. Cost-effectiveness isn’t the endpoint of EA, it’s a method that enables you to choosse the best intervention when you have scarce money.
For billionaire philanthropy, there are a lot of moral theories that don’t assume what you assume about democracy or assume billionaires shouldn’t make decisions about public good.Most consequentalists doesn’t assume automatically or a priori that billionaires should be less powerful, their stance on this would be based on more empirical truths but still, this part of your post also has a moral assumption involved in it. Libertarian-ish moral views, prioritarianism, utilitarianism and not a theory but a view called high-stakes instrumentalism are all views that are quite popular and we should integrate into our normative uncertainty model. You can check this blogpost on why some people aren’t against billionaire philanthropy. I personally wouldn’t want state or masses to prevent people from spending their money as they’d like, many people from countries that are experiencing democratic backsliding or have low trust in government too wouldn’t agree with you. In Turkey, it’s really hard to have abortions outside of private hospitals for instance, universal healthcare for the globally disadvantaged people means growing a state that’s usually corrupt and anti-liberal. I’m not saying this is defintiely wrong, we should be less confident of our views when we’re talking about this issue.
Aiming higher in our altruistic goals doesn’t alleviate the requirement of having a theory of change and noticing the skulls, there are many organizations trying to do what you want to do, advance equity, but world and a lot of places these specific charities operate are still quite unequal, they aren’t very successful, vaccines still have patents, what will you do differently this time?
Also I think a probabilistic standpoint is useful, like for instance when equity and health outcomes tradeoff, let’s imagine a parallel universe when universal healthcare will result in slightly worse outcomes and slightly worse wellbeing overall, both for the average and the well-off person. But, it will be equal, variation of health outcomes between wealthy people and poor people will decrease, even though poor people’s health outcomes won’t improve and this will take palce because of wealthy people’s loss of welfare. Do you think still, effective altruists should advance equity? This is a very specific conceptualization of good. I’m not saying equity is unimportant, other things may be important too, that’s why taking normative uncertainty and empirical uncertainty is really important when we’re talking about these issues.