To respond to a relatively small part of the post:
Individuals and institutions can be motivated to change their behaviour for the better on the basis of concern for others. (Otherwise, how could effective altruism be possible?)
Effective altruism works if only a few people can be unselfishly motivated in this way, whereas requiring unselfish motivation as a key part of the ordinary economic system that nearly everyone participates in is a much bigger ask, so I don’t think it would be very surprising to believe that one worked and the other didn’t.
What’s more, democratic capitalism + effective altruism will direct effort and resources to effective uses even if only a few capital-havers are unselfishly motivated in this way.
If socialism means the command-economy things, then democratic socialism + effective altruism doesn’t reliably direct resources to causes that only a small minority are motivated to support.
I’m not sure why we would believe that socialism would require more unselfish behavior from individuals, if anything a more consciously planned economy would be able to align interests far more effectively than indirect capitalist social regulation.
Because you will also select the people who will make the “consciously planned economy” from the population and can most optimistically assume normal distribution of these traits in people in power. It is, however, more likely that the less unselfish people will aspire to these positions and ultimately use them for their own ends, resulting in a redistribution of power to more selfish people. Centralized systems inherently offer more affordances of seizing power to selfish ends.
Reading the history of Mao, the Russian Revolution, and the Gulag Archipelago helps with some context.
[you] can most optimistically assume normal distribution of these traits in people in power
This is not maximally optimistic! We can hope we could come up with a system that (a) empowers unselfish people over selfish people and (b) protects the system itself against interference from the powerful. This is a difficult thing to achieve, and many have arguably failed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to do.
Centralized systems inherently offer more affordances of seizing power to selfish ends.
I think this is kind of unclear. If you do not deliberately engineer a government to manage the distribution of power, instead you will get an unmanaged distribution of power, which in particular will not obviously be well-placed to prevent an individual accumulating and then seizing power for themselves.
But even if true, I think I would still be in favour of central government because centralized systems inherently offer so many other things, which together are IMO worth it.
The point about EA only requiring a small number of unselfish people is quite right and I actually write about these sorts of dilemmas elsewhere. (https://philpapers.org/rec/VENIAS)
One thing I’d say in this context, though, is that if the case against socialism is: “Well, a small minority can be trusted to have less selfish motivations, but the general public can’t—and we’re in the small minority”—this starts to look like a kind of elitism that the left often worries about EA encapsulating.
If EAs can do it, why think that (especially under different social conditions) most people couldn’t? This would require some thought that EAs are special, which, given the elite, white, rich, etc. skew of EA is a worrying one.
Yes EAs are especially altruistic. Although especially altruistic people exist across all economic classes and races, you’d still expect to see more privileged people in EA because they have the means (alongside other factors like the cycle of low diversity).
And so, EA is not a good measure of who is altruistic because it incidentally filters out people who are less wealthy, have less spare time, are more risk-averse, or don’t want to be in spaces that don’t represent them. If you have more privilege, you can (not want to, but have the means to) do more altruism. It’s important for people to have self-serving motivations if they don’t have much time or money: they know the best way to spend it.
That leads to my next point, which is that the vast majority of elite white rich people (needlessly) have selfish motivations, and can’t exactly be expected to altruistically set up co-ops or start a business with no expectation of high returns in the world where it works out. This makes your point irrelevant, because it shows that even when people have the means they are still mostly not altruistic.
EA is possible because of a small minority of people having the sufficient means (time or money) and a weird altruism. Anyone who feels this weird altruism is welcome. If you know how to make people more altruistic, that would be fantastic information. Note there would be many things with a higher priority on the to-do list than ‘socialism’.
Agree with your first two paragraphs (I do see a lot of altruism in non-EA communities, too, but EAs are surely towards the top end!). But by ‘altruism’ I don’t just mean giving away money, so it doesn’t necessarily track means. And by ‘different social conditions’ I don’t simply mean people being more prosperous. There’s a load of ideology and incentives that could be changed.
EA is straight altruism (to signal unusual virtue).
Socialism is reciprocal altruism, so could be expected to be more popular (in a high trust society)
To respond to a relatively small part of the post:
Effective altruism works if only a few people can be unselfishly motivated in this way, whereas requiring unselfish motivation as a key part of the ordinary economic system that nearly everyone participates in is a much bigger ask, so I don’t think it would be very surprising to believe that one worked and the other didn’t.
What’s more, democratic capitalism + effective altruism will direct effort and resources to effective uses even if only a few capital-havers are unselfishly motivated in this way.
If socialism means the command-economy things, then democratic socialism + effective altruism doesn’t reliably direct resources to causes that only a small minority are motivated to support.
I’m not sure why we would believe that socialism would require more unselfish behavior from individuals, if anything a more consciously planned economy would be able to align interests far more effectively than indirect capitalist social regulation.
Because you will also select the people who will make the “consciously planned economy” from the population and can most optimistically assume normal distribution of these traits in people in power. It is, however, more likely that the less unselfish people will aspire to these positions and ultimately use them for their own ends, resulting in a redistribution of power to more selfish people. Centralized systems inherently offer more affordances of seizing power to selfish ends.
Reading the history of Mao, the Russian Revolution, and the Gulag Archipelago helps with some context.
This is not maximally optimistic! We can hope we could come up with a system that (a) empowers unselfish people over selfish people and (b) protects the system itself against interference from the powerful. This is a difficult thing to achieve, and many have arguably failed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to do.
I think this is kind of unclear. If you do not deliberately engineer a government to manage the distribution of power, instead you will get an unmanaged distribution of power, which in particular will not obviously be well-placed to prevent an individual accumulating and then seizing power for themselves.
But even if true, I think I would still be in favour of central government because centralized systems inherently offer so many other things, which together are IMO worth it.
The point about EA only requiring a small number of unselfish people is quite right and I actually write about these sorts of dilemmas elsewhere. (https://philpapers.org/rec/VENIAS)
One thing I’d say in this context, though, is that if the case against socialism is: “Well, a small minority can be trusted to have less selfish motivations, but the general public can’t—and we’re in the small minority”—this starts to look like a kind of elitism that the left often worries about EA encapsulating.
If EAs can do it, why think that (especially under different social conditions) most people couldn’t? This would require some thought that EAs are special, which, given the elite, white, rich, etc. skew of EA is a worrying one.
Yes EAs are especially altruistic. Although especially altruistic people exist across all economic classes and races, you’d still expect to see more privileged people in EA because they have the means (alongside other factors like the cycle of low diversity).
And so, EA is not a good measure of who is altruistic because it incidentally filters out people who are less wealthy, have less spare time, are more risk-averse, or don’t want to be in spaces that don’t represent them. If you have more privilege, you can (not want to, but have the means to) do more altruism. It’s important for people to have self-serving motivations if they don’t have much time or money: they know the best way to spend it.
That leads to my next point, which is that the vast majority of elite white rich people (needlessly) have selfish motivations, and can’t exactly be expected to altruistically set up co-ops or start a business with no expectation of high returns in the world where it works out. This makes your point irrelevant, because it shows that even when people have the means they are still mostly not altruistic.
EA is possible because of a small minority of people having the sufficient means (time or money) and a weird altruism. Anyone who feels this weird altruism is welcome. If you know how to make people more altruistic, that would be fantastic information. Note there would be many things with a higher priority on the to-do list than ‘socialism’.
Agree with your first two paragraphs (I do see a lot of altruism in non-EA communities, too, but EAs are surely towards the top end!). But by ‘altruism’ I don’t just mean giving away money, so it doesn’t necessarily track means. And by ‘different social conditions’ I don’t simply mean people being more prosperous. There’s a load of ideology and incentives that could be changed.
EA is straight altruism (to signal unusual virtue). Socialism is reciprocal altruism, so could be expected to be more popular (in a high trust society)