I live in a middle income country where most people are still relatively poor compared with people in developed world, although not as bad as the global extreme poor. So the uttermost priority for people here are to lift themselves out of poverty. When I occasionally mention that I gave money to charities, everyone thinks that I’m utterly insane. This makes me realize that EA is always going to have a limited audience, i.e., people who live in developed country who have a relatively comfortable life.
I upvoted because I too suffer from the fact that EA Philosophy was created by people of high-income countries, to convert other people from high-income countries.
However, I disagree completely that EA is
[...] always going to have a limited audience
In my opinion:
It’s true that a dollar spent on a developed country does less good than a dollar spent on a “less developed” country.
However, a dollar spent on an efficient cause inside your own country does more good than a dollar not spent on EA at all!
So, if the counterfactual for Effective Altruism is… no altruism at all… then it’s better for the world to take a less cosmopolitan worldview and donate mostly to effective causes inside your own country.
Of course, knowing the wild income disparities between even our “middle-income” countries and those from the most underdeveloped regions, I do think that we have a moral imperative to give … perhaps not all that we can, but at least some of what we can.
Full-disclosure:
I donated a little to EA causes, but since sharing my donations with my girlfriend, I decided to save up that money to invest and become an entrepreneur.
My exit plan is for it to become first a source of self-employment and then to sell it. If successful, then I will resume my giving until reaching 10% of profits once I sell the business.
I live in a middle income country where most people are still relatively poor compared with people in developed world, although not as bad as the global extreme poor. So the uttermost priority for people here are to lift themselves out of poverty. When I occasionally mention that I gave money to charities, everyone thinks that I’m utterly insane. This makes me realize that EA is always going to have a limited audience, i.e., people who live in developed country who have a relatively comfortable life.
I upvoted because I too suffer from the fact that EA Philosophy was created by people of high-income countries, to convert other people from high-income countries.
However, I disagree completely that EA is
In my opinion:
It’s true that a dollar spent on a developed country does less good than a dollar spent on a “less developed” country.
However, a dollar spent on an efficient cause inside your own country does more good than a dollar not spent on EA at all!
So, if the counterfactual for Effective Altruism is… no altruism at all… then it’s better for the world to take a less cosmopolitan worldview and donate mostly to effective causes inside your own country.
Of course, knowing the wild income disparities between even our “middle-income” countries and those from the most underdeveloped regions, I do think that we have a moral imperative to give … perhaps not all that we can, but at least some of what we can.
Full-disclosure:
I donated a little to EA causes, but since sharing my donations with my girlfriend, I decided to save up that money to invest and become an entrepreneur.
My exit plan is for it to become first a source of self-employment and then to sell it. If successful, then I will resume my giving until reaching 10% of profits once I sell the business.