Reddit highlight: EA and socialism

By Aaron Gertler 🔸 @ 2020-01-03T13:46 (+21)

This is a linkpost to https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/egkcmh/effective_altruism/fclbdzx/

I happened across the following Reddit post on r/Socialism_101 and thought it was worth cross-posting. I don't know who wrote it. I've bolded my favorite bits.

As someone very sympathetic to socialism, grassroots organizing, and political/systemic change, I'm also quite sympathetic to effective altruism (EA), and happy to critique all of the above in the name of actually making sure the good I'm trying to do has good results for the people it's intended to help. (Considering "the road to hell..." and all that).

**Disclosure: I observed EA from afar skeptically for a long while, as I was involved in more traditional social justice type work, where I still spend a lot of my leisure time. Currently, I observe EA from up close -- still skeptically as well as sympathetically -- as staff at an org that does work in effective altruism.**

They believe the most effective way for many people to make a difference in the world is to make as much profit as possible and then to become a philanthropist that donates to effective charities.

This quote struck me as an odd general description of effective altruism (EA). I think the critiques and contradictions you're exploring here are definitely worth exploring. At the same time, it seems worth noting that I think any critique that applies to the quote above is only critiquing a narrow portion of the ethos of "EA", as I understand it.

I think most importantly, it's worth noting that EA isn't one organization that could make a cohesive recommendation on what everyone should do to make the world better. To me, it makes more sense to think of EA like a field of study (like e.g. economics or sociology), or a set of tools (like e.g. the scientific method or the food pyramid), or a broad coalition organized around some shared questions/problems/principles (like e.g. socialism, feminism, libertarianism, humanism, environmentalism, etc). They're all working on parts of Project Make the World Better, and they're likely to focus on different questions or different parts of the answer. And some answers will be more fitting for some goals over others.

In general, I'm quite sold on the need to "check one's work" and prioritize our efforts by some sort of principles when trying to do good and promote change. Those seem like the main things EA pre-commits to. I'm sure we've all seen a lot of well-meaning efforts backfire when passionate, well-intended people try to make others' lives better. I've also seen a lot of people burn out on the idea that every problem must be solved at once, rather than acknowledging that we are finite people and we are always prioritizing something, whether or not we make our priorities explicit or systematic or ad hoc. What has drawn me to EA has been the desire for evidence-based efforts, the principle of being open to changing one's mind and methods, and the willingness to help people try to prioritize their efforts rather than shy away from the idea that prioritization is necessary. I think those pieces of the EA pie are applicable to anyone seriously trying to work out where their time, money, and effort should go in the name of doing good (including socialism).

Some people (maybe a lot, maybe too many) have currently reached fairly incrementalist conclusions using the tools of analysis favored by EA frameworks. As someone with a natural preference for broad collective action, I feel this tension too. I think this is not surprising though, since it's usually easier to look for evidence of positive impact with incremental changes. I just think EA thinking is plenty likely to lead people to a variety of worthwhile conclusions about how to do good, and is already doing that. In the meantime, I do think I'm pretty happy for some people (not all! but definitely some!) -- esp. people who have access to a lot of wealth and among those folks, even more especially those people who might not otherwise have been inclined to make a lot of sacrifice for "The Cause" --- to decide to redistribute their wealth from big companies to e.g. people in the developing world.