"Effective Altruism" is a reverse engineered philosophy invented by billionaires to justify wealth accumulation as humanitarian through means of "proving", mathematically, that the actions they were already taking were the "most effective" way of moving the human cause forward.
By creating giant 'charitable foundations' which promise to donate their 'future earnings' to charities deemed by some equation to be correct, the rich can sidestep systemic changes which threaten their wealth, while claiming to address the suffering created by those systems.
And, of course, a foundational aspect of the movement is the need to retain wealth in order to put a percentage of future returns into charity.
If I were given $1,000 and no debts to pay, told only to "make the world a better place", how would I spend it? The instinct for many would be 'charity', which is a good start principally, but to which charity should it go?
Everyone has a different idea of how to "improve" the human condition. Be it selling weapons to the """right""" people, delivering medicine to their victims, or redirecting the absurd food waste of industrialized nations to those who are starving. I could list a thousand different ways one may hypothesize the world "improved", but to each of those proposed thousand charities, I could only allocate $1 of that $1,000.
Effective Altruism has an answer. See, if I somehow instead had $100,000, then each of those charities could get $1,000 easily! Therefor, first, I must invest my $1,000 to generate enough revenue to feed those children, heal those wounded, and bomb whoever else is left.
Now, years later, I have $100,000. Yet, through my journey of self-discovery and profit generation, I have learned about 99,000 new problems, each of which certainly requires more than a mere dollar to solve. I cannot deploy my current wealth to solve all of these problems, otherwise I'll be out of money to donate. And then we're really screwed.
So, consider: with $1,000,000,000, I, finally, can make the world a better place. Could some doctor, $1,000 richer, say the same? Is their medicine really worth the life saving potential of the right man with this much cash? Think of all the good work my money will do, once, of course, it's no longer tied up in my investments.
With that much resource, why, we could find a new planet to live upon! One which is already free of the 999,900,000 problems that cropped up since I started my journey into altruism.
I must get to Mars immediately, for I was told to make the world a better place; and that world lacks the bombs, wounded, or civilians, which has really cut down on costs. Of course, to do that, I'll need to plan for the long-term.
I can't be going bankrupt now, can I? And you see, with $1,000,000,000,000....
if that observation causes you to have feelings about utilitarianism that you have not previously had, congrats <3
