What Happened to Effective Altruism?

D.E.: The institutional critique of effective altruism is that Peter Singer’s solution to global poverty is very individualistic, essentially leaves power as it is, and doesn’t deal with the root cause of any of these problems. The real problems are structural. They are to do with the way societies are organized, power imbalances, things like corruption and the lack of accountability for politicians. Donating money like the effective altruists encourage is just sticking a plaster over the wound. It’s not actually tackling the causes of the injury. The effective altruists have various responses to that, but I think the most compelling one is this. They would say, “Well, what we believe is we should do the most good. If you can convince us that working for structural change—for example, lobbying politicians or supporting organizations trying to root out corruption—is the most effective use of our resources, then we have no ideological commitment to donating through charities.” So it’s not a difference about ideology or morality, it’s a practical and empirical difference about what they think is the most effective way of bringing about change.

K.M.: In its early days, the movement seemed to be quite apolitical in its mission. Now it is increasingly impossible to keep philanthropy separate from politics. How might effective altruism change in response to this new political landscape?

D.E.: You are right that politics has become increasingly polarized. I’m not an expert on why that’s happened, but I think it’s happened in the United States to a greater extent than in any other Western democracy. The implications for E.A. are entirely pragmatic ones. Their ultimate aim is not to get any particular party in power. Their ultimate aim is obviously the distribution of resources in a way that effectively improves people’s lives. Insofar as alignment with any particular political party undermines that objective, they would obviously do well to disengage from party politics. Already they’re not overtly party political. Surveys of those who’ve signed up to effective altruism show they tend to be, as you might expect, on the progressive side, but vary from being very centrist to moderately progressive … in European terms, which might be very left-wing American terms. They’re not of one political persuasion, and they will probably want to remove themselves from the arena of politics just because it is so polarized. If you are associated with one side or the other, you alienate 50 percent of the American population.