Cross-posted from Otherwise. Most people in EA won't find these arguments new. Apologies for leaving out animal welfare entirely for the sake of simplicity.
Last month, Emma Goldberg wrote a NYT piece contrasting effective altruism with approaches that refuse to quantify meaningful experiences. The piece indicates that effective altruism is creepily numbers-focused. Goldberg asks “what if charity shouldn’t be optimized?”
The egalitarian answer
Dylan Matthews gives a try at answering a question in the piece: “How can anyone put a numerical value on a holy space” like Notre Dame cathedral? For the $760 million spent restoring the cathedral, he estimates you could prevent 47,500 deaths from malaria.
“47,500 people is about five times the population of the town I grew up in. . . . It’s useful to imagine walking down Main Street, stopping at each table at the diner Lou’s, shaking hands with as many people as you can, and telling them, ‘I think you need to die to make a cathedral pretty.’ And then going to the next town over and doing it again, and again, until you’ve told 47,500 people why they have to die.”
Who prefers magnificence?
Goldberg’s article draws a lot on author Amy Schiller’s plea to focus charity on “magnificence” rather than effectiveness. Some causes “make people’s lives feel meaningful, radiant, sacred. Think nature conservancies, cultural centers and places of worship. These are institutions that lend life its texture and color, and not just bare bones existence.”
But US arts funding goes disproportionately to the most expensive projects, with more than half of the funding going to the most expensive 2% of projects. These are typically museums, classical music groups, and performing arts centers.
When donors prioritize giving to communities they already have ties to, the money stays in richer communities. Some areas have way more rich people than others. New York City has 119 billionaires; most African countries have none. Unsurprisingly, Schill