Dylan Matthews just posted a Vox article "If you’re such an effective altruist, how come you’re so rich?" which addresses critics of effective altruism's billionaires.
My TL;DR
- A lot of recent criticism of EA seems to come from the fact that it has a couple of billionaires now as supporters
- These billionaires however are some of the biggest donors to US candidates that would increase taxes on them
- Open support for raising taxes, e.g. Moskovitz tweeted the other day: "I’m for raising taxes and help elect Dems to do it"
- The broader EA community skews heavily left-of-center (typically supportive of higher taxes and social welfare)
- Effective altruism was founded explicitly on voluntary redistribution of income from people in high-income countries to low-income countries (e.g. Giving What We Can) and most of the communities founders give a significant portion of their incomes
- Given that the billionaires do exist, what else would you rather they spend money on?
That's just my TL;DR – feel free to put in your own summaries, comments and critiques below.
I think going forward, the difference in effectiveness between the average US billionaire dollar and average US government dollar will increase, given the chances of
more US billionaires being influenced by EA
more US EAs becoming billionaires
and
I agree that a democratic process here would be good, but again I’d emphasise that US political system excludes 95% of people (and obviously, animals, children and future generations).
I was wrong to say that US government spending is only a bit more democratic than billionaire spending.
Although US government spending is extremely undemocratic, it’s much more democratic than billionaire spending.
It’s plausible to me that sacrificing this much impartially measured effectiveness to incorporate the opinions of 5% of adults is worth it, but I don’t think it is. (This somehow reads like it’s meant to be sarcastic / rude in tone, it isn’t meant to be!)