Beware the "greater good": FTX and Utilitarianism

The FTX debacle should lead Utilitarians to question the underpinnings of their moral philosophy.

Is it right to lie to wealthy customers and scam them out of their money in order to save lives in Africa?

That is effectively what Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) did by illegally funneling his customer deposits to Alameda Research.

To someone who believes that lying and stealing are wrong, SBF’s deception was clearly wrong. But a Utilitarian who determines right and wrong by trying to calculate “how much good” an action does for “the greatest number of people” could make a strong argument that SBF was right. If SBF’s deception allowed him to earn money which he then donated to an organization which saves lives in Africa, then many Utilitarians could indeed conclude that SBF’s action was right. After all, the inconvenience of hundreds of customers in a rich country (America) losing money probably is less morally consequential than people in Africa dying of stomach worms or malaria. 

So, according to that logic, if SBF’s illegal funneling of customer funds to Alameda Research allowed Alameda or FTX to earn more money, which allowed SBF to donate that money to save lives, SBF’s deception was not only okay; it was good. 

(Plausibly, lending customer deposits from FTX to Alameda allowed Alameda to profit – before the price of the FTT coin tanked and the deception was discovered – by increasing Alameda’s volume of trades. Alameda made money by charging fees on trades. (https://www.forbes.com/profile/alameda-research/?sh=529a18956570).)

But scamming customers and investors out of their money is NOT right.

So, let’s re-evaluate Utilitarian beliefs as a central component of Effective Altruism. Otherwise, we may well conclude that SBF was not wrong.