In short, effective altruism is commonly viewed as being about the moral obligation to donate as much money as possible to evidence-backed global poverty charities, or other measurable ways of making a short-term impact.

Just be the philanthropist that your broke ass wants to be.

Work 120 hours a week so you can receive 15% of the value you generate as a paycheck. Then take the 75% you receive from that after the tax man and donate it to a charity. It's so simple.

You want to be a better human? Just work more, and then donate more.

[–] thesporkeffect@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Except it's worse than that. The argument goes, if I could donate $1m right now to a charity, or invest that money in subprime mortgages for a year and donate $5m next year, plus keep a little bit of that profit to live on, obviously the optimal course of action is to be a capitalist and not donate right now.

Project this rationalization forward indefinitely and you get all the benefits of the 1% lifestyle while retaining the ability to feel morally superior to everyone else not in your little trust fund cult

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Not to say that argument is flawless. You can give a starving child 5 meals today, or 500 meals in a year - except in a year, he’s starved and can’t eat a single one.

It basically ties in with “Justice delayed is justice denied”.

[–] GiveMemes@jlai.lu 1 points 10 months ago

Or just actually work for a charitable organization if you're not super rich. Like a doctor is important to humanitarian aid, but so is getting them to and from the area, so is student loan forgiveness as med school is incredibly costly, they also have to offer their workers a (paltry) salary and per diem, etc, which is where the money is quite important.

Could it be done differently in a better society that we should absolutely be working towards? Yes. Can and should we also congratulate the people in our society for working with what they have? Yes.

[–] BenLeMan@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

IDK why people are downvoting my post. That's literally what that is.

I visited a talk with Peter Singer in Washington, D.C. a few years ago where people applauded a guy who had considered joining an NGO and decided to become an investment broker and donate to Effective Altruism instead. 🤔