Some thoughts on Effective Altruism

I discovered Effective Altruism through Give Well, a web site which embodies at least the essential part of what effective altruism means: giving charitably in such a way as to maximize the benefit to society. (And I discovered Give Well through Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, which gives you an idea of some of the information I peruse on the Internet.)

Here's Give Well on effective altruism, and why it is not detached from emotion. If I had read only this much, I probably would have unreservedly endorsed the idea. (I do, in fact, give to charity in part through Give Well's recommendations.) But a few google searches led to some more food for thought.

David Brooks had an important response to effective altruism, particularly to this piece by Dylan Matthews about how bright young people are taking high paying jobs in order to donate their salaries (the bulk of it) to ending third world poverty. Brooks makes a couple of arguments, here. One is that taking such a job may transform who you are. You start out an idealist, then slowly the culture of the career you've chosen changes you. That may or may not be true. The more crucial and convincing part to me was Brooks's claim that human beings are ends in themselves. That includes you, the would be altruist. You are not just a machine for turning your capacities into world betterment. You are a person of infinite worth.

Now we're starting to get at the problem with effective altruism. If it is just an approach to philanthropy in which we try to focus on those causes which make the most difference, then that's something everyone can learn from. If, on the other hand, it is embedded in a strictly utilitarian system of ethics, then that calls the whole thing into question.

From a Christian perspective, I think both the universalist and radical nature of effective altruism are praiseworthy. Jesus asked his followers to give up all of their riches, taught that what would count on the last day was what we had done to the "least of these," and showed that our neighbor includes those outside our tribe. He blessed those who were poor and called woe on those who are rich. Christian mission has always pursued the poor in other parts of the world, seeking to alleviate suffering and seeing no difference between human beings.

Yet there is a dearth of Christian response to the effective altruism movement. That is either because the movement was founded by people who have little time for Christianity, or because Christians have little time for new ways to think about charitable giving, or both. This blog post challenges Christians in particular to prioritize global poverty using the approach of effective altruism, and makes a point to remind us how much of our Christian "charitable" giving goes to institutions which largely serve ourselves (paying to maintain and run churches, in large part). And if you look at even the parts of the country with the highest per capita giving, we Americans (one of the most generous nations in the world) still only give away up to 7% of our income. Given how many people around the world still live in extreme poverty, can't we do more? And shouldn't we want to do it effectively?

One blog post I found criticizes effective altruism from a Christian perspective. I found it surprising that a Christian could be critical of a universalist ethic, yet there is a compelling point to be made about the embodied mission of Jesus on earth. Jesus himself was critical of those who gave charitably but neglected the true spirit of the law. In one episode he explicitly rebukes a pure utilitarian calculus concerning the poor. And I suppose one shouldn't forget what the Apostle Paul wrote, "If I give all I possess to the poor...but do not have love, I gain nothing."

Another criticism I found was in the form of a lengthy article defending "philanthrolocalism." This criticism was more directly political. It appealed to Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of the thick institutional structure of American democracy in order to claim that localized philanthropy is not only more natural to human beings (and this is a postive, not a negative) but also necessary to the thriving of a free people. There's something to this, but I'm far from convinced. After all, shouldn't an aspiration to altruism be radical rather than conservative? Humans strive to be altruistic precisely because they wish to reach some transcendent ideal rather than be content to follow an established social order.

Actually the most crushing blow I found was not from a theological or philosophical perspective, but from an artist. Art for art's sake has no place in the minds of most "effective altruists." Unless you know you are on your way to writing the best screenplay ever, there is no reason wasting your time.

I find this view intolerable. There is such a thing as life not worth living, and life without art--not only some art, but a plethora of diverse attempts at art--is just that. We humans have always had the inescapable desire to create and enjoy, not merely to witness but participate in the beauty of the world. From a Christian perspective, we are made to worship. If we all suddenly decided to calculate our every move so as to eradicate poverty, would the poor wake up to a middle class lifestyle in which nothing had any meaning? Would that be any sort of liberation?

I will conclude this little run through of effective altruism with an ironic dictum: use effective altruism only insofar as it is useful. I absolutely agree that we should all be far more concerned than we are with eradicating global poverty, and one of the simplest yet effective ways we can do that is to give money to well-chosen charitable organizations. So go to Give Well and see where you can put your donations to best use. But for all that, I still won't buy into utilitarianism, and you probably shouldn't, either.

How Markets Crowd Out Morals

That's the name of the lead essay by Michael Sandel in the latest Boston Review. Excerpt:

This economistic view of virtue fuels the faith in markets and propels their reach into places they don’t belong. But the metaphor is misleading. Altruism, generosity, solidarity, and civic spirit are not like commodities that are depleted with use. They are more like muscles that grow stronger with exercise. One of the defects of a market-driven society is that it lets these virtues languish. To renew our public life we need to exercise them more strenuously.

I agree with Sandel, even I'm not completely sure about all of his applications. For instance, economists are in remarkable agreement, contrary to many people (like Sandel, apparently), that the selling of organs such as kidneys should be allowed. I'm not convinced that the economists are wrong on that particular issue. I am convinced, however, that the utilitarian view, in which the social good is determined by the sum total of individual subjective desires, is wrong. What's downright bizarre to me is the economist's conception of altruism and love as scarce goods.

The more libertarian I get, the more anti-market I become. That's because the market has come to be a "mere mechanism," as Sandel puts it in his criticism of the economist's view. As a mere mechanism, it then becomes a tool for technocrats to place themselves at the helm of society under the presumption that they can steer us toward economic salvation. Money is not the ultimate tool for determining behavior. Banks are not the salvation of the world. You would have thought 2008 had taught us that already.

What makes the market work, in the classical liberal conception to which I subscribe, is the fact that our morals guide us. This is the whole point of Hayek's The Fatal Conceit. If we were guided solely by instinct, we would be stuck in small hunter-gatherer societies with no grounds on which to cooperate with people outside our tribe. If we are guided solely by reason, however, we often presumptuously move to destroy the conventions and institutions which have made us successful as a species. Our morals act as a buffer between instinct and reason, guiding us through complex decisions for which our instincts are either inadequate or misleading, and for which our reason is incapable of finding a satisfactory justification even when we are making the right decision.

The market, in this view, emerged over time as a set of conventions and institutions which tend to enhance the thriving of human beings. But once we assume that the market is a product of our reason and can be given some a priori justification based on a utilitarian conception of ethics, then we tend to treat it as a system through which to organize all of society, thus "crowding out" our morals.

The way forward, in my opinion, is through what I would like to call (somewhat paradoxically) a critical respect for tradition. Our moral traditions, in particular, have made human flourishing possible. Unfortunately, we inherit these moral traditions as one big package, so to speak. When we unpack these traditions, we have to critically assess how they can fit together. Sometimes they can't, and we must abandon certain traditions altogether. Sometimes we will spend our entire lives trying to resolve our morals in ways that can't fit in any logically coherent way, but this doesn't always mean that we must choose one or the other. It is the critical struggle with our moral traditions that produces moral advances. The outright rejection of moral tradition, on the other hand, is pure folly. You can't start from nothing.

For example, there are certainly competing moral traditions which have a say in the question of selling organs as commodities. On the one hand, we have a traditional belief in the sanctity of human life, and sacred things can't simply be bought and sold. To offer up your own kidney to someone who needs it is indeed a noble sacrifice, and everyone should recognize it as such. On the other hand, there is a certain dignity to the reciprocity of a market transaction. One man needs a kidney (much) more than he needs $10,000, another man needs $10,000 more than he needs both kidneys; the trade benefits both parties. It seems to me that making such a transaction legal would not have an utterly corrosive effect on our morals. What if it saved lives? Can we really be so terribly upset by that?

On other particular examples, I mostly agree with Sandel. Should we really give each other cash presents as gifts? That seems crass, and probably for a good reason. We are not being "irrational" by attempting to put a little more thought into gift-giving than just writing a check. On the other hand, it is also quite superficial to search high and low for a "good gift" without ever truly getting to know your relatives. I'm sure Sandel understands that there are many other good reasons to be concerned with the excessive gift-giving every year at Christmas time. We have to weigh our various moral traditions, from the value of gift-giving to the dignity of simple living, from the beauty of grandiose celebrations to the virtue of thrift.

Sandel's major contribution to the discussion is not in the particulars, but rather in the general principle which he states so well: "our capacity for love and benevolence is enlarged with practice." I couldn't agree more. Aside from strange utilitarian assumptions made by economists, the real problem of modern society is the ease with which we are able to think only of ourselves. With as much affluence as we have, it is difficult to find in ourselves the desire and the discipline to make lasting commitments which are not reducible to mere transactions. Yet without such commitments, the human race would never have flourished as it has. Moreover, I'm not sure it's even possible to understand individual happiness as an idea completely independent of committed relationships. Relationships to one another give us identity, which in turn gives us meaning, which in turn gives us happiness, provided those relationships are healthy.

Of course, this makes us ask which commitments are good. Considering this is an article about the corrupting influence of money, I would have to say that governments stand out as particularly poor candidates for our allegiance. Is there any doubt that the coercive power of government is a magnet for political crony capitalists and special interests? Sandel cites an instance in which a small Swiss town was asked to host a nuclear waste site. I, for one, do not yearn for a world in which men's hearts swell with patriotic pride at the thought of storing nuclear waste for the sake of the greater good. In fact, I'm not sure I really sympathize with the Swiss townspeople for being more willing to cooperate under the condition of not receiving compensation. But perhaps the Swiss feel a greater sense of solidarity, given that they live in such a small country which has allowed itself to be relatively isolated from conflict. The United States is not such a country.

In my opinion, the commitments we ought to foster the most are those which we can see and know personally: our families, our friends, our neighbors in our communities, our colleagues, our churches, etc. I am very skeptical of people calling for commitments to large institutions such as our national government, except insofar as it is required to provide a basic social cohesion in which a variety of communities and institutions can flourish. It is pointless to love people in general and no one in particular. I think it is therefore misguided to put the interests of country before the interests of people you actually know. If your nation begins to trample the rights of your community, then loyalty to country is no longer a virtue.

Sandel doesn't really delve into politics per se, but I think he means to go there, and I'd be curious to hear what his political philosophy is. In any case, he has given us some important things to think about, and I look forward to seeing what kind of influence he has on the intellectual community. The economists, in particular, should have some interesting things to say.