The effective altruism movement grew out of an understanding that sometimes charitable giving doesn’t achieve its desired effects. Even when aid works, effective altruists argue that aid can be given more efficientlythrough the application of cost-benefit analysis.

Effective altruism enjoys widespread support, including among Quillettereaders ranging from Sam Harris to Geoffrey Miller. In fact, it’s hard to deny that if we’re inclined to act charitably, we should follow our head as much as our heart. We should subject charity to scrutiny.

When Helping Hurts

The problem comes when the view we take of what we’re trying to achieve becomes too myopic. For example, we all agree that if we’re going to relieve a famine, we should find the cheapest way to feed the famished. But what if feeding the hungry creates more hungry people to feed? What if it indirectly contributes to more civil conflict, enriches warlords, or interferes with agricultural markets in ways that drive domestic farmers out of business? Recent studies suggest that food aid to African countries has done all of these things.

When foreign aid fails to achieve its goals, we naturally look for more effective delivery mechanisms. For example, in the fight against malaria, some have suggested that we should give away mosquito nets rather than administering pesticides like DDT. Let’s assume they’re right. Might it still be possible that an efficient patchwork of policies can fail to improve the overall welfare of a country, or the world as a whole? Yes, and this is because of the importance of formal political institutions and informal social norms in creating peace and prosperity.

Certain kinds of aid to poor countries can have tangible benefits in the short run, but long run costs, such as an expanding population in poor countries that is more likely to suffer the ravages of famine, pestilence, and war. Unless we take a sufficiently long-run view of the effects of alternative institutions, altruism can become pathological.

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It is time for the EA movement to rediscover humanism.

QuilletteMatt Johnson

Institutions Matter

There doesn’t appear to be a clear consensus about whether foreign aid can create the conditions for countries to escape from the Malthusian trap that engulfed the entire world before England’s Industrial Revolution. The norm throughout history was that temporary spikes in access to resources led to population increases, which led to an uptick in starvation, disease, or war. It is only with economic development and technological progress aided by the right institutions that some countries have been able to escape this fate.

Some economists think certain forms of aid are likely to improve institutions, and thereby increase the long-run welfare of people who live under them. Others, like Gregory Clark, think that, despite what we’d like to believe, “the West has no model of economic development to offer the still-poor countries of the world.  There is no simple economic medicine that will guarantee growth.”

It is hard to know who is right. But we do know that foreign aid over the last few decades has facilitated massive population growth in Africa, even as European and East Asian birth rates have plummeted. Demographers predict that the population of Africa alone will rise from about 200 million in 1950 to a projected four billion by 2100. The problems this will cause in countries without stable political institutions are staggering. And these problems are likely to bleed over into other countries, especially in the form of mass migration.

The Problem with the Effective Altruism Campaign

Sydney. London. Toronto.

QuilletteChristian O’Connor