[lucajona]

This hits on the problem with "Effective Altruism" — it is exactly the bad form of utilitarian thinking.

It seems purely about reallocating some wealth from the rich to the poor. That's nice, but it's only treating the symptoms and ignoring many other factors that influence human flourishing, such as an individual's ability to improve their own circumstances (instead of waiting for a generous benefactor to give them some cash). Surely addressing poverty involves systemic changes, not just charity. And besides, charity can also have a negative utility, feeding feelings of inferiority in the receiver and leading to resentment.

[philh]

One of the factors that influences human flourishing is the prevalence of malaria nearby. If you get malaria and die, your ability to improve your own circumstances falls to 0.

"People now have access to bed nets which make them less likely to get malaria and die" seems like it would count as a systemic change.

[lucajona]

Good point. But if the only way you can avoid malaria is if someone gives you a bed net, then your ability to improve your own circumstances is still close to 0. You're still impoverished and powerless, you're just not dead. And now you're dependent on a source of bed nets that might dry up.

If plain old reciprocal altruism hadn't somehow failed, there would be a way that you could exchange your labour or otherwise for bed nets. The people paying your wages could be acting altruistically, or they could be rationally self-interested actors.

These are the sort of systemic changes I was thinking of, but I like your argument.

[JamesBarney]

Some people value their independence over a reduced risk of malaria. These people would turn down the anti-malaria net(utility doesn't change). Other people value a reduced risk of malaria over independence. These people would take the anti-malaria net(increased utility). So by offering a malaria net you are always benefiting people.

So I don't think I know how a charity could reduce utility as long as the recipients have a choice and are rationally self-interested actors.

[pdonis]

You're assuming that just giving the bed net to the person is the only way of reducing their risk of malaria. You are not even considering, or allowing the person to consider, the option of trading their own wealth production for the bed net.

In other words, you're assuming they can have either independence or a reduced risk of malaria, but not both. What if having both is possible--but only if the charity is not there, so the person is forced to consider the third option? In other words, what if the second-order effect of providing charity to people is to make them unaware of other options that would actually provide more overall utility (because they would provide both independence and reduced risk of malaria, or whatever it is they're worried about)?

[JamesBarney]

How does the charity prevent the person from buying a bed net?

So you're saying that when a charity provides bed nets, it causes individuals to make the irrational and sub-optimal choice of using a bed net without purchasing it. And this happens frequently enough to significantly reduce the utility that a charity provides?

This doesn't seem very intuitive to me. I am curious if you have any evidence that you could point me to show this effect happening. I'd be especially curious how the presence of the charity causes people to act irrationally.

[pdonis]

> you're saying that when a charity provides bed nets, it causes individuals to make the irrational and sub-optimal choice of using a bed net without purchasing it.

If your choice is between buying a bed net, or taking one that is available for free, the rational and optimal choice for you, if we only consider that choice itself, is to take the free one. Isn't that obvious?

But this is a first-order effect, and I'm talking about second-order effects. Most people who are given bed nets by charities probably can't afford to buy them. What I'm thinking about is this: people who get bed nets from charities are probably used to thinking of valuable things like bed nets as being provided by charity. They aren't used to thinking of them as something that can be worked for. More generally, they think of wealth--not just bed nets but things of value generally--as something that is pre-existing in the world, and it's just a matter of who happens to have it and is willing to give it to those who don't happen to have it. They view wealth as a zero-sum game.

But in reality, wealth is something that gets created. Those bed nets didn't grow on trees. Somebody made them. Somebody created the wealth they represent. But in order to create wealth, people first have to understand that wealth can be created, and people who are used to getting things through charity aren't likely to think that way. So they won't even think of, for example, figuring out how bed nets are made, and starting up an operation to make them themselves. Then they wouldn't need charity. They wouldn't even need to buy the bed nets. (And even if they did choose to buy them, it would be because they are doing something else that creates even more wealth, so they have enough surplus to trade for the bed nets and still come out ahead.)

Now you could say that, if all that is true, it is irrational to accept charity, instead of choosing to learn how to create the wealth yourself. I sympathize with that impulse; I have it myself. But now we're using a different definition of "rational", according to which people in sub-Saharan Africa, with no education, are supposed to understand wealth creation and economics well enough to see that accepting bed nets from charity, even if it benefits them in the short term, is not optimal for them in the long term. This definition of rationality, while it seems attractive in the abstract, has the huge downside of being totally unreasonable. It's much more reasonable to accept that people's perceptions of the choices available to them are affected by their environment, what they see other people around them doing, and what choices have been available in the past. That's why providing charity to people who are capable of creating their own wealth is, in the long run, a bad idea; it affects their own perception of the options available to them, so they don't even think of wealth creation as an option.

> I'd be especially curious how the presence of the charity causes people to act irrationally.

I'm not saying it does. Accepting charity if it is available is a rational choice, if a person is only considering that choice in isolation. The problem is with second-order effects. See above.

[JamesBarney]

I don't understand how Effective Altruism says that you can't treat systemic causes. I think that given the large increase in utility that systemic changes would cause they would be precisely in favor of these changes most of all.

I am not aware of any research that says that charity has net negative expected utility. No charity to my knowledge forces any recipients to take the charity. So you would expect any individual who would receive negative utility from charity would choose to turn it down.

[philh]

To pick a contrived example, I suspect that if you offered unlimited free heroin for personal use! that would make the world a worse place.

More subtly, charity could make one person better off and others worse off. You could go around to every doctor in the world and ask them if I gave you a million dollars, what would you do?. Then you could give a million dollars only to the ones who say they would retire and spend it on bribing law enforcement officers to overlook the murder spree that they can now afford to finance.

Those are both pretty actively evil, but it's at least plausible that well-intentioned but poorly-thought-out charities could have negative effects.

[JamesBarney]

You could also accidentally save Hitlers life. I'm sorry if I misspoke, I didn't mean to imply it's theoretically impossible to do harm by giving people money.

You're right that it's plausible that their have existed in the world at some time charities that have accidentally done harm. I don't think that it's plausible that it's a significant problem facing charities, specifically large charities advocated by 'Effective Altruists'.