[owenshen24]

I haven't read Giridharadas's book, and this article was very light on substance.

I do think this is an interesting topic. Effective altruism has lots of ongoing internal discussion about the efficacy of pushing for systemic change.

But I think the claims made in the article would have to be made a lot more substantive. See Scott Alexander's take here (https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billio...).

Overall, I think parts of this approach might throw the baby out with the bathwater. Even if we do restructure the way that society works, presumably we'll still care about interventions to improve well-being. I think effective altruism (https://www.effectivealtruism.com/) has provided a lot of traction on how to think about these issues. Even if you disagree with their moral stance, I think it's hard to deny that people in the EA community have been very thoughtful about quantifying interventions and thinking about impact.

And I don't think these sorts of questions are going to go away, come a social restructuring. There seems to be a lot that we can salvage from the EA viewpoint, even if we decide systemic change is the way forward, and I think that's worth emphasizing.