Giving What We Can is a community of people who have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to cost-effective charities. I'm a proud member of 10 years.
Effective Altruism is very confusing to me as it seems to only address the symptoms of poverty and not the root causes.
In a very abbreviated version, that root cause being that our society requires that some labor in terrible conditions for little pay because it is necessary to maintain profits. And, those people having little power to oppose this state of affairs compared to those who perpetuate the status quo, nothing changes.
Individual acts of charity like these are inspiring, but you will never get enough people/money on board with your program through the kindness of their hearts. It’s like trying to change the direction of the wind by blowing and trying to convince your friends to blow as well, except it’s even worse because those who have tons of money (as a class) will actively act to keep the system going.
Early years of Effective Altruism (EA) was about promoting "earning to give" as it was a straight-forward and simple way for people who are late in their careers to do a tremendous amount of good (by giving to cost-effective charities). But as the movement grew, there are more individuals joining at the beginning of their career and are more flexible with what they can do: enter https://80000hours.org/ (80,000 hours is roughly the amount of hours people will spend during their working life).
There is now a misconception that EA is about "patch fixes" rather than addressing "systemic causes". This is unfortunate, as numerous people within EA are concerned with the far future and broader goals than helping most-in-need individuals immediately. For example, pandemic risk (and decreasing it) has been on the EA radar well before the current pandemic.
One lesson from EA, is that you can't in good faith say "I can't do much good, I'm not working in a non-profit" -- since just about everyone (who is well over the US poverty level) is able to give at least some amounts to charity. And since giving to cost-effective charities can be 1000x the positive impact of average charities, you don't even have to give much to do a lot of good (see https://givewell.org/ for recommendations).
As for people who want systemic change, EA is all in favor of it - connect with others working on the same issues, and focus on effectiveness as you do the best you can with your efforts.
> that root cause being that our society requires that some labor in terrible conditions for little pay because it is necessary to maintain profits.
Economic theory would argue that: "little pay" is because they produce "little value".
I know pay and value are not aligned. But better education, health prospectives and stability (not war) tends to improve pay throughout an economy.
Individual acts of charity, especially effective altruism, is more like blow with the wind. Contrary to popular belief extreme poverty is rapidly declining.
> Economic theory would argue that: "little pay" is because they produce "little value".
Any economic theory that predicts this is probably not very useful, since this claim is easily falsified. Consider e.g., the situation of Amazon workers who are paid low wages and forced to maintain such a pace that they need to go to the bathroom in bottles and bags, but whose labor on the other hand caused Jeff Bezos' wealth to increase by over $100,000 per worker over the last year.
In a very abbreviated version, that root cause being that our society requires that some labor in terrible conditions for little pay because it is necessary to maintain profits. And, those people having little power to oppose this state of affairs compared to those who perpetuate the status quo, nothing changes.
Individual acts of charity like these are inspiring, but you will never get enough people/money on board with your program through the kindness of their hearts. It’s like trying to change the direction of the wind by blowing and trying to convince your friends to blow as well, except it’s even worse because those who have tons of money (as a class) will actively act to keep the system going.