Sure, but it doesn't fit into the traditional framework of "effective altruism". Collective efforts-based altruism is just very different in so many ways.
Why not? A collective, efforts-based, altruistic organization needs funding. If such a organization could demonstrate that their efforts lead to good outcomes (improve happiness, save lives), then effective altruists would donate to them.
A legitimate argument is that not everyone can make tons of money and donate because someone has to do the work. But there are plenty of "effective" organizations that are not yet overfunded.
The thing is that money without involvement is poison to collective movements, besides a certain point. Money and involvement is much better.
If all you want is to distribute, then sure. Collective movements aren't even the best at straight distribution, so someone trying to maximize the marginal utility of their dollar probably won't even donate. But collective action is generally not just about distribution, and moreso about fixing the structure of society to make distribution from rich donors unnecessary.
I agree that both money and involvement is necessary. But in our current world, nonprofits have a lack of money, not lack of involvement. Nonprofits talk all the time about how difficult it is to fundraise. And all the charities GiveWell recommends still have a lack of capital.
I think EA's would 100% want to fix the structure of society, if that method was resource efficient. If you believe that changing the structure of society is more resource efficient (in terms of time or money) than donating to AMF, GiveDirectly, or Deworm the World, please publish your analysis.
How much {money, time, etc.} would it take to convince a government or people to adopt a certain policy? What would the benefits of that policy be? How much pushback would you get from opponents? What are the risks? If you can successfully make an argument that changing a policy would be more resource efficient than current efficient charities, that would convince EAs to direct more resources to politics.
Any time humans get together to solve a problem, band together to form a charity, coordinate over a social network to send out PPE, etc, they are not simply allocating optimally at the margins, they are aggregating resources and spending them toward a directed goal more efficiently. These are all examples of altruism. If you narrowly scope altruism to "marginal donation optimization", then yes, effective altruism is indeed a fairly trivially optimal way to allocate these resources.
> As with Dada, altruism doesn't survive intellectual evaluation.
Sure and I'm not as interested in discussing the philosophical ideal of altruism. My interest in charitable work, as I suspect many interested in EA feel, stems from trying to do the greatest good with my limited allocation of resources, be that money, time, knowledge, manual labor, or otherwise. In that regard I'm unconcerned about the usual moral philosophical questions about motive and goodness.
Neither of these requirements make sense. First, with activism, being known pretty often costs you. And with second, you are not altruistic if you dont die?
(Plus, people who helped the right cause and did not died have done more good then those who died for bad cause. Ultimate sacrifice for something bad does not make you better.)
> Anything less is open to the usual questions of motive.
But then the focus is on "if someone theoretically learned about me existing, do I leave a space for that person to attribute to me some intentions?" And the answer to that should be "who cares".