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OmarLittleFinger t1_j9pgx2h wrote

Effective Altruism, finding more ways to line politicians pockets.

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Flatline2962 t1_j9pki15 wrote

Effective Altruism and longtermism is a weird alloy that functions as the new conscience salve for obscenely wealthy people.

The argument that they need to hoard wealth because the more wealth they hoard the better they can act for humanity, but that the results can't be judged on any one given lifetime and instead can only be reflected on hundreds or thousands of years down the line is an awfully convenient story to tell yourself if you are a shitheel wealthy person.

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Boollish t1_j9qy4vv wrote

Effective Altruism is just tech bros thinking biggest problem with the uncaring boot of capitalism is the tech bros aren't wearing the boot.

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a-c-moore t1_j9rd8g2 wrote

It's interesting to see the journey it has been on.

I first heard about effective altruism years ago when the basic idea was that the most helpful thing you could do was to take a super high paying job, live like a pauper on the lowest budget possible, and donate most of what you earned. The idea was to use hard data related to outcomes to choose the most effective places to donate, rather than just relying on what gave you a warm fuzzy. I thought it was kind of an interesting idea.

Since then it seems like it has become downright cultish. I also saw some EA leader guy talking about how the most effective thing to do with philanthropy money was to give it to rich people because they new how to spend it to create economic activity and jobs, so I guess this snake has now reached all the way around to eat its own tail and we ended up right back at "trickle down" economics somehow.

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ControlledSingular t1_j9s8ic6 wrote

I too think that the biggest problem with the booties of capitalism is that i am not wearing them!

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spatenfloot OP t1_j9ph8iy wrote

Yes, and it shows why fraud and financial misdeeds are not effectively prosecuted. He, like many companies, donated to politicians of both parties.

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