Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Effective altruism has a strategy problem. Overreliance on a strategy of donating to the most effective charities keeps us on the firefighter's treadmill , continually pursuing the next-highest quantifiable marginal gain. But on its own, this is politically shortsighted. Without any long-term framework within which these individual rescues fit together to bring about the greatest overall impact, we are almost certainly leaving a lot of value on the table. Thus, effective altruists' preferred means undercut their professed aims. Alongside the charity framework, the more effective altruist ought to consider a mutual aid framework, which better acknowledges and honors the unavoidably political commitments of effective altruism to reimagine and remake the world.