Via International Man
International Man: Doug, “effective altruism” sounds like a noble idea. Who are the effective altruists, and what makes them think they can calculate the best way to help humanity?
Doug Casey: It might help to start with a definition of “effective altruism.” Let’s refer to it as EA. It’s hard to find a clear and certain definition, but EA purports to figure out how to do as much good as possible, then act on that knowledge, which sounds good. But it’s not.
I’d argue, as did Ayn Rand, that altruism is the root of many evils. And the more effective it is, the more destructive it is.
“Altruism” is usually defined as “the unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others, often at a personal cost or without expecting a reward”. In other words, it advocates sacrificing yourself to others, and promotes that as a moral good. But how can that be a good thing? To sacrifice is to trade a greater for a lesser good; that’s why sacrifice is painful. Altruism legitimizes sacrifice.
Altruism also always implies a one-way flow of goods and services. That’s what happens in a slave society. By contrast, in a free society there’s an equal exchange of values.
I would characterize EA’s tenets as artificial, unsustainable, and innately destructive. They’re the type of things airy-fairy left-wing intellectuals write about, or college sophomores fantasize at a late-night BS session.
Many or most EAers are tech bros. That means they likely have high IQs. But a high IQ doesn’t automatically preclude stupidity. Many people confuse stupidity with low intelligence; they correlate, but are not the same thing. Accurate definitions of words are important. They avoid confusion and sloppy thinking—something that effective altruists are guilty of.
I use two general definitions of stupidity. One is an inadvertent tendency to self-destruction. Another is seeing only the immediate and direct consequences of an action, while overlooking its delayed and indirect consequences. When a comedian does these things, it’s funny. When a politician does them, it’s a catastrophe.
Here, let me say something that will shock people. Most charity is not virtuous; it’s stupid. It tends to destroy the recipient by giving him things which are undeserved, which he’s done nothing to merit. That discourages him from doing things to improve himself. After a while, he feels entitled to the charity that he’s getting. For instance, shipping food to a country with a famine may put off hunger for a season. But the free imported food collapses the prices for local farmers, puts them out of business, and makes the famine permanent, and the people reliant upon foreign aid.
The charity damages the giver as well. The capital he has is dissipated as water poured into the sands of a desert.
This is especially true in the case of EAers since they seem to specialize in helping those at a great distance. They believe all recipients are of the same value. So it’s better for you to give a thousand dollars to a starving Bangladeshi than to give that money to your own child. Why? Because the Bangladeshi needs it more, and he’s just as valuable as your child. An altruist believes that’s logical, and also believes that your child should make the sacrifice for a poor kid on the other side of the globe.
That thought may have a certain logic, but it’s also stupid. The greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more that can go wrong. That’s why charity should almost always be local, where you can monitor the effect it has on the recipients. In the 19th century, most organized charity took place through local beneficial organizations who could determine who was worthy of charity, and whether the recipients used it wisely or let it corrupt them. Today, government welfare has replaced local charity, creating a permanent class of recipients who are destroyed by it.
The real beneficiaries are the givers who get to play virtuous big shots at the expense of everyone else.
International Man: Effective altruists believe a small group of experts can engineer a better future. They fund causes ranging from malaria prevention to animal welfare and alleged threats from AI. Does effective altruism solve those problems, or does it give the old charity racket a scientific gloss?
Doug Casey: Much charity involves indiscriminate giving to those who have “need.” But somebody else’s need should not constitute a moral claim upon your life. I believe in helping others, but justice trumps charity. In other words, it’s not a question of somebody’s “need.” It’s a question of whether or not they deserve it. And the cost of meeting that need.
Modern state welfare systems can be viewed as effective altruism. They purport to give benefits to people that need them. That’s a stupid basis for helping people. Need is relative, and everybody believes they need more.
EA is really about social engineering. EA fans purport to find bad things—hunger, disease, ignorance, and the like—and take action to eliminate them. It’s no accident that they conclude the most effective way to do that is through government action, which is essentially about telling other people what they must do, and enforcing that order with coercion if necessary. There’s a lot of truth to the old saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. EAers stupidly overlook that reality.
A more effective solution to poverty was offered by private beneficial societies. There were hundreds of them in the 19th century. They were local in nature because the givers wanted to know who they were giving to and whether that person was deserving. Socialists and progressives of the time thought they had a better and more “effective” solution in the form of government programs.
International Man: Who benefits most from “effective altruism”: the recipients, or the donors, foundations, and so-called experts who run it?
Doug Casey: There’s a near 100% correlation between the EA types and wokesters, social justice warriors, progressives, and similar busybodies. Their problem is not intellectual; it’s psychological. Many of them impress me as being mentally ill, trying to disguise that disability with a thin social veneer, a mask of sanity, if you will.
These people are terminally unhappy with themselves and create a crutch to hold up their psyches. In other words, they aren’t being altruistic to help other people so much as to feel better about themselves.
International Man: Sam Bankman-Fried promoted effective altruism while committing fraud at FTX. Was he a con man who borrowed its language, or does the movement offer cover for people who want power, prestige, and a reputation for virtue?
Doug Casey: One of the few good things about Bankman-Fried is that his fraud, conviction, and imprisonment have served to discredit EA. The first tipoff to the fellow’s character is that he styled himself with a hyphenated last name. Perhaps that was to show he was special. Or perhaps at the urging of his two highly PC parents, both academics, who wished to advertise their equality in creating their spawn.
He was a thief at heart. Like most thieves, he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that he was a bad guy. In fact, almost all of the world’s great criminals rationalize what they’re doing by believing that they’re working for the greater good. Mao may have killed 50 million people, but he believed it was necessary to sacrifice them in order to reform China and build communism. Hitler rationalized what he was doing for the greater good of German race purity—the same with Stalin and Pol Pot. Even a vicious street thug doesn’t see himself as a bad guy. He sees himself as a good guy who sometimes has to do unpleasant things just in order to survive.
The most dangerous kind of criminal is one that finds a philosophy to rationalize and justify everything he does as a positive moral good.
International Man: The first of your Nine Ps is People. If the founder or CEO of a company is an effective altruist, what does that tell you about how they might use shareholders’ capital?
Doug Casey: It tells me to stay far away from him.
Now we have to ask ourselves, what’s the most important thing about a person? His IQ? His education? His parents and background? Of course those things are important, but they’re a relative distraction. The most important thing in sizing up a person is his morality, his character, his sense of ethics, and what he believes is right and wrong.
If someone self-identifies as a socialist, communist, a Peronist, a progressive, a Democrat, or an effective altruist, I suggest you walk the other way. Good people result in good business. Bad people give bad results. If someone lacks critical thinking skills, a basic moral core, or doesn’t acknowledge property rights—don’t walk, run.
The end result of theft is economic disaster, personal unhappiness, and social discord.
Editor’s Note: A CEO who wants to save the world with your money can turn your investment into a sacrifice you never agreed to make.
Your goal is to grow your capital. That means finding people who respect it, businesses that create value, and prices that offer substantial upside.
Legendary investor Doug Casey sees compelling opportunities in neglected markets that supply the energy, food, and resources civilization needs.
In his free special report, Where Investors Can Still Find 10X—Even 100X Opportunities, Doug reveals three contrarian stocks he likes and explains where he sees the potential for explosive gains.
Click here to get your free copy.
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
International Man: Doug, “effective altruism” sounds like a noble idea. Who are the effective altruists, and what makes them think they can calculate the best way to help humanity?
Doug Casey: It might help to start with a definition of “effective altruism.” Let’s refer to it as EA. It’s hard to find a clear and certain definition, but EA purports to figure out how to do as much good as possible, then act on that knowledge, which sounds good. But it’s not.
I’d argue, as did Ayn Rand, that altruism is the root of many evils. And the more effective it is, the more destructive it is.
“Altruism” is usually defined as “the unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others, often at a personal cost or without expecting a reward”. In other words, it advocates sacrificing yourself to others, and promotes that as a moral good. But how can that be a good thing? To sacrifice is to trade a greater for a lesser good; that’s why sacrifice is painful. Altruism legitimizes sacrifice.
Altruism also always implies a one-way flow of goods and services. That’s what happens in a slave society. By contrast, in a free society there’s an equal exchange of values.
I would characterize EA’s tenets as artificial, unsustainable, and innately destructive. They’re the type of things airy-fairy left-wing intellectuals write about, or college sophomores fantasize at a late-night BS session.
Many or most EAers are tech bros. That means they likely have high IQs. But a high IQ doesn’t automatically preclude stupidity. Many people confuse stupidity with low intelligence; they correlate, but are not the same thing. Accurate definitions of words are important. They avoid confusion and sloppy thinking—something that effective altruists are guilty of.
I use two general definitions of stupidity. One is an inadvertent tendency to self-destruction. Another is seeing only the immediate and direct consequences of an action, while overlooking its delayed and indirect consequences. When a comedian does these things, it’s funny. When a politician does them, it’s a catastrophe.
Here, let me say something that will shock people. Most charity is not virtuous; it’s stupid. It tends to destroy the recipient by giving him things which are undeserved, which he’s done nothing to merit. That discourages him from doing things to improve himself. After a while, he feels entitled to the charity that he’s getting. For instance, shipping food to a country with a famine may put off hunger for a season. But the free imported food collapses the prices for local farmers, puts them out of business, and makes the famine permanent, and the people reliant upon foreign aid.
The charity damages the giver as well. The capital he has is dissipated as water poured into the sands of a desert.
This is especially true in the case of EAers since they seem to specialize in helping those at a great distance. They believe all recipients are of the same value. So it’s better for you to give a thousand dollars to a starving Bangladeshi than to give that money to your own child. Why? Because the Bangladeshi needs it more, and he’s just as valuable as your child. An altruist believes that’s logical, and also believes that your child should make the sacrifice for a poor kid on the other side of the globe.
That thought may have a certain logic, but it’s also stupid. The greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more that can go wrong. That’s why charity should almost always be local, where you can monitor the effect it has on the recipients. In the 19th century, most organized charity took place through local beneficial organizations who could determine who was worthy of charity, and whether the recipients used it wisely or let it corrupt them. Today, government welfare has replaced local charity, creating a permanent class of recipients who are destroyed by it.
The real beneficiaries are the givers who get to play virtuous big shots at the expense of everyone else.
International Man: Effective altruists believe a small group of experts can engineer a better future. They fund causes ranging from malaria prevention to animal welfare and alleged threats from AI. Does effective altruism solve those problems, or does it give the old charity racket a scientific gloss?
Doug Casey: Much charity involves indiscriminate giving to those who have “need.” But somebody else’s need should not constitute a moral claim upon your life. I believe in helping others, but justice trumps charity. In other words, it’s not a question of somebody’s “need.” It’s a question of whether or not they deserve it. And the cost of meeting that need.
Modern state welfare systems can be viewed as effective altruism. They purport to give benefits to people that need them. That’s a stupid basis for helping people. Need is relative, and everybody believes they need more.
EA is really about social engineering. EA fans purport to find bad things—hunger, disease, ignorance, and the like—and take action to eliminate them. It’s no accident that they conclude the most effective way to do that is through government action, which is essentially about telling other people what they must do, and enforcing that order with coercion if necessary. There’s a lot of truth to the old saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. EAers stupidly overlook that reality.
A more effective solution to poverty was offered by private beneficial societies. There were hundreds of them in the 19th century. They were local in nature because the givers wanted to know who they were giving to and whether that person was deserving. Socialists and progressives of the time thought they had a better and more “effective” solution in the form of government programs.
International Man: Who benefits most from “effective altruism”: the recipients, or the donors, foundations, and so-called experts who run it?
Doug Casey: There’s a near 100% correlation between the EA types and wokesters, social justice warriors, progressives, and similar busybodies. Their problem is not intellectual; it’s psychological. Many of them impress me as being mentally ill, trying to disguise that disability with a thin social veneer, a mask of sanity, if you will.
These people are terminally unhappy with themselves and create a crutch to hold up their psyches. In other words, they aren’t being altruistic to help other people so much as to feel better about themselves.
International Man: Sam Bankman-Fried promoted effective altruism while committing fraud at FTX. Was he a con man who borrowed its language, or does the movement offer cover for people who want power, prestige, and a reputation for virtue?
Doug Casey: One of the few good things about Bankman-Fried is that his fraud, conviction, and imprisonment have served to discredit EA. The first tipoff to the fellow’s character is that he styled himself with a hyphenated last name. Perhaps that was to show he was special. Or perhaps at the urging of his two highly PC parents, both academics, who wished to advertise their equality in creating their spawn.
He was a thief at heart. Like most thieves, he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that he was a bad guy. In fact, almost all of the world’s great criminals rationalize what they’re doing by believing that they’re working for the greater good. Mao may have killed 50 million people, but he believed it was necessary to sacrifice them in order to reform China and build communism. Hitler rationalized what he was doing for the greater good of German race purity—the same with Stalin and Pol Pot. Even a vicious street thug doesn’t see himself as a bad guy. He sees himself as a good guy who sometimes has to do unpleasant things just in order to survive.
The most dangerous kind of criminal is one that finds a philosophy to rationalize and justify everything he does as a positive moral good.
International Man: The first of your Nine Ps is People. If the founder or CEO of a company is an effective altruist, what does that tell you about how they might use shareholders’ capital?
Doug Casey: It tells me to stay far away from him.
Now we have to ask ourselves, what’s the most important thing about a person? His IQ? His education? His parents and background? Of course those things are important, but they’re a relative distraction. The most important thing in sizing up a person is his morality, his character, his sense of ethics, and what he believes is right and wrong.
If someone self-identifies as a socialist, communist, a Peronist, a progressive, a Democrat, or an effective altruist, I suggest you walk the other way. Good people result in good business. Bad people give bad results. If someone lacks critical thinking skills, a basic moral core, or doesn’t acknowledge property rights—don’t walk, run.
The end result of theft is economic disaster, personal unhappiness, and social discord.
Editor’s Note: A CEO who wants to save the world with your money can turn your investment into a sacrifice you never agreed to make.
Your goal is to grow your capital. That means finding people who respect it, businesses that create value, and prices that offer substantial upside.
Legendary investor Doug Casey sees compelling opportunities in neglected markets that supply the energy, food, and resources civilization needs.
In his free special report, Where Investors Can Still Find 10X—Even 100X Opportunities, Doug reveals three contrarian stocks he likes and explains where he sees the potential for explosive gains.
Click here to get your free copy.
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
