The concept of effective altruism as apparently espoused in and around Silicon Valley is, in my limited understanding, deeply and tragically flawed and indeed sums up much of the worst features of a system of remedying public goods through private means. At root, the core of effective altruism seems to be people out making as much money as they can to give it away to solve the world's problems. Sounds nice.
Except when you say "make as much money as possible" in a world in which seven companies control about 30% of the market cap of the S&P 500, or about $11.5 trillion, which to give a sense of scale is about 45% of US 2022 GDP, this creates real problems. Basically what it boils down to is a lot of techbros -- the same community lets not forget that also espouses the merits of micro-dosing LSD to improve productivity -- getting outsized sway over how to fund the achievement of public goods. With zero oversight. Who voted for these guys? Why should they determine what society's problems are that need to be addressed? These are some general lines of critique I've seen advanced against philanthropy in general, but it's much worse when it's techbros in charge because in general they spend so much time alone and not out in the world seeing people and their problems. I guess the same is true for all of us in a work from home and let Amazon deliver it world, but at least I am conscious of it as a huge gap. Maybe they are too but I'm not hearing it from them.
Also, the idea that AI is going to create a great deal of abundance that does away with human need is just hogwash. There's a basic human need to feel that you are producing, contributing, that you're part of the web of being. If AI is just figuring everything out for us and delivering AI-baked pizzas using AI-flown drones to our homes built by AI-robots so we can all play pickleball, people will feel like shit because they didn't do anything useful that day.
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