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Emile comments on Open Thread April 16 - April 22, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Why the heck do Effective Altruists need to be singled out for this? You seem to be punishing people for wanting to be effective altruists, which is super weird.
Not all but many effective altruists and certainly the dominant discourse in recent times care about earning to give, ie making a ton of money so that you can give more to charity. Making a ton of money in america has the side effect of giving a ton of money to the us government. If this is evil on net, it might be more effectively altruistic for someone not to make money to give to charity OR the government if you live in the US.
Effective altruists are the ones who care particularly much about what their money does.
You get effective altruists wrong. They care about the results of their actions. It a philosophy about choosing effective actions about actions that aren't. It's not about feeling guilty that some of your actions have no big positive effects.
That means you focus your attention on area where you can achieve a lot instead of focusing it where you can't do much. I find the argument that the US would spend less on military when US citizens would pay less taxes questionable. You can't simply defund a highly powerful organisation like the NSA. Less government money is rather going to be a problem for welfare payments.
In discussions about where an effective altruist is supposed to live it might be a worthwhile point the effect of tax money. Paying taxes in Switzerland instead of the US might be beneficial if you decide whether to life in San Francisco or Zurich.
Maybe he's been antagonized by some smug effective altruist harping on about how much more ethical he is. I suspect things like that happen.
I expect some people perceive effective altruists that way no matter what their attitudes; they feel the harping on about how much more ethical they are is implied.