Seeing as, in terms of absolute as well as disposable income, I'm probably closer to being a recipient of donations rather than a giver of them, effective altruism is among those topics that make me feel just a little extra alienated from LessWrong. It's something I know I couldn't participate in, for at least 5 to 7 more years, even if I were so inclined (I expect to live in the next few years on a yearly income between $5000 and $7000, if things go well). Every single penny I get my hands on goes, and will continue to go, strictly towards my own benefit, and in all honesty I couldn't afford anything else. Maybe one day when I'll stop always feeling a few thousand $$ short of a lifestyle I find agreeable, I may reconsider. But for now, all this EA talk does for me is reinforce the impression of LW as a club for rich people in which I feel maybe a bit awkward and not belonging. If you ain't got no money, take yo' broke ass home!

Anyway, the manner in which my own existence relates to goals such as EA is only half the story, probably the more morally dubious half. Disconnected from my personal circumstances, the Effective Altruism movement seems one big mix of good and not-so-good motives and consequences. On the one hand, the fact that there are people dedicated to donating large fractions of their income is a laudable thing in itself. On the other hand...

• I don't believe for one second that effective altruism would have been nearly as big of a phenomenon on LessWrong, if the owners of LessWrong hadn't been living off people's donations. MIRI is a charity that wants money. Giving to charity is probably the biggest moral credential on LW. Coincidence? I think not.

• Ensuring the flow of money in a particular direction may not be the very best effort one can put into making the world a better place. Sure, it's something, and at least in the short term a very vital something, but more than anything else it seems to be a way to patch up, or prop up, a part of the system that was shaky to begin with. The long-term end goal should be to make people less reliant on charity money. Sometimes there is a shortage of knowledge, or of power, or of good incentives, rather than of money. "Throwing money at a cause" is just one way to help -- although I suppose effective altruist organizations already incorporate the knowledge of this problem in their concept of "room for more funding".

• We already have governments that take away a large portion of our incomes anyway, that have systems in place for allocating funds and efforts, and that purport to promote the same kinds of causes as charities, yet often function inefficiently and even harmfully. However, they're a lot more reliable in terms of actually ensuring the collection of "enough" funds. To pay taxes and to give to charity (yes, I'm aware that charitable giving unlocks tax deductions) is to contribute to two systems that are doing the same job, the second being there mostly because the first isn't doing its job as it should. In this way, and possibly assuming that EA would be a larger movement in the future than it is now, charity might work to mask government inefficiencies and damage or to clean up after them.

• In the context of earning to give, participating in a particularly noxious industry as a way of earning your livelihood, and using part of that money to contribute to altruist causes, is something that looks to me like a tax on the well-being you thus cause into the world. I'm not sure that tax is always smaller than 100%. And it's more difficult to quantify the negative externalities from your job than it is to quantify the positive effects of your donations, because the first are more causally distant.

To take the discussion back to the meta level, I'm but one user with not so much karma and probably a non-central example of a LessWronger, so I don't demand that anyone accommodates me and my preferences not to discuss EA. However, knowing that other users basically come from an effective altruism mindset makes discussion with them somewhat difficult, since we don't have the same assumptions about the relationship between money and welfare. The most annoying of all is the very rare and very occasional display of charitable snobbery, or a commitment not to aid first world people who are not effective altruists, or who don't donate enough. (I've seen that, but Google seems to fail me at this moment.) It seems easier and more pleasant to discuss ethical matters with people who don't come from an EA worldview, and personally I'd like to see more of a plurality of approaches on the matter on LW.

tl;dr It's a rich people thing and therefore alien to me; as for objective merits, I've got mixed positive and negative feelings about it. But in the end, to each their own.