Edit: The purpose of this question is not to make the world worse, but to see whether we actually have concrete ideas of what would, and my guess is that most of us don't, not in a really concrete way. From the downvotes I'm wondering if everyone else is thinking way darker directions than I am. If so please share.
There is a lot of discussion here about effective altruism. Organizations like GiveWell with donations, using criterion like quality-life-years-saved-per-dollar. People distinguish warm-and-fuzzy giving from the most effective use of dollars from various utilitarian perspectives.
But I want to ask a different question: What would effective anti-altruism be?
To make it more concrete:
I am an eccentric multimillionaire, proposing a contest to all of you, who will for the purposes of this exercise play greedy and callous, yet honest and efficient, contest entrants.
Whoever can propose the most negative possible use for my money, in the sense that it causes the greatest amount of global misery, (feel free to argue for your own interpretation of the details of what this means) will receive $1 million to carry out his or her proposal and $1 million to keep for him or herself to with as desired.
A few rules:
1) Everything must be 100% legal in whatever jurisdiction you propose. Edit: People had trouble with the old phrasing, so I'll add that it should not only be legal in the letter of the law, but also in some reasonable interpretation of the spirit of the law.
1a) In fact, I encourage you to think of things that aren't merely legal but that would also be legal under whatever your favorite hypothetical laws are. Maybe that means non-coercive, non-violent, or something else in that vein.
2) This money may be used as seed funding for a non-profit or for-profit anti-altruistic venture, but I will take into account both the risk and the marginal impact of only the first million dollars.
3) Risk and plausibility are factors just as they would be in any investment for effective altruism
4) If you're going to propose that you keep and embezzle the first million dollars, you should have an extremely good justification for why such a mundane plan would match my standards for anti-altruism.
I hope this pushes you all to think of truly anti-altruistic means of spending this money. I think you may find that effective anti-altruism is a good deal harder than you'd believe.
Start a foundation which would support the teaching of fundamentalist religious science far beyond the confines of religious schools. So create I would seek out brilliant but deluded "values" supporting people and point out how this would reach far more people than they could ever reach by participating only within declared religious institutions. I would include teaching communist and anarchist "theories" of economics, especially including teaching that all successful corporations and the people who help them succeed are greedy and evil. I would set the foundation up so that it would be a pure meritocracy with fantastic status rewards for very capable and very intelligent proponents of the ludicrous crypto-religious positions I was advocating. I would concentrate the foundation in the newly developing countries where the cost of pulling capable of people in to my endeavour would be relatively low, and the impact of doing so would be relatively high, for example I would certainly wish to revive religious feelings in India in such a way to encourage governments go unliberalize their freeer market laws and to encourage intelligent kids from somewhat traditionally religious families to particpate in a resurgence of their traditional religions, especially their teachings against science and efficient economies.
Its possible we might identify some organizations that are already doing this with great energy and talent, in which case I would encourage joining forces with these organizations, possibly giving direct resource help.
Your proposal has a lot to like. It takes EA principles of targeting developing nations where costs are lower and your own infrastructure can, relatively, go further, as well as a focus on anti-development and un-education. We can also see that similar work has been tremendously effective, for instance, in making Uganda a hotbed of homophobia.
But at the same time I worry you're getting into a crowded market and also overestimating how far your budget will take you. Even in developing areas, establishing a school is not cheap or easy. And your plan of runni... (read more)