Effective Altruism
Effective altruism (EA) is a philosophical and social movement which applies evidence and reason to working out the most effective way to improve the world. EA has its philosophical roots in classical utilitarianism. This moral theory defines the rightness of an action in terms of the extent to which it maximises aggregate utility (this is what I mean by ‘do/does the most good’). Some utilitarian partisans within the EA movement argue that people have a moral obligation to pursue a career that does the most good (henceforth the ‘80,000 Hours argument’). I want to offer two reasons to reject the 80,000 Hours argument on the grounds that it is self-defeating for (1) many individuals and (2) society at large.
Self-Defeating for Individuals
William Macaskill and Benjamin Todd founded a company called 80,000 Hours which provides advice and coaching to help people choose a career that does the most good. The 80,000 Hours argument can be formulated as follows:
(P1) Each person has a moral obligation to do the most good
(P2) Choosing ‘career X’ does the most good
(C1) Therefore, each person has a moral obligation to pursue ‘career X’.
Many people would think career X involves working for a charity in the social sector. However, Macaskill argues that a person can do more good by working in a high paying job and donating a large proportion of their income to effective charities (the ‘earn to give strategy’). The reasons for this are as follows: (1) many charities waste resources and do not tackle problems effectively; (2) the marginal contribution of working at a charity is lower than earning to give; (3) the time spent doing good work at a charity must be compared with the good that could have been done working elsewhere; (4) working at a charity can prevent a person from building career capital, which is essential for a person to hold influential positions where they can do the most good in the future.
The 80,000 Hours argument would be self-defeating for many individuals because it would lead them to develop character traits which prevent them from doing the most good throughout their lives. There is psychological evidence to support this claim.
The environment a person works in will have a significant impact on the values and character traits they develop and can impact their psychology in ways which make them less altruistic in their thinking and behaviour. A person’s thoughts and actions can be influenced by factors they are unaware of through what are known as priming effects. Those primed to think about money display an enhanced sense of individualism and diminished communal motivations. A person pursuing the earn to give strategy is likely to be working in a money-priming environment, given that many firms which pay high salaries are profit-driven and their workspace environment is rife with money-priming stimuli. Working in a money-priming environment like a hedge fund might make a person more individualistic and less committed to giving. Furthermore, a person’s values and character traits change as they grow older. This means that a person who is wholly committed to donating a large proportion of their income to charity in their youth might not necessarily remain committed later in their life.
To illustrate this point, consider the following example. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, was inspired by the 80,000 Hours argument and decided to pursue the earn to give strategy. Although he remained committed to his pledge early in his career, when FTX went bankrupt, Sam Bankman-Fried used customer funds to cover up FTX’s losses. It has been suggested that the earn to give strategy provided a convenient rationalisation for his behaviour. It allows young entrepreneurs to justify earning exorbitant sums of money before they have the life experience necessary to manage their wealth in an ethical way. If Sam Bankman-Fried did not pursue the earn to give strategy, and instead worked in policy, for example, he would not have been primed to think about money to the same extent. He would have been able to do good work which makes a social contribution throughout his life. Perhaps, he would have also been able to do more good throughout his life than he would have done pursuing the earn to give strategy.
These psychological observations suggest that the 80,000 Hours argument is invalid: C1 does not necessarily follow from P1 and P2. Even if ‘Each person has a moral obligation to do the most good’ (P1) and ‘Choosing career X does the most good’ (P2), it does not follow that ‘each person has a moral obligation to pursue career X’ (C1), if this causes them to develop character traits which prevent them doing the most good throughout their lives. If choosing career X causes a person to develop such character traits, then they would not have a moral obligation to pursue career X because doing so would be self-defeating, in that it would prevent them from maximising aggregate utility. In other words, C1 defeats P1.
Self-Defeating for Society
A zealous effective altruist might offer the following objection to the claim that the 80,000 Hours argument would be self-defeating for many individuals: this claim is engaging with an uncharitable reading of the 80,000 Hours argument by focusing on the earn to give strategy. The earn to give strategy is only one of the career paths that 80,000 Hours advise people to pursue. They suggest a range of career options and advise people to choose based on how well they believe they will ‘fit’ the role; and they only advise a small proportion of people who are well ‘fitted’ to pursue the earn to give strategy. Many people are not well fitted to the earn to give strategy and should pursue different careers in policy or research, for example, in order to adhere to the 80,000 Hours argument. This suggests that C1 does follow logically from P2 (and that the 80,000 Hours argument is valid). A person not pursuing the earn to give strategy would still be adhering to the 80,000 Hours argument, provided they were well fitted to the career they pursue and intend to do the most good in it.
Even if every person pursued a career to which they were best fitted, and did the most good they could do in that career, the 80,000 Hours argument would still be self-defeating for two reasons.
First, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to say whether career X even exists. For society to do the most good, people must choose different careers so that all essential operations can be carried out and there are no shortages in important areas of the workforce. This division of labour is important because all production is interdependent, and most jobs cannot be carried out unless other jobs are also carried out. For example, empirical evidence suggests that childcare workers, hospital cleaners, and recycling workers make a much greater social contribution than investment bankers, advertising executives, and tax accountants. This implies that a person working as a researcher in a hospital does not do more good than a person working as a cleaner in a hospital, because the researcher would have no place to work without the hospital cleaner. If everyone adhered to the 80,000 Hours argument, there would be an excess of workers in some areas and shortages in others, which would result in society not being structured in a way which does the most good.
Second, the 80,000 Hours argument suffers from many of the criticisms associated with classical utilitarianism, which places emphasis on avoiding suffering and premature death at the expense of other values like social justice. This induces a form of moral blindness in the actions of effective altruists, in that they fail to promote equality, focus on the worst off, or respect human rights as ends in themselves. Some of these social values, like tackling structural injustices, require systemic changes which must be led by government institutions. If everyone adhered to the 80,000 Hours argument, there would still be many systemic problems which would prevent society from being structured in a way that does the most good. For example, institutional racism would still be a problem within the police force and structural inequalities would still exist within society. These problems require government intervention and would not be resolved if everyone adhered to the 80,000 Hours argument.
To sum things up, the 80,000 Hours argument, when read charitably, highlights how the claim (1) in my argument is weaker than claim (2), because many individuals could pursue careers which do the most good without pursuing the earn to give strategy and developing character traits which make their decision self-defeating. However, the 80,000 Hours argument cannot overcome claim (2), because it is rooted in a utilitarian moral framework which ignores the importance of a division of labour and induces moral blindness to other values such as social justice.