Here, let me say something that will shock people. Most charity is not virtuous; it’s stupid. It tends to destroy the recipient by giving him things which are undeserved, which he’s done nothing to merit. That discourages him from doing things to improve himself. After a while, he feels entitled to the charity that he’s getting. For instance, shipping food to a country with a famine may put off hunger for a season. But the free imported food collapses the prices for local farmers, puts them out of business, and makes the famine permanent, and the people reliant upon foreign aid.
The charity damages the giver as well. The capital he has is dissipated as water poured into the sands of a desert.
This is especially true in the case of EAers since they seem to specialize in helping those at a great distance. They believe all recipients are of the same value. So it’s better for you to give a thousand dollars to a starving Bangladeshi than to give that money to your own child. Why? Because the Bangladeshi needs it more, and he’s just as valuable as your child. An altruist believes that’s logical, and also believes that your child should make the sacrifice for a poor kid on the other side of the globe.
That thought may have a certain logic, but it’s also stupid. The greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more that can go wrong. That’s why charity should almost always be local, where you can monitor the effect it has on the recipients. In the 19th century, most organized charity took place through local beneficial organizations who could determine who was worthy of charity, and whether the recipients used it wisely or let it corrupt them. Today, government welfare has replaced local charity, creating a permanent class of recipients who are destroyed by it.
The real beneficiaries are the givers who get to play virtuous big shots at the expense of everyone else.
Doug Casey: Much charity involves indiscriminate giving to those who have “need.” But somebody else’s need should not constitute a moral claim upon your life. I believe in helping others, but justice trumps charity. In other words, it’s not a question of somebody’s “need.” It’s a question of whether or not they deserve it. And the cost of meeting that need.
Modern state welfare systems can be viewed as effective altruism. They purport to give benefits to people that need them. That’s a stupid basis for helping people. Need is relative, and everybody believes they need more.
EA is really about social engineering. EA fans purport to find bad things—hunger, disease, ignorance, and the like—and take action to eliminate them. It’s no accident that they conclude the most effective way to do that is through government action, which is essentially about telling other people what they must do, and enforcing that order with coercion if necessary. There’s a lot of truth to the old saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. EAers stupidly overlook that reality.
A more effective solution to poverty was offered by private beneficial societies. There were hundreds of them in the 19th century. They were local in nature because the givers wanted to know who they were giving to and whether that person was deserving. Socialists and progressives of the time thought they had a better and more “effective” solution in the form of government programs.
