IF YOU GIVE AWAY MONEY, WHY DO YOU DO it? Why those specific causes, and those specific charities? The premise of “effective altruism”, a decade-old trend promoted by neo-utilitarian philosophers and seized on by graduates in tech and finance, is that the rest of us are probably getting it wrong. Whether because we give too little or because we chose the wrong recipient, our donations aren’t doing enough good.
But effective altruism is now losing its shine. In November one of its best-known devotees, Sam Bankman-Fried, was found guilty of diverting client funds from FTX, the cryptocurrency trading platform he founded in 2019. Once he was worth $26 billion, most of which he pledged to give away over his lifetime. But in March he is likely to be sentenced to decades in jail.
The scandal doesn’t merely
