With increasing coverage of EA, I’m seeing many critiques on Twitter along the line of “EA billionaires should just pay more taxes” and “philanthropy bypasses democratic processes”.
A key value which EAs share and most people do not hold (or at least do not adhere to in practice) is internationalism and the idea that people matter equally, regardless of nationality.
I think it’s very important to emphasise this when communicating about EA.
Internationalism explains why paying taxes isn’t better than funding EA charities and projects (because governments typically spend <1% of tax revenue on improving things for people in other countries, while EA spending values everyone equally).
Internationalism also justifies philanthropists using their influence to promote policies which improve things for people around the world (because the policies of powerful governments can have large impacts on foreigners, but foreigners are excluded from the democratic processes which determine the policies).
(Also, side note, but I think when EAs observe that people don’t care as much about people who are far away from them, the reason is more about nationality and nationalism than physical distance)
Cf this post from 2014 which had a similar message.
That's definitely a con that will cost many QALY's. But so does the risk in cosmopolitanism; the lack of incentive for government innovation to attract citizens which also costs many QALY's.
I do want to say that I'm not saying cosmopolitanism isn't the best option, but rather think some more doubt and careful running of the numbers of QALY's may be necessary to increase confidence in that option.
Also Your totally right that it's impractical often to tell the person in a bad nation to just leave their nation & they did not choose their country.
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