THE BIG IDEA GIVING'S ROCKY YEAR
THE DOWNFALL OF fintech mogul Sam Bankman-Fried not only upended the cryptocurrency market, it also raised concerns about the future of effective altruism—a school of philanthropy that he embraced and that reportedly contributed to his fraudulent ways. Effective altruism espouses the idea that instead of giving your money to causes that you have a personal connection to (a hospital where a relative was treated, an alma mater) or one that tugs at your heartstrings—say, an earthquake in a developing country—you fund projects that have the highest potential for immediate and widespread impact, such as supplying mosquito nets to fight malaria. The movement encourages “earning to give,” in which individuals pursue lucrative jobs—sometimes even predatory in nature—in order to dole out as much money as possible. Bankman-Fried would use “earning to give” as cloud cover when he started siphoning billions of dollars from his customers.
More recently, effective altruism has introduced another controversial idea with “longtermism,” in
