Examining Effective Altruism as a Moral Guide to Alleviating Human Suffering

Abstract

The individualistic nature of the effective altruism approach limits its capacity to adequately address needless human suffering caused by poverty. Its extreme position argues that one's personal choices on consumption and career path should produce the most good to the poor up until the point where they begin to cause personal harm. This is unnecessary. Rather, I argue that the collective action of individuals who realize, and accept their moral obligation to help the poor, can unite their comparative advantages in doing so to satisfy this obligation without making excessively demanding sacrifices.