I think an argument for local altruism is that the good you produce will indirectly return to you, which makes the good-doing sustainable. Otherwise, if the help only flows in one direction geographically, sooner or later the good-doers upstream will burn out, or may get in a situation where they need help, but there is no one to help them.
The problem with first-order effective altruism is that it doesn’t include these effects in consideration. For example, if there is a high-earning person who sends tons of money to EA charities which save 1000 people a year, then if a situation happens that you have to choose between saving this 1 person or saving 100 other people, instead of the first-order equation “100 is more than 1”, you should consider that saving this 1 person means indirectly saving 1000 people every year (that is, until this 1 person gets in trouble again).
However...
...this is not an argument for indiscriminate local altruism. If we go like “okay, let’s include the higher-order effects of ‘by helping this person, we indirectly help these people, too’”, that is… mathematically speaking, trying to find eigenvectors in the matrix of mutual help, I guess… but in a plain language, it means to prioritize the people who help others. So still, no charity for cute puppies, and probably no support of art or sport. (Unless an effective altruist can convince you that the extra art or sport can make them X% more productive, which translates to Y% higher income, which means Z% greater donations to effective charities.)
This, done properly, would probably rub many people the wrong way even more than current effective altruism does. Because it would mean judging your neighbors, and declaring some of them worthy of more help than others. “Sorry, dude, we won’t contribute to your heart surgery fund. Seriously, teaching children math and computer science, are you stupid? Just give them a link to Khan Academy. I don’t care about your little child’s surgery either. Now this guy here, he is an effective altruist who saves 1000 people every month, and could save 10 more if he could get home from his job faster and get a few more minutes of extra time for his hobbies. So we are saving the money for his new car, slightly faster than the current one.” OK, this is exaggerated, but you get the point.
And yet, I think that a softer version of this might actually work. Something like providing a support net for local altruists, both effective and the classical ones. For example, providing them free therapy to prevent burnout, or a free place to stay at should they need one; organize networking. (Then I remember some people’s outrage at Lighthaven “walled compound”, so there’s probably no way to avoid being hated.)
I think an argument for local altruism is that the good you produce will indirectly return to you, which makes the good-doing sustainable. Otherwise, if the help only flows in one direction geographically, sooner or later the good-doers upstream will burn out, or may get in a situation where they need help, but there is no one to help them.
The problem with first-order effective altruism is that it doesn’t include these effects in consideration. For example, if there is a high-earning person who sends tons of money to EA charities which save 1000 people a year, then if a situation happens that you have to choose between saving this 1 person or saving 100 other people, instead of the first-order equation “100 is more than 1”, you should consider that saving this 1 person means indirectly saving 1000 people every year (that is, until this 1 person gets in trouble again).
However...
...this is not an argument for indiscriminate local altruism. If we go like “okay, let’s include the higher-order effects of ‘by helping this person, we indirectly help these people, too’”, that is… mathematically speaking, trying to find eigenvectors in the matrix of mutual help, I guess… but in a plain language, it means to prioritize the people who help others. So still, no charity for cute puppies, and probably no support of art or sport. (Unless an effective altruist can convince you that the extra art or sport can make them X% more productive, which translates to Y% higher income, which means Z% greater donations to effective charities.)
This, done properly, would probably rub many people the wrong way even more than current effective altruism does. Because it would mean judging your neighbors, and declaring some of them worthy of more help than others. “Sorry, dude, we won’t contribute to your heart surgery fund. Seriously, teaching children math and computer science, are you stupid? Just give them a link to Khan Academy. I don’t care about your little child’s surgery either. Now this guy here, he is an effective altruist who saves 1000 people every month, and could save 10 more if he could get home from his job faster and get a few more minutes of extra time for his hobbies. So we are saving the money for his new car, slightly faster than the current one.” OK, this is exaggerated, but you get the point.
And yet, I think that a softer version of this might actually work. Something like providing a support net for local altruists, both effective and the classical ones. For example, providing them free therapy to prevent burnout, or a free place to stay at should they need one; organize networking. (Then I remember some people’s outrage at Lighthaven “walled compound”, so there’s probably no way to avoid being hated.)