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No, it equalizes them. You can argue that is bad, but it is not "reversed".
The EA movement still is heads-and-shoulders over the average non-EA charity in terms of accountability.
This doesn't match my experience with churches at all. For instance, when I volunteered serving dinner and distributing food to the poor, there was literally no effort made to restrict it to good people/the congregation/etc.
Has EA ever shipped rice to Africans? Or are you simply straw-manning?
On concentric loyalties, the circles grow exponentially larger. The chance that your inner few circles will happen to contain most effective causes are basically nil. If all the resources are going to the outer rings, the loyalties are effectively reversed.
What does EA do to hold its beneficiaries accountable that others don't? I was not saying that they are worse, they just aren't better from what I know. Churches now don't have nearly enough cultural capital to make and demands, but in times where it's volunteers serving their local community, guys would absolutely be expected to maintain a certain level of decorum and respect, lest service be denied. There's also more reason for the recipients to do this. They are interacting with real people they know, not salaried representatives of the government or other massive entity.
Their population started exploding when the shipments started flowing. Are you disputing that food AID generates more Africans? That seems straightforward.
The most obvious example is GiveWell re-evaluating its charities ~annually and periodically removing charities from its recommendations. GiveWell publishes its reasoning and provides spreadsheets where you can plug in your own numbers. Evidence Action also cut its busing program after finding it wasn't effective enough. You can argue that GiveWell is, itself, largely unaccountable, but I'd argue a meta-charity rating the effectiveness of the concrete-charities is a good deal of greater accountability than almost any other non-profit.
No, I'm disputing that Effective Altruism shipped rice to Africa, which you implied in your previous comment. If you didn't intend to imply that EA was doing it, what was the point of that last paragraph?
GiveWell's top charities are:
Medicine to prevent malaria
Nets to prevent malaria
Supplements to prevent vitamin A deficiency [in Africa]
Cash incentives for routine childhood vaccines [in Africa]
I'll admit that this is not "sending pallets of rice," but it's very similar. They are providing supplies that produce more Africans who need more supplies. Their top one is "$3500 per life saved". But if saving a life also means creating 2-3 more lives, should the cost not actually be infinite? By accountability I don't mean for the charities, e.g. against theft. I mean accountability for the recipients. If I offer someone a couch to sleep on, there is an expectation that the person is working on finding their own place to stay. What are Africans doing to deal with malaria themselves, such that there is a foreseeable end to the program? Does anything happen if they don't follow through?
There are important distinctions you are eliding.
For instance, malaria nets (and deworming) have significant positive externalities.
But, more importantly, you are employing a double standard: expect individual accountability for your people; you expect group accountability for those people.
What exactly is an individual African supposed to do to "deal with malaria themselves"? With vitamin A deficiency?
[ Edit: likewise, where is your concern that the friend sleeping on your couch will be more likely to have kids, propagating their... issues ]
An accountable way to do the same thing would be to fund a company that manufactures the mosquito nets or malaria medication in Africa, staffed by Africans. Once at breakeven, turn over ownership. Job done. If those things are too difficult to manufacture, stick with importing/distribution, but sell the product for money. If nobody will pay for it, then maybe it's not worth as much as GiveWell is paying for it.
Virtually the entire point of altruistic charity is to give people things they couldn't otherwise afford themselves. That is, distributing goods/services that aren't otherwise profitable.
But even if you don't care about that, malaria nets have positive externalities, which means even a myopic free-market promoter should see the obvious value here.
Finally, again, why the double standard? You don't ask churches why they don't set up farms instead of staff food kitchens. You might retort that EAs claim to care about effectiveness, but you have given no actual evidence to think your plan is better from a utilitarian or NPV perspective.
Whether or not something is a positive externality (for him) at all depends on your preferences and the prior distribution of property rights. You can't simply take this for granted.
This is an obvious sneer, please don't do that.
Only if you think its directed at someone in this conversation. The person I'm talking to hasn't indicated they hold such beliefs, and have, in fact, indicated the opposite with their strong visceral feeling of loyalty to those close to them. This makes my use of the phrase not a sneer, but a rhetorical usage similar to saying "Even a Nazi would agree Einstein is a genius."
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