A Review of ‘The Good it Promises, The Harm it Does’
Oxford is effective altruism’s hometown. It’s the site of groups like Giving What We Can, figures like William MacAskill, and – through these related influences – the general growth of effective altruism (EA) across recent years. Interesting and important, then, that the most substantial critique of EA itself comes from Oxford University Press in the form of The Good it Promises, The Harm It Does – a collection of essays representing a diverse and compelling set of reasons to reconsider EA.
Taking animal ethics as its focus, The Good It Promises is less a single, unified argument than a bundle of questioning voices. Still, several criticisms recur throughout the volume’s essays – whether those essays come from Christians (David L. Clough, chapter seven), feminists (Carol J. Adams, chapter nine), anticapitalists (John Sanbonmatsu, chapter fifteen), or simply those working on the ground in animal advocacy. Consistently, these voices maintain that EA is neither so effective nor so altruistic as it purports to be.
Here, I take a look at this narrative, how it unfolds across The Good It Promises, and what hope might be left for EA in light of it. Ultimately, it is unclear whether any version of EA that fully answers the criticisms raised in The Good It Promises could consistently hold onto those commitments that make it EA, and it is very clear that any version of EA that doesn’t answer them neglects substantial elements of its purported mission. Anyone sympathetic to EA should take seriously the problems raised in this powerful volume.
Effectiveness, or the Internal Critique
The Good It Promises frequently calls attention to instances in which effective altruism is simply ineffective. Examples abound, and they might be divided into two general kinds: first, cases in which EA is ineffective within the sphere of animal issues; and second, cases in which EA’s influence in that sphere has harmful effects that spill over beyond it. Both of these lines of criticism are generally internal to EA – they are presented in a manner at least sympathetic to its utilitarian terms and often incredibly constructive in aim – but they reveal significant flaws in the EA movement as it presently functions.
Within animal advocacy, EA’s quantificational focus may lead it to pick the wrong battles and, in doing so, actively disadvantage worthwhile causes. In both respects, it is at least an open question whether EA is really effective; and at times, the clear answer is that it is not. For instance, touched upon in several of the volume’s essays (see especially chapters one, ten and eleven) is EA’s focus on developing and promoting so-called ‘alternative proteins’ – fake-meat-style options which, whether lab-grown or not, aim to recreate the experience of consuming meat. Because product sales are straightforwardly quantifiable, campaigns like these are the EA-minded animal advocate’s bread and butter; however, for several reasons, it is highly questionable whether they are actually effective.
As Michele Simon discusses in chapter eleven, that non-meat meat is growing in popularity does not entail that people are actively substituting it for meat. Often, these options replace other plant-based options rather than meat itself; further, since they often come from corporations that themselves engage in meat production, they might indirectly keep animal consumption afloat.
But even if demand changes lead to a scaling back of meat production (which hasn’t happened so far – see chapter eleven), one might still make a plausible case that these products lead to more meat consumption overall. By serving as a route for meat-heavy establishments to avoid the so-called ‘veto vote’, they dull the force of plant-based preferences in changing meat eaters’ consumption habits. When, for instance, Burger King introduces meat-free burgers, the whole family no longer has to switch to a more plant-heavy restaurant on account of the vegetarian child – leading to a round of beef burgers and a single meat-free one where the entire group may have gotten mostly-vegetarian pasta options otherwise.
This is not to say that a transition to non-meat meat is unsalvageably harmful (and it is also not to say that The Good It Promises says so.). Instead, it simply casts doubt on whether a focus on alternative proteins is as effective as it is made to seem, and whether the number-driven methods that produced that seeming effectiveness are really to be trusted.
The issue of non-meat meat leads into another criticism of EA’s effectiveness – one which takes as its focus EA’s effects beyond animal advocacy. Even granting to EA that alternative meat campaigns are successful in their immediate goal of reducing meat consumption, these may not be maximally effective all things considered. As non-meat meats often rely on monoculture crops that destroy biodiversity, the overall environmental impact of a transition may not be beneficial. Further – looking beyond environmental issues – alternative meat campaigns intersect with racial inequality in potentially damaging ways. In their advertising, they have – at least in Brazil – reinforced blonde, white beauty standards. And more fundamentally, in their emphasis on non-meat meat over legume- and vegetable-based food, they both erode the food traditions of indigenous and historically enslaved communities and possibly prevent progress toward expanding access to fresh food in places like the US’s often ‘fast-food stricken’ food deserts, which often exist in areas where people of colour are the majority. If EA cares about the effectiveness of its altruism in more than just animal welfare, it must grapple with these substantial – and often difficult to quantify – spillover effects.
Altruism, or the External Critique
Effectiveness objections like the one outlined above call for substantial changes to EA’s current animal advocacy strategies. Still, by their nature as internal critiques, they leave the heart of EA untouched. (‘Meat-free meat is absolutely ineffective!’ the committed effective altruist might respond. ‘Thanks for the feedback, let’s try something new.’) The objections raised by The Good it Promises consistently cut deeper into EA’s core commitments. In particular, the very notion of altruism EA relies upon might itself be misguided. In The Good it Promises, several essays take up this sort of objection in several different ways. But especially compelling is a recurring resistance to EA’s utilitarian disposition as an uncaring, objectifying, and therefore misguided way of helping animals.
Several of the volume’s contributions, for instance, come from animal sanctuary advocates – contributions which, across the board, treat animals as not numbers, not mechanistic objects, but partners and even agents. Readers are told of the health journey of Esther the pig in chapter twelve; of the lives of two steers – ‘the boys’, Tucker and Amos – in chapter thirteen; and of the liberatory efforts of Fred the feral goat in chapter fourteen. In each case, the animals in question are described in precisely the sorts of terms people would be: they are described as having preferences, friends, goals, and rich, full lives – as something like ends in themselves.
This way of thinking about animals opens up a lane for another critique of EA. Even for those generally unsympathetic to utilitarianism, something like ‘utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people’ often looks appealing – animals are sentient beings that experience pain, but if they don’t lead the same sort of lives as humans, they don’t seem entitled to the same moral treatment as humans. EA-for-animals might tempt by the same reasoning. If we are utilitarians for animals, then it may be time to give up on sanctuaries’ more costly, care-driven approaches in favour of operations that, through slight improvements to the welfare of many animals, win out in the utilitarian calculus (see the discussions of cage-free egg campaigns in chapters two, seven, and fifteen).
But when animals are spoken of as leading the sort of life a person leads – as they repeatedly are in The Good It Promises – EA loses its lustre as an animal advocacy strategy. Because EA’s moral core is utilitarian, it rules out the view that particular animals might be owed something (as in chapter seven’s discussion of military dogs) or individually deserving of emotional bonds and care (as in chapter nine’s discussion of care ethics). And because EA’s language is often not just quantificational but marked by terms like ‘alternative protein,’ it arguably objectifies animals, albeit unintentionally – ‘animals become meat, meat becomes protein, and animals become protein delivery systems’ (chapter eleven).
This objection targets the heart of EA. If a utilitarian treatment of animals is objectionable in the same ways it might be for humans, then EA’s so-called ‘altruism’ looks decisively less altruistic. More might be said on a premise operative here – that utilitarianism for humans is at least plausibly objectionable – and more is said on it throughout The Good It Promises. But as a start, this sort of critique seems both compelling and destructive. In its allusions to it, The Good it Promises, The Harm it Does gives readers serious reasons to resist effective altruism as a means of caring for animals.
Wyatt Radzin is an undergraduate studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University. She is also the Brasenose College JCR Environment & Ethics Representative.
