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jimkleiber01/22/20251 replyview on HN

The problem with EA is in judging what is effective. Perhaps ridding the unforgivable student loans of parents actually helps the kids more than school lunches.

And frankly, some of the most effective altruism may be just to directly give cash to people, yet I don't know how many people in the EA community would trust people so much with unconditional cash.


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currymj01/22/2025

there are many many problems with the EA movement, but they do generally support unconditional cash transfers.

cash transfers are seen as the "default" baseline. the bar for charity is that it must be better than cash transfers. they do find some such charities that they claim are even better than cash transfers, but they are totally comfortable with giving people unconditional cash.

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