alt Hacker NewsI want to cure lung cancer, therefore as an Effective Altruist™ I maximize my income by selling cigarettes to children outside playgrounds. The money will go towards research in my will, and in the meantime the incidence of lung cancer in teenagers will incentivize the free market to find a cure!
People don't become quants because they are EAs, they become EAs to justify to themselves why they became quants.
Being a quant is not that interesting and if you're not redirecting the money you're not really an EA, are you?
Your first paragraph is just a standard response to utilitarianism, although a poor one because it doesn't consider EV.
Nonetheless I'm not quite sure why merely mentioning EA draws out all these irrelevant replies about it. It was incidental, not an endorsement of EA.