Global inequalities seem to be about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century. Indeed, the share of income presently captured by the poorest half of the world’s people is about half what it was in 1820, before the great divergence between Western countries and their colonies. In other words, there is still a long way to go to undo the global economic inequalities inherited from the very unequal organization of world production between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries.
World economic inequality report, 2022
1. Introduction
This is Part 4 in my series Harms. Risk mitigation has potential harms, as well as benefits. This series aims to chronicle some of the harms that existential risk mitigation may bring about, so that the value of risk mitigation efforts can be properly assessed.
Part 1 looked at the risk of distraction. Part 2 looked at surveillance. Part 3 looked at the cost of delayed technological development.
Today’s post looks at the propensity of longtermism to increase global inequality. Whereas short-term interventions were primarily inequality-reducing transfers of wealth from the richest to the poorest nations, longtermist dollars often flow to the wealthiest societies, and indeed to some of the most advantaged individuals within those societies.
I will look at the state of global inequality today (Section 2) and reasons to be concerned about inequality (Section 3). Then I will discuss how short-termist philanthropy tended to reduce inequality (Section 4) whereas longtermist philanthropy tends to exacerbate inequality (Section 5). Section 6 concludes.
2. Inequality today
We live in a deeply unequal world. Some of us have a great deal of resources. Others have rather less. Here, for example, is the global income distribution.
One of the most concerning facts about global inequality is that there is high inequality between nations. While there is some evidence that economic inequality between nations may finally be beginning to fall, the past few centuries have left us with a good deal of catching up to do. Here is how per-capita GDP has evolved across the world over the past two centuries:
I hope that these figures motivate three claims. First, global inequality is high today. Second, much of global inequality occurs between nations. And third, inequality has a dramatic impact on the lives of people today.
3. Why care about inequality?
On some views, inequality or its correlates are intrinsically bad. For example, prioritarian views in population ethics hold that it is better, other things equal, for a benefit to accrue to poorer members of society than for the same benefit to accrue to richer members of society. This is not (merely) because richer members of society might appreciate the benefit less, but instead because it does not always seem so valuable to concentrate benefits among a small few. For example, those moved by Robert Nozick’s utility monster may think it is not so good to concentrate a great amount of utility within a single person, leaving other members of society badly off, and that it would be better to spread that utility more equally among society members.
On other views, inequality is bad because of what it communicates. For example, Andreas Mogensen has argued that unequal distributions of healthcare resources may be bad because they communicate greater respect for the value of some lives than the value of other lives. In the same way, leaving residents of poorer nations to make do with so little when many others have so much may communicate that little value is placed on the lives and well-being of residents of poorer nations.
Inequality also matters on instrumental grounds. Most obviously, the marginal utility of additional money diminishes rapidly. A software engineer earning $400,000 does not enjoy eighty times as much welfare as a farmer earning $5,000. This means that unequal distributions of wealth are, other things equal, highly inefficient from the point of view of promoting welfare.
Inequality breeds a number of further instrumental harms. Within-society inequalities erode social cohesion, which can lead to a range of harms up to and culminating in revolution or civil unrest. There is some evidence that inequality dampens economic growth, though the jury is still out on this question. And inequality both reinforces and is reinforced by structures of social domination that may be intrinsically or instrumentally bad in themselves.
None of this is to say that inequality is always wrong. But we pay a heavy price for inequality, and that price is worth taking seriously.
Let’s look at two ways in which the turn to longtermism exacerbates inequality: first, by incurring an opportunity cost in terms of foregone inequality reduction (Section 4) and second, by directly exacerbating inequalities (Section 5).
4. How short-termism reduces inequality
Short-termists favored causes such as global health and development that were excellent tools for inequality reduction.
Consider cash transfers as an example of work done to combat poverty. There is good evidence that cash transfers reduce income inequality by providing recipients with the financial means to pay immediate expenses and invest in their financial futures. Cash transfers also reduce inequality across many other measures, such as health inequality, providing individuals with the means to acquire needed healthcare.
Alternatively, consider malaria nets as an example of global health work. For example, the Against Malaria Foundation estimates that every dollar spent yields $12 in economic improvements in some of the most economically disadvantaged regions on Earth. And a well-known review estimates the economic costs of endemic malaria from 1980-1995 in many countries in the range of 15-20% of overall income. For brevity, I’ll reproduce roughly the first half of the full table below:
To the extent that short-termist programs tended to robustly reduce inequality, longtermist interventions may incur an opportunity cost of foregone inequality reduction.
5. How longtermism exacerbates inequality
Whereas short-termists primarily aimed to transfer resources from the richest to the poorest nations, longtermists are, if anything, transferring resources the other way.
Most directly, longtermist grants increasingly go to members of advantaged groups. To illustrate, let’s look at the last 5 grants approved by Open Philanthropy (I write these words on April 5, 2024):
- $60,000 to Good Impressions “to run Amazon advertisements for books relevant to global catastrophic risks”
- $150,000 to UK Day One “to support the development of crowdsourced science and technology policy ideas”
- $91,100 to People for Animals Uttarakhand “to support its work on corporate cage-free campaigns in India”
- $220,000 to cFactual “to support its fellowship program for strategy and management professionals.”
- $100,000 to Asociación para el Rescate y Bienestar de los Animales “to support its corporate cage-free campaigns in Peru”
The short-termist grants are to organizations in Uttarakhand and Peru. Here, directly from the grants page, are pictures of the grant recipients:
What about the long-termists? cFactual is a consultancy founded by two alumni of the Boston Consulting Group. They received money to award to strategy and management professionals. UK Day One is a UK-based policy initiative. Good Impressions is an organization that funds advertisements and SEO for nonprofits. Their founder is also an alumnus of the Boston Consulting Group, and I believe that they are headquartered in Toronto.
So far, we have seen that many direct longtermist grants go to organizations headquartered in wealthy nations, whereas direct short-termist grants often go to recipients in a wider range of nations. The same can be said for community building funds, which are preferentially concentrated in wealthy nations.
For example, here are (as of today) all of the upcoming EAG and EAGx events listed on effectivealtruism.org.
These are not exactly located in the world’s most disadvantaged cities or nations.
6. Taking stock
Today’s post explored the state of inequality in the world today and gave instrumental and intrinsic reasons to care about inequality. From there, we looked at two ways that longtermist funding may exacerbate inequality. First, longtermist funding exacerbates inequality through the opportunity cost of foregone short-termist funding, much of which was directed to the world’s poorest nations. Second, longtermist funding may directly contribute to inequality by directing resources to the world’s wealthiest communities.
To say that longtermism exacerbates inequality is not, in itself, to say that longtermism must be wrong. But it is certainly to point to an identifiable harm of longtermism that should be figured against the value of longtermist interventions.
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