That’s the title for my latest piece in The Conversation, reposted at my Substack blog. Comment here or at Substack.

My latest Blogstack

My latest, published in The Conversation and on my Substack

Within pretty broad limits[1], I’m an advocate of historical ‘presentism’, that is, assessing past events and actions in the same way as those in the present, and considering history in relation to our present concerns. In particular, that implies viewing enslavers, racists and warmongers in the same light, whether they are active today or died hundreds of years ago.

Protesters pulling down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, England, during a demonstration organized to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement on June 7, 2020.

William Want/Twitter/AFP

A common objection to this position runs along the lines:

Suppose that at some point in the future, the vast majority of people are vegans. They will judge you in the same way as you judge past enslavers, racists and warmongers. In anticipation of this, you should suspend judgement on people in the past.

I don’t buy this. There are plenty of vegans around today and I have heard and rejected their arguments. While I condemn cruel farming practices, and try to avoid buying food produced with such practices, I don’t accept that there is anything inherently wrong with killing animals for food. Animals raised for food live longer and, with humane farming practices, happier, lives than their wild counterparts [2]. They aren’t aware of their own mortality, and have no life projects that are foreclosed when they die.

Vegans reject these arguments and judge me and others harshly for making them. Perhaps they are right. And they might, in the future, convince a majority of people. But if so, members of the future vegan majority would be just as entitled to condemn my views as are vegans alive today, and to view me in the same light as they would the remaining minority of non-vegans. The fact that I would by then be a “person of my own time” is neither here nor there.

I’ll qualify this a bit. No one can think deeply about everything so, most of the time, most of us go along with whatever people around us think. So, it’s unfair to pass judgement on ordinary Confederate (or Nazi) soldiers for fighting for a cause everyone around them said was right.

But that doesn’t excuse Calhoun, or Jefferson, or Locke, any more than it excuses Hitler. These are people who had been made aware of the evil they were promoting and profiting from, and promoted it anyway. And, if the ethical case for veganism is correct, then I am wrong, regardless of the fact that, at present, most people agree with me.

fn1. As examples of those limits, I don’t want to criticise people who failed to support equal marriage at a time when hardly anyone thought about it. And going back before the modern era (say pre-1600) the difference in world views is so great that it’s hard to make any kind of judgement on most issues.

fn2. Not to mention, happier than the lives of most people.

More discussion at Substack. Based on that, I expect most of the comments here to be about the merits or otherwise of veganism, and only a few to address presentism. This reinforces the point that veganism is not an example on which anti-presentists can lean to support their case. Feel free to provide better examples.

With corrupt crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried as its most prominent representative, the Effective Altruism movement is not particularly popularly these days. And some other people associated with the Effective Altruism movement have bizarre and unappealing ideas. But the worst form of ad hominem argument is “someone bad asserts p, therefore p is bad”[1].

Whether under this name or not, most economic research on both welfare policy and development aid takes the premise of effective altruism for granted. The central premise of effective altruism is simple: if you want to help poor people, give them what they most need. The practical force of this premise arises from a lot of evidence showing that, in general, what poor people need most is money.

(Image generated with DALL-E)

The starting point for the premise is some version of consequentialism. It is most directly opposed to the idea that altruism should be evaluated in terms of personal virtue. To take a typical example, effective altruism would say that someone with professional skills that are highly valued in the market should not volunteer in a soup kitchen, they should spend the time working for high pay and then donate their pay to the people who are hungry. [2] And there are plenty of highly popular interpretations of personal altruism that are even less effective, such as “thoughts and prayers”.

Coming to the question: why give people money, rather than addressing their needs directly, I will quote from my book Economics in Two Lessons which presents the issue in terms of opportunity cost.

What would a desperately poor family do with some extra money? They might use it to stave off immediate disaster, buying urgently needed food or medical attention for sick children. On they other hand, they could put the money towards school fees for the children, or save up for a piece of capital like a sewing machine or mobile phone that would increase the family’s earning power.

The poor family is faced with the reality of opportunity cost. Improved living standards in the future come at the cost of present suffering, perhaps even starvation and death. Whether or not their judgements are the same as we would make, they are in the best possible position to make them.

There are plenty of qualifications to make here. Maybe the most important is that family heads (commonly men) may make decisions that are more in their own interests than in those of the family as a whole. Giving money to mothers is often more effective.

And sometimes delivering aid in kind is the only way to stop corrupt officials stealing it along the way.

In addition, there are some kinds of aid (local public goods) that can’t be given on a household basis. If people in a village don’t have clean drinking water, then the solution may be a well that everyone can use.

Nevertheless, whenever anyone advocates a policy on the basis that it will help poor people it is always worth asking: wouldn’t it be better to just send money?

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[1] Ad hominem arguments aren’t always bad, as I’ve discussed before. If someone is presenting evidence on a factual issue, rather than a logical syllogism, it’s necessary to ask whether you are getting all the facts, or just those that suit the person’s own position .

[2} Contrary to the SBF example, it doesn’t suggest stealing money to buy an island in the Bahamas, then covering up by giving some of the loot away