It’s hard to argue with the tenets of effective altruism. The movement, which began in the UK in 2009 and quickly spread, particularly among America’s tech glitterati, holds that we should spend our lives trying to help the most people we can, in the most effective ways possible. So far, so laudable.

But the downfall of crypto exchange FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the most prominent effective altruists, have exposed some of the problems with the thinking behind the philosophy and how it’s being practiced.

One method at the center of effective altruism (EA) urges its followers to make as much money as possible, so that they can devote a large part of their riches to helping humanity: an idea called “Earn to give.”

But while that mission might be purely altruistic, there’s another way of seeing it: As a get-out-of-jail-free card to people who want to put vast wealth creation at the center of their lives. It allows such people to ignore, if they wish, the fraying edges of the neoliberal order: The widening gaps between rich and poor, for instance, or the destruction of the environment. And while they’re giving away a lot of their wealth, they aren’t doing it at the expense of personal luxury. Not only does ‘earn to give’ ignore the problems at the heart of the prevailing economic system, it supercharges capitalism. It hints that capitalism isn’t only the best way to live, or the only way to live, but also a just way to live.

EA carries a seductive message

EA holds that while we can’t easily solve all the world’s problems, we could certainly alleviate the greatest suffering if we chose wisely where to direct our efforts. And certainly some of the efforts of EA have improved lives. As of 2022, Against Malaria Foundation had received $58 million from Open Philanthropy, an EA-influenced funder founded by Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook, and his wife, the former journalist Cari Tuna. Providing deworming medicine for children in poor countries has been put on the agenda and funded, in large part, by effective altruists. There’s nothing glitzy about these causes. Here, money effected real change.

The ideological fountainhead of EA is William MacAskill, who as a philosophy undergraduate at Oxford in 2009, formed his first ideas about how to do the most good possible. MacAskill’s thesis led to the formation of several organizations, including the Centre for Effective Altruism. MacAskill has written several books about the movement. In them, he advances another central idea: “ longtermism,” a framework of thought in which effective altruists weigh the good they can do by adding up the number of people who benefit⁠—not just those alive today, but also those yet to be born. In that calculation, speculative worries about the future—such as the risks of rogue AI—can trump clear and present dangers like cholera or deforestation.

A conversation between MacAskill and Bankman-Fried is credited with propelling the FTX founder into his subsequent career in trading, and then cryptocurrency. MacAskill also worked for Bankman-Fried’s charitable enterprises. After FTX’s collapse, MacAskill tweeted that he “will have much to reflect on” if it turns out FTX misused funds. He didn’t respond to a request for comment from Quartz.

What’s the future for EA?

The collapse of FTX raises practical and moral questions about