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1. INTRODUCTION
It is uncontroversial that we should do good, when possible. Still, we disagree about how to achieve good. Effective Altruism is a popular social movement that contends that we should do the most good possible by sourcing one's personal donations to the organizations that most effectively address humanity's most severe problems.1 These issues include, but are not limited to, access to food and clean water, adequate health care, and providing measures to avoid preventable disease.2 However, because Effective Altruists are committed to doing the most good in the most effective ways, some argue that it is wrong to help those nearest to you.3 These Effective Altruists view impartiality as a key quality of fairness: neither proximity nor our personal relationships should affect who we help, or how much we help them.
In this article, I target a major subset of Effective Altruists who consider it a moral obligation to do the most good possible.4 Call these Obligation-Oriented Effective Altruists (OOEAs), and their movement Obligation-Oriented Effective Altruism (OOEA). I argue that, insofar as this variety of OOEA seems to commit us to refrain from helping the people right in front of us, there is something intuitively wrong about it.5
In contrast, I introduce an alternative model of doing good—Mutual Aid—which encourages aid to those nearest to us. Mutual Aid is a network of community members, usually from the same geographical region, who share a commitment to offer, receive, and exchange material goods, wealth, and social support.6 As Dean Spade (2020b) writes: "Mutual Aid is a form of political participation in which people … [provide] for one another through coordinated collective care" (136). Though Mutual Aid has a long tradition among people of color, queer, and disability groups, the concept has recently made headlines as communities have formed Mutual Aid platforms to meet the needs of their communities during the COVID-19 crisis.7
In what follows, I argue that we should resist those Effective Altruists who claim that partially distributing our funds to people or causes we care about is morally wrong or even less than ideal. If our shared goal is to do good, where good includes minimizing human suffering, Mutual Aid has much to offer above and...