Stick to the market, which enforces consequentialism

Arnold Kling in his 5/28 substack.

Matt Yglesias writes,

I don’t know whether all or most of the current EA conventional wisdom will stand the test of time, but I think the ethic of trying to make sure your actions have the desired consequences rather than being merely expressive is incredibly important.

EA refers to Effective Altruism. He praises Sam Bankman-Fried, who made megabillions in the crypto market in order to give it away.

While I give credit to EA for at least trying to go beyond mere virtuous intentions and to think in terms of consequences, it is still only an intention to think about consequences. If you really care about consequences, stick to the market, which enforces consequentialism. Use the heuristic that if your firm makes profits, it made people better off. If it doesn’t, it didn’t.

Now in a complex world there are bound to be exceptions in which this heuristic fails. I think that there is a high probability that it fails in the case of crypto profits. My personal opinion is that the crypto ecosystem is a negative-sum game, like poker in a casino, or like a chain letter. So I find it plausible that SBF’s megabillions are much greater than any social value he created winning them.