“Effective Altruism focused on bednets while a malaria vaccine was stuck for 35 years. The case for Abundance.” by abiolvera

This post was cross-posted from Positive Sum by the Forum team. The author notes: I'm not saying every abundance goal meets this bar, e.g. high speed rail in America would not. This post is intended as a clarifying abundance's relation to EA, rather than a criticism of EA prioritization. Subtitle: Functional governance and democracy helps many EA cause areas. A thousand small government failures compound into civilizational risk. This piece is written for the effective altruism community, people focused on finding the highest-impact ways to do good, especially through a lens of whether something is important, tractable, and neglected. I’m giving a version of this piece as a talk at EA Global x DC next week. Effective Altruism has a great track record. In 2023 alone, an EA-backed organization prevented 40,000 deaths and 20 million malaria cases. Another moved over $1 billion in cash directly to the world's poorest families and changed how USAID measures its own effectiveness. But EA has a blind spot: systems change. It's harder to measure, the benefits are diffuse, and it seems less tractable. But it's often more impactful. China's decision to liberalize its economy lifted hundreds of millions out of extreme poverty. The [...] ---Outline:(01:51) We focused on bednets while a malaria vaccine was stuck for 35 years(02:49) Abundance, at its core, is responsive governance(03:36) Why abundance is important(08:21) Why abundance is neglected(09:31) Why abundance is tractable(10:24) What this means for AI risk(11:31) The movement needs people The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration. --- First published: May 5th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LtwbmXhNouBBGGBzL/effective-altruism-focused-on-bednets-while-a-malaria --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.