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| === Effective Altruism === | === Effective Altruism === |
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| In a 2013 interview, Fried discussed a number of topics directly related to [[effective altruism]], particularly the subject of [[utilitarianism]]: | In a 2013 interview, Fried discussed a number of topics directly related to [[effective altruism]], particularly the subject of [[utilitarianism]].((Driscoll, S. (2013, November 11). //On Trolley Cars, Blame, and Other Diversions.// Stanford Law School. https://archive.vn/J6tlX)) In 2015, Fried wrote a review of [[Peter Singer]]'s book titled //[[books:The Most Good You Can Do|The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically]]//.((Fried, B. H. (2014, August 20). //Emotional Empathy Is Not the Culprit.// Boston Review. https://archive.vn/VugXn)) |
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| “Libertarians and Rawlsians agree on very little, but they share a fundamental hostility to utilitarianism,” says Fried. She explains that the goal of utilitarianism is to maximize overall well-being for society as a whole. “The strict version of utilitarianism pursues that goal by throwing everyone’s well-being into the same hopper, aggregating all gains and losses to well-being from different policy options, and then choosing the one that offers the greatest good.” | Fried also served for a time on the board of directors for the school’s [[McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society]].((Fried, B. H. (2015). //Not-So-Ordinary Altruism.// Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/books/reviews/entry/not_so_ordinary_altruism)) |
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| Fried questions the notion that “rights theory” makes any more sense than the above-described approach. | === Mind the Gap === |
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| “However rich a country is and however much of its GDP it devotes to health care, at some point it will have to choose between allocating more money to, say, cancer research or early childhood prevention,” she says. “And before we have gotten to that particular set of hard choices, we will have made scores of others in deciding how much of our budget to allocate to health care to begin with, rather than, say, education, the military, Social Security, etc.” | In mid-2018, Fried co-founded a [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] [[political action committee|Super PAC]] called [[Mind the Gap]] in order to win back the [[United States House of Representatives]] in the 2018 midterm election.((Schleifer, T. (2020, January 6). //Inside the secretive Silicon Valley group that has funneled over $20 million to Democrats.// Vox. https://archive.vn/iDkg9)) ((Fried, B., Brest, P., & Gottlieb, G. (2019). //Overview of Mind the Gap.// Capital Research Center. Retrieved December 8, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20221208090124/https://capitalresearch.org/app/uploads/Mind-The-Gap-Internal-memo.pdf)) |
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| But, Fried explains, the necessity for tradeoffs is hardly limited to material resources. “Every time you get in a car, reroof your house, or walk onto a crowded city bus, your conduct poses some risk of physical or psychological harm to others. The job of any ‘rules of the road,’ be they government regulation or moral norms, is to figure out how to balance your legitimate interests in pursuing your life projects against others’ interests in not being harmed in the process. And however we strike that balance, if different people will be affected differently, we will necessarily be trading off one group’s well-being for another’s.” | |
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| Utilitarians, says Fried, have faced that necessity head-on. “However unappealing one might find their answer, at least it is an answer. Rights theory, in contrast, has yet to provide one.” | |
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| ===== External links ===== | ===== External links ===== |
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| * [[https://www.influencewatch.org/person/barbara-fried/|InfluenceWatch]] | * [[https://www.influencewatch.org/person/barbara-fried/|InfluenceWatch]] |
| | * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Fried|Wikipedia]] |
