Avery
Like Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, it does decent job of arguing a few points while having some room for improvement.
The main flaw for me was the easy assumption Bregman makes that the reader is infinitely qualified to solve the most important problems. I guess it’s a call to arms for the most skilled members of the population to solve the hard problems, but I think it’s an easy out to say “well I’m just regular-skilled”. At least that’s usually the temptation in my case. The book spends a lot of time convincing you that you should help solve the world’s problems without being much of a guide on how to get started, especially if you’re not ready to throw away the other responsibilities in your life.
How do you know whether it’s worth it to re-skill into a domain that might be more useful to society? How best to meet up with other like-minded people so that everyone isn’t just working on the same problems in isolation? How to navigate the tendency for many companies to “green-wash” their business in self-congratulatory language about making a difference and caring about people. I find it easy to get jaded reading company mission statements, and, as pointed out in the book, it’s not nearly enough to simply be a non-profit.
If there was a book that had the same argument as Moral Ambition, but with more clear advice on how to put it into action, I think that would be more effective. As it is, if you agree off the bat, the rest of the book mostly just reinforces that.
I found his treatment of the effective altruist movement somewhat reasonable. Clearly their main philosophy is in line with the message of the book, but the issue is that it’s easy to lose sight of reality when you’re fixated on simple metrics and surround yourself (at an investment bank, say) with people who don’t value the same things. The concept of scamming “regular” people out of their money in order to solve the worlds’ most pressing problems is ridiculed as a failure of this movement, but that actually seemed a little unfair to me. I think it probably deserves a slightly more charitable interpretation, given the priorities in the book. Obviously it’s a pretty risky strategy that does more harm than good if it fails (also true of many humanitarian efforts!). As quoted by Bregman: “We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.”
Like Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, it does decent job of arguing a few points while having some room for improvement.
The main flaw for me was the easy assumption Bregman makes that the reader is infinitely qualified to solve the most important problems. I guess it’s a call to arms for the most skilled members of the population to solve the hard problems, but I think it’s an easy out to say “well I’m just regular-skilled”. At least that’s usually the temptation in my case. The book spends a lot of time convincing you that you should help solve the world’s problems without being much of a guide on how to get started, especially if you’re not ready to throw away the other responsibilities in your life.
How do you know whether it’s worth it to re-skill into a domain that might be more useful to society? How best to meet up with other like-minded people so that everyone isn’t just working on the same problems in isolation? How to navigate the tendency for many companies to “green-wash” their business in self-congratulatory language about making a difference and caring about people. I find it easy to get jaded reading company mission statements, and, as pointed out in the book, it’s not nearly enough to simply be a non-profit.
If there was a book that had the same argument as Moral Ambition, but with more clear advice on how to put it into action, I think that would be more effective. As it is, if you agree off the bat, the rest of the book mostly just reinforces that.
I found his treatment of the effective altruist movement somewhat reasonable. Clearly their main philosophy is in line with the message of the book, but the issue is that it’s easy to lose sight of reality when you’re fixated on simple metrics and surround yourself (at an investment bank, say) with people who don’t value the same things. The concept of scamming “regular” people out of their money in order to solve the worlds’ most pressing problems is ridiculed as a failure of this movement, but that actually seemed a little unfair to me. I think it probably deserves a slightly more charitable interpretation, given the priorities in the book. Obviously it’s a pretty risky strategy that does more harm than good if it fails (also true of many humanitarian efforts!). As quoted by Bregman: “We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.”