Jon Pretty

is there something like "complex-systems criticism of utilitarianism"? I want to counter reductionist thinking of the form "we should put all our money into buying more malaria nets rather than justice reform because malaria nets save more lives per dollar".

My argument is that creating a more equal society leads to more non-white people with access to education and opportunities to innovate, but simply sending more malaria nets to Africa without infrastructure change will just have people dying from other preventable diseases.

This isn't to criticise anti-malaria efforts, but to respond to the ideology of 'effective altruistm' which claims that it's "doing the most good" while mostly focusing on shallow metrics that ignore deeper structural problems in society.

But isn't this just making an argument to continue with utilitarianism, while making deeper predictions about the likely impact of either course of action? I.e. the problem is the shallow metrics, not the utilitarianism.