As a former effective altruist, who believed in an ever expanding moral circle, here is why even if you want to care for as many as possible, which I still do, you have to prioritize the local. We could cheekily call it „effective nationalism“. Whatever your theory of change or the good is, its realization depends on your (the moral actors) continual existence (self-maintenance) as well as the ground you stand on that enables your continual existence (family, culture, nation) and affluence from which you can afford to think about such lofty goals. Accordingly even if you have global charitable aims, they are causally dependent on everything local to you. And maintaining this ground is infinitely harder —there is an asymmetry in importance—than being in the historical exceptional position where you might be under the impression that there is such an abundance of resources you can use it to help others far outside the ground you stand on. Effective altruism assumes “everything works and will work and affluence is given and will continue ”, thus far out there ideas are neglected while everything local is already taken care of. I’d argue basically everything is always neglected, never done to a satisfactory degree, barely even satisficed. Civilizational affluence, without an end of history mentality, has always been an outlier and there is no reason to assume anything has changed now. The further away you spend your resources without careful consideration of the costs to your foundation, the more you speed up the deterioration of this local affluence. It’s an entropic force. If you take your affluence for a given in this generation, the ethics of the next one will have to focus entirely on building it back from scratch, and it will likely take more than one if it’s possible at all, some things lost stay lost. The majority of the question of how to use resources ethically will always yield that it is about sustaining the living systems you depend on first, it is the majority of the issue at hand.