This post helped establish ballot initiatives as an underapprechiated way to do good within effective altruism in a variety of cause areas. However, since the post was published, Rethink Priorities (the author organization of this post) did not end up doing much more work in ballot initiatives and as far as I know, no one advancing ballot initiatives within effective altruism was specifically motivated to do so by this post (though it’s possible some efforts were still sped up on the margin). So I think this post did not end up having the impact that I was expecting it to have.
Another important update since this post was written is that I’ve personally become more skittish about doing ballot initiatives without strong coordination within the movement, since I think there’s an underapprechiated risk of doing harm by launching an initiative that is poorly thought out, legally challenged, and/or that crowds out a superior initiative.
Note/Disclaimer: Jason wrote this post as part of his work at Rethink Priorities. I, as co-CEO of Rethink Priorities, supervised the creation of this post. I’m writing this review in a personal capacity as a personal reflection and did not show it to anyone else at Rethink Priorities, so it’s possible this review might be missing important details or be wrong, and it should not be taken as an official Rethink Priorities organizational view.
This post helped establish ballot initiatives as an underapprechiated way to do good within effective altruism in a variety of cause areas. However, since the post was published, Rethink Priorities (the author organization of this post) did not end up doing much more work in ballot initiatives and as far as I know, no one advancing ballot initiatives within effective altruism was specifically motivated to do so by this post (though it’s possible some efforts were still sped up on the margin). So I think this post did not end up having the impact that I was expecting it to have.
Another important update since this post was written is that I’ve personally become more skittish about doing ballot initiatives without strong coordination within the movement, since I think there’s an underapprechiated risk of doing harm by launching an initiative that is poorly thought out, legally challenged, and/or that crowds out a superior initiative.
Note/Disclaimer: Jason wrote this post as part of his work at Rethink Priorities. I, as co-CEO of Rethink Priorities, supervised the creation of this post. I’m writing this review in a personal capacity as a personal reflection and did not show it to anyone else at Rethink Priorities, so it’s possible this review might be missing important details or be wrong, and it should not be taken as an official Rethink Priorities organizational view.