To me, FTX hosting EA events and fellowships in the Bahamas reeked of neocolonialism (which is a word I don’t like to bandy about willy-nilly). 90.6% of The Bahamas’ population are Black,[1] whereas the majority of EAs are White.[2] Relative to many countries in the Americas, The Bahamas has a superficially strong economy with a GDP (PPP) per capita of $40,274, but a lot of this economic activity is due to tourism and offshore companies using it as a tax haven,[1] and it’s unclear to me how much of this prosperity actually trickles down to the majority of Bahamians. (According to UN data, The Bahamas has a Gini coefficient of 0.57, the highest in the Caribbean.[3]) Also, I’ve never heard anyone talk about recruiting Bahamians into the EA movement or EA orgs.
I think it can sometimes fee a bit brutal to be downvoted with no explanation. I might say the Bahamas was glad to have FTX there and it’s kind of patronising to deny them that opportunity because of their poverty and make it worse, right?
I get the sense FTX was actually giving quite a lot the Bahamas, though clearly not now and also unclear how much of that was corruption.
I disagree because I would only count something as neocolonialism if there was a strong argument that it was doing net harm to the local population in the interest of the ‘colonisers’.
It seems to me that you’d be better off arguing that an event in the Bahamas causes harms to Bahamians directly, instead of drawing an analogy with colonialism. See The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
(I’m not trying to be dismissive—I think there are ways to make this argument, perhaps something like: “observing a retreat full of foreigners will cause Bahamians to experience resentment and a reduced sense of self-determination; those are unpleasant things to experience, and could also cause backlash against the EA movement”. My claim is just that talking about harms directly is a better starting point for discussion.)
Epistemic status: Hot take
To me, FTX hosting EA events and fellowships in the Bahamas reeked of neocolonialism (which is a word I don’t like to bandy about willy-nilly). 90.6% of The Bahamas’ population are Black,[1] whereas the majority of EAs are White.[2] Relative to many countries in the Americas, The Bahamas has a superficially strong economy with a GDP (PPP) per capita of $40,274, but a lot of this economic activity is due to tourism and offshore companies using it as a tax haven,[1] and it’s unclear to me how much of this prosperity actually trickles down to the majority of Bahamians. (According to UN data, The Bahamas has a Gini coefficient of 0.57, the highest in the Caribbean.[3]) Also, I’ve never heard anyone talk about recruiting Bahamians into the EA movement or EA orgs.
The Bahamas—Wikipedia
Every EA community survey ever, e.g. EA Survey 2020
Inequality in the Bahamas—Etonomics
I think it can sometimes fee a bit brutal to be downvoted with no explanation. I might say the Bahamas was glad to have FTX there and it’s kind of patronising to deny them that opportunity because of their poverty and make it worse, right?
I get the sense FTX was actually giving quite a lot the Bahamas, though clearly not now and also unclear how much of that was corruption.
I disagree because I would only count something as neocolonialism if there was a strong argument that it was doing net harm to the local population in the interest of the ‘colonisers’.
I mean, it plausibly did cause net harm to the Bahamas in this case, even if that wasn’t what people expected.
It seems to me that you’d be better off arguing that an event in the Bahamas causes harms to Bahamians directly, instead of drawing an analogy with colonialism. See The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
(I’m not trying to be dismissive—I think there are ways to make this argument, perhaps something like: “observing a retreat full of foreigners will cause Bahamians to experience resentment and a reduced sense of self-determination; those are unpleasant things to experience, and could also cause backlash against the EA movement”. My claim is just that talking about harms directly is a better starting point for discussion.)