It provides useful insight. It’s true that many, many organisations over history have been “captured” up to some point.
I guess that is the fate of a lot of things : organisms that are the best at capturing power are more competitive. So at the end of the day, places with deciders concentrate mostly individuals and corporations that are very good at obtaining power and keeping it.
It’s why we end up with actual scientific studies concluding that the US is not a democracy but an oligarchy. I recommend reading Propaganda by Edwards Bernays and the Powell memo.
Which is why you need counter-powers to prevent that. It’s hard and doesn’t always work, but with a lot of effort it’s possible to mitigate that, many social movements obtained some results through this—but we really need to learn from the FTX scandal to achieve that.
However, I’m not certain that EA as a whole has died yet. I agree that I find it seriously unlikely that EA ideals end up shaping the whole world for centuries to come, because of these reasons. But what I care about is “how much impact do we have?”, and I’m not sure the impact we have is really declining. So far, Givewell is still donating more than ever before. But we’ll see how this goes.
Thanks for the post !
It provides useful insight. It’s true that many, many organisations over history have been “captured” up to some point.
I guess that is the fate of a lot of things : organisms that are the best at capturing power are more competitive. So at the end of the day, places with deciders concentrate mostly individuals and corporations that are very good at obtaining power and keeping it.
It’s why we end up with actual scientific studies concluding that the US is not a democracy but an oligarchy. I recommend reading Propaganda by Edwards Bernays and the Powell memo.
Which is why you need counter-powers to prevent that. It’s hard and doesn’t always work, but with a lot of effort it’s possible to mitigate that, many social movements obtained some results through this—but we really need to learn from the FTX scandal to achieve that.
However, I’m not certain that EA as a whole has died yet. I agree that I find it seriously unlikely that EA ideals end up shaping the whole world for centuries to come, because of these reasons. But what I care about is “how much impact do we have?”, and I’m not sure the impact we have is really declining. So far, Givewell is still donating more than ever before. But we’ll see how this goes.