I appreciate you laying out the specifics here! As someone who grew up in/around politics, the ineffectiveness of a freshman member of congress feels obvious. I want to amplify the concern for politics & EA.
EA should seriously consider drawing the line at financial support. Some EAs want EA-aligned candidates to run, and that generally feels like a good idea. Rational politicians who care about important issues are better, right? They know what’s best? Let’s assume that’s true, even if that’s quite an assumption to make. Representatives vote on every bill, many of which have little to do with EA. How should we expect an EA candidate to vote on non-EA issues? If EA publicly and significantly backs a specific candidate, EA becomes at least a little culpable for all of a candidate’s views, not just the EA ones. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that a candidate will vote how they say they’ll vote. Moreover, even if they do vote how they say they’ll vote, that doesn’t guarantee results, whether that be winning a vote or operationalizing a government program that proves to be effective. There’s so much uncertainty here. How can we as EAs truly calculate return on investment in campaign politics? I don’t think we can with any real accuracy. There’s nothing wrong with supporting candidates that you like, but this seems to fall far short of what we typically expect in terms of evidence. It feels like informed voting, not EA.
Agree that running EA candidates may polarize issues that are refreshingly nonpartisan. This would be an own-goal of sizable consequence.
Politics is a high-leverage arena, so it’s logical that EAs are attracted to it, especially now that there’s money floating around. EA as a (mostly) nonpartisan movement has higher potential with less downside. Channeling the community’s energy into lobbying and advocating for EA-aligned policy is straightforward, effective and transparent. “This strongly suggests that influencing current elected officials, rather than attempting to directly hold political power, plays more towards our strengths.” I couldn’t agree more.
I wanted to keep the meat of my argument above as concise as possible, but also want to mention that EAs largely fail to grasp 1) what politics do to politicians and 2) the unknowable, cascading, massive impacts of political decisions. Politicians change their minds, trade votes, compromise, make decisions based on reelection. And the decisions they make reverberate. None of this is predictable or measurable, so it’s hard to imagine how to classify it as effective altruism.
I appreciate you laying out the specifics here! As someone who grew up in/around politics, the ineffectiveness of a freshman member of congress feels obvious. I want to amplify the concern for politics & EA.
EA should seriously consider drawing the line at financial support. Some EAs want EA-aligned candidates to run, and that generally feels like a good idea. Rational politicians who care about important issues are better, right? They know what’s best? Let’s assume that’s true, even if that’s quite an assumption to make. Representatives vote on every bill, many of which have little to do with EA. How should we expect an EA candidate to vote on non-EA issues? If EA publicly and significantly backs a specific candidate, EA becomes at least a little culpable for all of a candidate’s views, not just the EA ones. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that a candidate will vote how they say they’ll vote. Moreover, even if they do vote how they say they’ll vote, that doesn’t guarantee results, whether that be winning a vote or operationalizing a government program that proves to be effective. There’s so much uncertainty here. How can we as EAs truly calculate return on investment in campaign politics? I don’t think we can with any real accuracy. There’s nothing wrong with supporting candidates that you like, but this seems to fall far short of what we typically expect in terms of evidence. It feels like informed voting, not EA.
Agree that running EA candidates may polarize issues that are refreshingly nonpartisan. This would be an own-goal of sizable consequence.
Politics is a high-leverage arena, so it’s logical that EAs are attracted to it, especially now that there’s money floating around. EA as a (mostly) nonpartisan movement has higher potential with less downside. Channeling the community’s energy into lobbying and advocating for EA-aligned policy is straightforward, effective and transparent. “This strongly suggests that influencing current elected officials, rather than attempting to directly hold political power, plays more towards our strengths.” I couldn’t agree more.
Interested to hear why people are downvoting this comment… would love to engage in a discussion!
I wanted to keep the meat of my argument above as concise as possible, but also want to mention that EAs largely fail to grasp 1) what politics do to politicians and 2) the unknowable, cascading, massive impacts of political decisions. Politicians change their minds, trade votes, compromise, make decisions based on reelection. And the decisions they make reverberate. None of this is predictable or measurable, so it’s hard to imagine how to classify it as effective altruism.