I suspect that part of the theory of impact here might not run through any individual grant item (ie, liberalized zoning laws leading to economic growth through increased housing construction in some particular city), but rather through a variety of bigger-picture considerations that look something like:
The overall state / quality of US politics is extremely important, because the US is the most powerful country in the world, etc. Improving the state of US politics even a little (ie by making it more likely that smart, thoughtful people will be in power, make good decisions, implement successful reforms, etc) seems like an important point of leverage for many very important causes (consider USAID cuts, AI chip export controls to China, and foreign policy especially concerning great power relations, nuclear nonproliferation, preserving democracy and broad human influence over the future, continued global economic growth, etc).
Of course “fighting for influence over US politics” is gonna seem less appealing once you take into account the fact that it is in a certain sense the least-neglected possible cause, has all sorts of deranging / polarizing / etc side-effects, and so forth. But maybe, even considering all these things, influencing US politics still seems very worthwhile. (This seems plausible to me.)
Promoting the abundance movement seems like a decent idea for both improving the US Democratic party (in terms of focusing it on smarter, more impactful ideas) and perhaps making the Democrats more likely to win elections (which is great if you think Dems are better than the current Republican party), and maybe even improve the Republican party too (if the abundance agenda proves to be a political winner and the right is forced to compete by adopting similar policies). And, as a plus, promoting this pro-growth, liberal/libertarian agenda seems a little less polarizing that most other conceivable ways of engaging with US politics.
People have wondered for a long time if, in addition to direct work on x-risks, one should consider intermediate “existential risk-factors” like great power war. It seems plausible to me that “trying to make the United States more sane” is a pretty big factor in many valuable goals—global health & development, existential risk mitigation, flourishing long-term futures, and so forth.
I suspect that part of the theory of impact here might not run through any individual grant item (ie, liberalized zoning laws leading to economic growth through increased housing construction in some particular city), but rather through a variety of bigger-picture considerations that look something like:
The overall state / quality of US politics is extremely important, because the US is the most powerful country in the world, etc. Improving the state of US politics even a little (ie by making it more likely that smart, thoughtful people will be in power, make good decisions, implement successful reforms, etc) seems like an important point of leverage for many very important causes (consider USAID cuts, AI chip export controls to China, and foreign policy especially concerning great power relations, nuclear nonproliferation, preserving democracy and broad human influence over the future, continued global economic growth, etc).
Of course “fighting for influence over US politics” is gonna seem less appealing once you take into account the fact that it is in a certain sense the least-neglected possible cause, has all sorts of deranging / polarizing / etc side-effects, and so forth. But maybe, even considering all these things, influencing US politics still seems very worthwhile. (This seems plausible to me.)
Promoting the abundance movement seems like a decent idea for both improving the US Democratic party (in terms of focusing it on smarter, more impactful ideas) and perhaps making the Democrats more likely to win elections (which is great if you think Dems are better than the current Republican party), and maybe even improve the Republican party too (if the abundance agenda proves to be a political winner and the right is forced to compete by adopting similar policies). And, as a plus, promoting this pro-growth, liberal/libertarian agenda seems a little less polarizing that most other conceivable ways of engaging with US politics.
People have wondered for a long time if, in addition to direct work on x-risks, one should consider intermediate “existential risk-factors” like great power war. It seems plausible to me that “trying to make the United States more sane” is a pretty big factor in many valuable goals—global health & development, existential risk mitigation, flourishing long-term futures, and so forth.