First, there’s a lot of niche special interest groups that get their way with government. There’s lots of ways to pressuring government for a policy outcome that aren’t a simple popular appeal.
Second, I don’t think it’s impossible to build public support for many things we believe in. I think a message like “it’s unacceptable that in current year there are people who need something as simple as a net, but don’t have access to it—government could fix this today” could easily have popular appeal. Or at least sufficient popular that an alliance of governments would put a few per cent of their aid budgets on the problem and fix it. I agree that not everything we care about could work this way, but many things could.
While I am sympathetic to more policy work, I am not sure how this ties into centralization within EA more generally. Funding is very centralized, so that’s not an impediment to the big funder dropping nine figures a year on it lobbying if desired.
I think EA is generally a mediocre brand for lobbying efforts—it has too elitist a vibe (billionaires trying to influence how my tax money is spent) and will remain vulnerable to FTX attacks for at least several years. So beyond providing the funding, I think too much visible coordination with the rest of EA is likely to be net negative.
I think the ‘good vibes’ that help policy advocacy come (in part) from benefiting from other people’s positive externalities. That’s to say, I’d like us to be in a position where we can say “we’re the movement that achieved X, Y and Z. So when we ask your nation to (put 5% of its aid budget to bed nets) you should take us seriously”.
To the extent that we’re more centralised and coordinated, it’s easier to say “we’re the movement that achieved X, Y and Z”. When we intentionally fracture and distance ourselves, we also fracture and distance ourselves from those positive externalities.
Again, I recognise that there is a give and take here—risks and opportunities. I just think that we need to put this potential path to policy impact as an ‘opportunity’ that we largely pass-up when we choose to distance our work and organisations from other another.
I’m not sure that’s true for two reasons:
First, there’s a lot of niche special interest groups that get their way with government. There’s lots of ways to pressuring government for a policy outcome that aren’t a simple popular appeal.
Second, I don’t think it’s impossible to build public support for many things we believe in. I think a message like “it’s unacceptable that in current year there are people who need something as simple as a net, but don’t have access to it—government could fix this today” could easily have popular appeal. Or at least sufficient popular that an alliance of governments would put a few per cent of their aid budgets on the problem and fix it. I agree that not everything we care about could work this way, but many things could.
While I am sympathetic to more policy work, I am not sure how this ties into centralization within EA more generally. Funding is very centralized, so that’s not an impediment to the big funder dropping nine figures a year on it lobbying if desired.
I think EA is generally a mediocre brand for lobbying efforts—it has too elitist a vibe (billionaires trying to influence how my tax money is spent) and will remain vulnerable to FTX attacks for at least several years. So beyond providing the funding, I think too much visible coordination with the rest of EA is likely to be net negative.
I think the ‘good vibes’ that help policy advocacy come (in part) from benefiting from other people’s positive externalities. That’s to say, I’d like us to be in a position where we can say “we’re the movement that achieved X, Y and Z. So when we ask your nation to (put 5% of its aid budget to bed nets) you should take us seriously”.
To the extent that we’re more centralised and coordinated, it’s easier to say “we’re the movement that achieved X, Y and Z”. When we intentionally fracture and distance ourselves, we also fracture and distance ourselves from those positive externalities.
Again, I recognise that there is a give and take here—risks and opportunities. I just think that we need to put this potential path to policy impact as an ‘opportunity’ that we largely pass-up when we choose to distance our work and organisations from other another.