Am a bit late to this but wanted to jot down a few thoughts:
Does EA Represent Electoral Constituents? Since EA is cosmopolitan and disregards national and possibly temporal boundaries, does that mean EA politicians will prioritize non-voters over the interest of voters? A lot of EAs may feel like which Americans have health insurance coverage or have a right to an abortion is less important than Africans dying of malaria or humanity going extinct. But 1. is this a legitimate basis for democratic politics and 2. if legitimate, will espousing it inherently be a losing electoral strategy (since EA politicians will quickly be branded as doing a suboptimal job representing their voters)?
Should We Be Open to a Chesterton’s Fence Around Money in Politics? One political science mystery (which EA investment in electoral races has tried to exploit) is that there is less money in politics than might be rational from the economic self-interest of motivated stakeholders (i.e. campaign donations and lobbying expenditures are much less than the government spending they help determine). But the Flynn campaign experience implies that at least being identified with a single donor creates strong backlash, so we should perhaps more carefully consider explanations for the “too little money in politics” mystery that aren’t simply “it is rational to spend more money on politics.”
Should We Require Local Buy-In to Run in Electoral Races? I’d love to understand better the local Oregonian organizing and stakeholder building that was done for this campaign. I’m also curious to what extent Nick Kristof (who was running for Governor of Oregon and has written sympathetically about effective altruism) was engaged. I was frankly pretty surprised not to see Kristof publicly on board, particularly because he’d built a gubernatorial campaign that ended up not being used (since he was excluded from the ballot for residency reasons). Given the heavy carpetbagging criticism of Flynn (outside crypto money, hadn’t voted in recent elections, etc.) and some of the issues that have come up (criticism on local reddits, Oregonians posting negatively about the campaign on this forum, perhaps a misguided tactic of bringing in outside volunteers for door-knocking) along with question 1. i raise above, it may be uniquely valuable in future races to have at least some local community groups bought in ahead of time.
Am a bit late to this but wanted to jot down a few thoughts:
Does EA Represent Electoral Constituents? Since EA is cosmopolitan and disregards national and possibly temporal boundaries, does that mean EA politicians will prioritize non-voters over the interest of voters? A lot of EAs may feel like which Americans have health insurance coverage or have a right to an abortion is less important than Africans dying of malaria or humanity going extinct. But 1. is this a legitimate basis for democratic politics and 2. if legitimate, will espousing it inherently be a losing electoral strategy (since EA politicians will quickly be branded as doing a suboptimal job representing their voters)?
Should We Be Open to a Chesterton’s Fence Around Money in Politics? One political science mystery (which EA investment in electoral races has tried to exploit) is that there is less money in politics than might be rational from the economic self-interest of motivated stakeholders (i.e. campaign donations and lobbying expenditures are much less than the government spending they help determine). But the Flynn campaign experience implies that at least being identified with a single donor creates strong backlash, so we should perhaps more carefully consider explanations for the “too little money in politics” mystery that aren’t simply “it is rational to spend more money on politics.”
Should We Require Local Buy-In to Run in Electoral Races? I’d love to understand better the local Oregonian organizing and stakeholder building that was done for this campaign. I’m also curious to what extent Nick Kristof (who was running for Governor of Oregon and has written sympathetically about effective altruism) was engaged. I was frankly pretty surprised not to see Kristof publicly on board, particularly because he’d built a gubernatorial campaign that ended up not being used (since he was excluded from the ballot for residency reasons). Given the heavy carpetbagging criticism of Flynn (outside crypto money, hadn’t voted in recent elections, etc.) and some of the issues that have come up (criticism on local reddits, Oregonians posting negatively about the campaign on this forum, perhaps a misguided tactic of bringing in outside volunteers for door-knocking) along with question 1. i raise above, it may be uniquely valuable in future races to have at least some local community groups bought in ahead of time.