Quick points: 1. I’ve come to believe that work in foundational political change is fairly neglected, in-comparison to its value. 2. As Scott Alexander wrote, political donations are surprisingly small for their impact. This seems especially true for someone as radical as Trump. 3. Related, the upper-class has been doing fantastically these last 10-30 years or so, and now has a very large amount of basically-spare capital. 4. I very much expect that there could be arrangements that are positive-EV to groups of these wealthy individuals, to help us have better political institutions.
So a corresponding $10T+ question is, “How to we set up structures whereby spare capital (which clearly exists) gets funneled into mutually-beneficial efforts to improve governments (or other similar institutions)”
A very simple example would be something like, “GiveWell for Political Reform.” (I know small versions of this have been tried. Also, I know it would be very tough to find ways to get people with spare capital to part with said capital.)
I wrote one specific futuristic proposal here. I expect that better epistemics/thinking abilities will help a lot here. I’m personally working on epistemic improvements, in large part to help with things like this.
I found that linked post from Scott Alexander quite interesting, but it seems like the numbers are no longer up to date. The paper he cites is from 2003. I think the political landscape has changed quite a bit since then. If I had to guess, I’d say political donations have become larger. It would be interesting to see more recent figures and if these are still small for their impact.
Quick points:
1. I’ve come to believe that work in foundational political change is fairly neglected, in-comparison to its value.
2. As Scott Alexander wrote, political donations are surprisingly small for their impact. This seems especially true for someone as radical as Trump.
3. Related, the upper-class has been doing fantastically these last 10-30 years or so, and now has a very large amount of basically-spare capital.
4. I very much expect that there could be arrangements that are positive-EV to groups of these wealthy individuals, to help us have better political institutions.
So a corresponding $10T+ question is, “How to we set up structures whereby spare capital (which clearly exists) gets funneled into mutually-beneficial efforts to improve governments (or other similar institutions)”
A very simple example would be something like, “GiveWell for Political Reform.” (I know small versions of this have been tried. Also, I know it would be very tough to find ways to get people with spare capital to part with said capital.)
I wrote one specific futuristic proposal here. I expect that better epistemics/thinking abilities will help a lot here. I’m personally working on epistemic improvements, in large part to help with things like this.
I found that linked post from Scott Alexander quite interesting, but it seems like the numbers are no longer up to date. The paper he cites is from 2003. I think the political landscape has changed quite a bit since then. If I had to guess, I’d say political donations have become larger. It would be interesting to see more recent figures and if these are still small for their impact.