I believe Bob Jacobs is a socialist, although I donāt know what version of socialism he supports. āSocialismā is a fraught term and even when people try to clarify what they mean by it, sometimes it still doesnāt get less confusing.
Iām inclined to be open-minded towards Bobās critiques of effective altruism, but I get the sense that his critiques of EA and his ideas for reform are going to end up being a microcosm of socialist or left-wing critiques of society at large and socialist or left-wing ideas for reforming society.
My thought on that is summed up in the Beatlesā song āRevolutionā:
You say you got a real solution, well, you know
Weād all love to see the plan
In principle, democracy is good, equality is good, less hierarchy is better than more hierarchy, not being completely reliant on billionaires and centimillionaires is goodā¦ But I need to know some more specifics on how Bob wants to achieve those things.
Bob Jacobs reached out to me privately after reading this comment. He gave me his permission to share what was said. I wonāt try to summarize our whole conversation, but Iāll give some highlights. We agreed on two concrete ways EA could be reformed:
Trying to internationalize EA beyond the Anglosphere countries by translating resources like the EA Forum and the EA Newsletter into other languages than English. (Bobās idea. I agree.)
Trying to internationalize EA beyond the Anglosphere countries by funding more non-Anglosphere-based people and projects. (Bobās idea. I agree. I also added that I think itās a good idea for charities focused on global poverty to have people from globally poor countries in leadership roles. I just put what I said about this to Bob in a quick take.)
Bob also talked to me about two concrete ideas I donāt have strong opinions on:
Reforming the EA Forumās karma system (which he discusses in the Substack post).
Turning EA organizations into worker co-ops (a suggestion heās previously made on the EA Forum here, which he mentioned in the Substack post).
As I told Bob, I havenāt thought much about the EA Forumās karma system and, honestly, I donāt want to. Maybe Iāll give it deeper thought if someone else does the hardest part of the work for me first and makes a compelling post about it ā including what specific changes they want made.
Workplace democracy and worker co-ops are a topic Iām curious about, but thatās also a big topic I barely know anything about. I would have to do a lot more research to form a strong opinion.
In theory, I like the idea of workplace democracy. I like the idea, more generally, of making non-democratic things democratic ā like online communities ā and of trying to make democratic things more democratic (most obviously, reforming electoral systems to make them more proportional, but also experiments in partial direct democracy like ballot initiatives).
But I havenāt thought about or read about the practicalities of workplace democracy or worker co-ops, either for for-profit companies or non-profit organizations. A lot of things sound great in theory but become more complex and thorny when you try them out. (For example, corporate lobbies have been using ballot initiatives to push self-serving legislation. These corporate-backed ballot initiatives can be long and have confusing wording ā maybe deliberately. Thatās not something I anticipated happening when I first heard about ballot initiatives.)
I believe Bob Jacobs is a socialist, although I donāt know what version of socialism he supports. āSocialismā is a fraught term and even when people try to clarify what they mean by it, sometimes it still doesnāt get less confusing.
Iām inclined to be open-minded towards Bobās critiques of effective altruism, but I get the sense that his critiques of EA and his ideas for reform are going to end up being a microcosm of socialist or left-wing critiques of society at large and socialist or left-wing ideas for reforming society.
My thought on that is summed up in the Beatlesā song āRevolutionā:
In principle, democracy is good, equality is good, less hierarchy is better than more hierarchy, not being completely reliant on billionaires and centimillionaires is goodā¦ But I need to know some more specifics on how Bob wants to achieve those things.
Bob Jacobs reached out to me privately after reading this comment. He gave me his permission to share what was said. I wonāt try to summarize our whole conversation, but Iāll give some highlights. We agreed on two concrete ways EA could be reformed:
Trying to internationalize EA beyond the Anglosphere countries by translating resources like the EA Forum and the EA Newsletter into other languages than English. (Bobās idea. I agree.)
Trying to internationalize EA beyond the Anglosphere countries by funding more non-Anglosphere-based people and projects. (Bobās idea. I agree. I also added that I think itās a good idea for charities focused on global poverty to have people from globally poor countries in leadership roles. I just put what I said about this to Bob in a quick take.)
Bob also talked to me about two concrete ideas I donāt have strong opinions on:
Reforming the EA Forumās karma system (which he discusses in the Substack post).
Turning EA organizations into worker co-ops (a suggestion heās previously made on the EA Forum here, which he mentioned in the Substack post).
As I told Bob, I havenāt thought much about the EA Forumās karma system and, honestly, I donāt want to. Maybe Iāll give it deeper thought if someone else does the hardest part of the work for me first and makes a compelling post about it ā including what specific changes they want made.
Workplace democracy and worker co-ops are a topic Iām curious about, but thatās also a big topic I barely know anything about. I would have to do a lot more research to form a strong opinion.
In theory, I like the idea of workplace democracy. I like the idea, more generally, of making non-democratic things democratic ā like online communities ā and of trying to make democratic things more democratic (most obviously, reforming electoral systems to make them more proportional, but also experiments in partial direct democracy like ballot initiatives).
But I havenāt thought about or read about the practicalities of workplace democracy or worker co-ops, either for for-profit companies or non-profit organizations. A lot of things sound great in theory but become more complex and thorny when you try them out. (For example, corporate lobbies have been using ballot initiatives to push self-serving legislation. These corporate-backed ballot initiatives can be long and have confusing wording ā maybe deliberately. Thatās not something I anticipated happening when I first heard about ballot initiatives.)