Echoing some of the discussion in your post, I think it’s very hard for us to determine in what cases political giving impact is “an exceptionally good opportunity” due to strong biases on what we think is good and, I think importantly, given how much most people value signaling their values even if the person they vote for to send the signal fails to adequately deliver on their stated values. To me this is one of the great challenges of making political choices: many candidates stand for things you might like, but then after the fact they consistently take or approve of government action that goes against those things you stand for in the name of “compromise” to “get things done”.
I have no special beef with realpolitik—that’s just how people works—but it does make it very hard to know what the net impact of a voting choice is since it’s hard to find politicians without mixed records that sometimes contain surprises that, in the final evaluation, might swap them from net positive to net negative effect on the world.
Echoing some of the discussion in your post, I think it’s very hard for us to determine in what cases political giving impact is “an exceptionally good opportunity” due to strong biases on what we think is good and, I think importantly, given how much most people value signaling their values even if the person they vote for to send the signal fails to adequately deliver on their stated values. To me this is one of the great challenges of making political choices: many candidates stand for things you might like, but then after the fact they consistently take or approve of government action that goes against those things you stand for in the name of “compromise” to “get things done”.
I have no special beef with realpolitik—that’s just how people works—but it does make it very hard to know what the net impact of a voting choice is since it’s hard to find politicians without mixed records that sometimes contain surprises that, in the final evaluation, might swap them from net positive to net negative effect on the world.