I am not that confident this was the right decision (and will be curious about people’s views, though I can’t do anything about it now), but I already gave most of 10% of my income this year (as per my GWWC pledge) to the ‘Biden Victory Fund.’ (The rest went to the Meta Fund earlier in the year). I know Biden’s campaign was the opposite of neglected, but I thought the imporance and urgency of replacing Trump as the US president swamped that consideration in the end (I think having Republicans in the White House, and especially Trump, is very bad for the provision of global public and coordination-relient goods). I expect to go back to giving to non-political causes next year.
I am still considering giving to the Georgia senate race with some of my budget for next year, because it seems so high ‘leverage’ on US electoral reform, which would (I think) make it easier for Democrats to get elected in the future and (I hope) make the US’s democracy function better long-term. For example, there’s an electoral reform bill that seems much more likely to pass if Democrats control the senate.
The quality of these choices depends on substantive judgements that in US politics Democrats make better choices for the world than Republicans, and that continued US global leadership would be better than the alternative with regard to things like climate change, AI, and biorisks. I think both of these things are true, but could be wrong!
Do you think the Biden campaign had room for more funding, i.e., that your donation made a Biden victory more likely on the margin (by enough to be worth it)? I am pretty skeptical of this; I suspect they already had more money than they were able to spend effectively. (I don’t have a source for this other than Maciej Cegłowski, who has relevant experience but whom I don’t agree with on everything; on the other hand, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone make the case that U.S. presidential general-election campaigns do have room for more funding, and I’d be pretty surprised if there were such a case and it was strong.)
“Neglectedness” is a good heuristic for cause areas but I think that when donating to specific orgs it can wind up just confusing things and RFMF is the better thing to ask about.
I’m less certain about the Georgia campaign but still skeptical there, partly because it’s a really high-profile race (since it determines control of the Senate and isn’t competing for airtime with any other races) and partly because I think substantive electoral reform is likely to remain intractable even if the Democrats win. But I’d be interested to see a more thorough analysis of this.
I wrote something about campaign contributions in federal US elections earlier this year. I could be wrong, but based on my (non-expert) survey of the campaign finance literature, it doesn’t seem like donating to political campaigns has a very substantial impact on election outcomes (most of the time). The main takeaway is that spending and success are correlated, but the former doesn’t cause the latter. Spending is simply a useful heuristic for the size/traction/etc. of a campaign.
Yes, I do think they had room for more funding, but could be wrong. My view was based on (1) a recommendation from someone whose judgement on these things I think is informed and probably better than most people’s including mine, who thought the Biden Victory Fund was the highest impact thing to donate to this year, (2) an intuition that the DNC/etc. wouldn’t put so much work into fundraising if more money didn’t benefit their chances of success, and (3) the way the Biden Victory Fund in particular structured the funds it received, which was to distribute it among the Biden campaign, the DNC, and state parties (in order of priority), which it said how it would do more precisesly, except that it would change the distrbution if the results would have resulted in “excessive” amounts going to certain orgs.
I am not that confident this was the right decision (and will be curious about people’s views, though I can’t do anything about it now), but I already gave most of 10% of my income this year (as per my GWWC pledge) to the ‘Biden Victory Fund.’ (The rest went to the Meta Fund earlier in the year). I know Biden’s campaign was the opposite of neglected, but I thought the imporance and urgency of replacing Trump as the US president swamped that consideration in the end (I think having Republicans in the White House, and especially Trump, is very bad for the provision of global public and coordination-relient goods). I expect to go back to giving to non-political causes next year.
I am still considering giving to the Georgia senate race with some of my budget for next year, because it seems so high ‘leverage’ on US electoral reform, which would (I think) make it easier for Democrats to get elected in the future and (I hope) make the US’s democracy function better long-term. For example, there’s an electoral reform bill that seems much more likely to pass if Democrats control the senate.
The quality of these choices depends on substantive judgements that in US politics Democrats make better choices for the world than Republicans, and that continued US global leadership would be better than the alternative with regard to things like climate change, AI, and biorisks. I think both of these things are true, but could be wrong!
Do you think the Biden campaign had room for more funding, i.e., that your donation made a Biden victory more likely on the margin (by enough to be worth it)? I am pretty skeptical of this; I suspect they already had more money than they were able to spend effectively. (I don’t have a source for this other than Maciej Cegłowski, who has relevant experience but whom I don’t agree with on everything; on the other hand, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone make the case that U.S. presidential general-election campaigns do have room for more funding, and I’d be pretty surprised if there were such a case and it was strong.)
“Neglectedness” is a good heuristic for cause areas but I think that when donating to specific orgs it can wind up just confusing things and RFMF is the better thing to ask about.
I’m less certain about the Georgia campaign but still skeptical there, partly because it’s a really high-profile race (since it determines control of the Senate and isn’t competing for airtime with any other races) and partly because I think substantive electoral reform is likely to remain intractable even if the Democrats win. But I’d be interested to see a more thorough analysis of this.
I wrote something about campaign contributions in federal US elections earlier this year. I could be wrong, but based on my (non-expert) survey of the campaign finance literature, it doesn’t seem like donating to political campaigns has a very substantial impact on election outcomes (most of the time). The main takeaway is that spending and success are correlated, but the former doesn’t cause the latter. Spending is simply a useful heuristic for the size/traction/etc. of a campaign.
Yes, I do think they had room for more funding, but could be wrong. My view was based on (1) a recommendation from someone whose judgement on these things I think is informed and probably better than most people’s including mine, who thought the Biden Victory Fund was the highest impact thing to donate to this year, (2) an intuition that the DNC/etc. wouldn’t put so much work into fundraising if more money didn’t benefit their chances of success, and (3) the way the Biden Victory Fund in particular structured the funds it received, which was to distribute it among the Biden campaign, the DNC, and state parties (in order of priority), which it said how it would do more precisesly, except that it would change the distrbution if the results would have resulted in “excessive” amounts going to certain orgs.