While it is an aspect of EA to lobby government to consider x and s-risk, it is not (as far as I can tell) the primary focus, nor it is what most people seem to spend their time doing. In other ideologies it might be reasonable to say we are doing what we can whilst carrying on, but since we are about finding the most effective way to do things, if this were the most important thing to do, we should all do it. We should found or convince a political party and either campaign or pay others to. Why don’t we?
Well in America, perhaps the main reason is that the implicit two-party system makes this intractable. Even in multiparty countries, I suspect EA is not yet large enough to get any power. Eventually, however, this could be a nice thing to add to the EA ecosystem.
If people choose work based on 80k hours advice rather than their own desires/market incentives, this makes a break from market allocation and backtracks towards central planning which has always been worse in the past. Why is it better here?
EA is acting on the margin with a small number of actors, not the whole economy.
EAs are individually deciding which jobs will have the highest social impact, they are not being commanded.
When comparing different jobs in a free market, the disparities in social impact are greater than the disparities in contributions to economic growth. Therefore it is easier to improve upon the market’s social impact than it is to improve upon the market’s economic growth.
Likewise the 80k hours advice isn’t scalable. If 10% of the workforce was reading 80k hours, it would make much more sense at to change government than to tell each individual which job they ought to be doing
The same thing can be said about career advice that is given by other websites. If 10% of the workforce read Mergers and Inquisitions and tried to become an investment banker, then trying to become an investment banker wouldn’t make sense anymore. But it would be silly to complain about Mergers and Inquisitions that way.
I can’t help but think it seems as if much of EA is a stopgap right now to demonstrate our legitimacy so that we can convince others to join and eventually move to our real purpose—wholescale legislative change. If that’s the case we should be honest about it.
EA doesn’t have a “real purpose”, it just does whatever works best. Legislative change is something we may add to our toolkit; that doesn’t mean we would abandon other things like charitable donations.
Well in America, perhaps the main reason is that the implicit two-party system makes this intractable. Even in multiparty countries, I suspect EA is not yet large enough to get any power. Eventually, however, this could be a nice thing to add to the EA ecosystem.
EA is acting on the margin with a small number of actors, not the whole economy.
EAs are individually deciding which jobs will have the highest social impact, they are not being commanded.
When comparing different jobs in a free market, the disparities in social impact are greater than the disparities in contributions to economic growth. Therefore it is easier to improve upon the market’s social impact than it is to improve upon the market’s economic growth.
The same thing can be said about career advice that is given by other websites. If 10% of the workforce read Mergers and Inquisitions and tried to become an investment banker, then trying to become an investment banker wouldn’t make sense anymore. But it would be silly to complain about Mergers and Inquisitions that way.
EA doesn’t have a “real purpose”, it just does whatever works best. Legislative change is something we may add to our toolkit; that doesn’t mean we would abandon other things like charitable donations.