Hey, thanks for doing this. I’m curious about this bullet — “Why I think politics is an underrated way to do good that the EA community sometimes overlooks”. What are we underrating? And what policies seem good to push for from an EA perspective, but which few EAs are looking at?
I’m someone who thinks of myself as an EA, but I don’t engage at a deep level with the community at all times, so this is my half-insider-half-outsider view of EA. My general sense is that EA famously focuses on a handful of areas—AI, animal welfare, catastrophic risk management, GiveWell-style medical interventions, etc. I very rarely see EAs talking about ‘normal politics’ as a place to do good, and I think there are some normal politics issues that have deep promise.
One example is advocacy for increased immigration for rich countries. The evidence seems incredibly strong to me that increased immigration is an enormously valuable opportunity. Estimates for this kind of drastic change are always a little fuzzy, but fully open borders would have an impact on the scale of doubling world GDP. It’s a multi-trillion dollar bill we’re passing on the sidewalk and refusing to pick up. Even making a small difference in immigration policy can produce extremely large benefits. And support for immigration is increasing over time, so there’s real promise for change.
There are probably some EA-oriented types thinking about this already, but I think it deserves more prominence. It would also make so many other EA favorites (like AI research) a lot easier to coordinate.
Hey, thanks for doing this. I’m curious about this bullet — “Why I think politics is an underrated way to do good that the EA community sometimes overlooks”. What are we underrating? And what policies seem good to push for from an EA perspective, but which few EAs are looking at?
I’m someone who thinks of myself as an EA, but I don’t engage at a deep level with the community at all times, so this is my half-insider-half-outsider view of EA. My general sense is that EA famously focuses on a handful of areas—AI, animal welfare, catastrophic risk management, GiveWell-style medical interventions, etc. I very rarely see EAs talking about ‘normal politics’ as a place to do good, and I think there are some normal politics issues that have deep promise.
One example is advocacy for increased immigration for rich countries. The evidence seems incredibly strong to me that increased immigration is an enormously valuable opportunity. Estimates for this kind of drastic change are always a little fuzzy, but fully open borders would have an impact on the scale of doubling world GDP. It’s a multi-trillion dollar bill we’re passing on the sidewalk and refusing to pick up. Even making a small difference in immigration policy can produce extremely large benefits. And support for immigration is increasing over time, so there’s real promise for change.
There are probably some EA-oriented types thinking about this already, but I think it deserves more prominence. It would also make so many other EA favorites (like AI research) a lot easier to coordinate.