In the piece, we say that there is no publicly published treatments by EAs of (1) how best to increase growth, (2) the claim that we know nothing about how to increase growth. I don’t see that claim being discussed in either the Broi post or the Shulman post—neither of them mentions economic growth. I hadn’t seen the thing on trade, but this also can’t really be classed as a treatment of either question—it just discusses one way to increase growth, it doesn’t compare and rank different ways of increasing growth.
Pritchett’s arguments are a form of the systemic change objection, which has been discussed a bit. But there are lots of different forms of the systemic change and the forms that have been raised previously are either (i) socialist or (ii) people misrepresenting what EA actually does by saying that EA is in principle opposed to systemic change or that it never does systemic change, both of which are obviously false.
Yup, agreed that none of the linked things are on growth per se. I just think the link to the systemic change objection is useful because it gives hints as to what problems there might be with the growth-focus argument, how people are likely to react to the growth-focus argument, which arguments are persuasive, etc.
In the piece, we say that there is no publicly published treatments by EAs of (1) how best to increase growth, (2) the claim that we know nothing about how to increase growth. I don’t see that claim being discussed in either the Broi post or the Shulman post—neither of them mentions economic growth. I hadn’t seen the thing on trade, but this also can’t really be classed as a treatment of either question—it just discusses one way to increase growth, it doesn’t compare and rank different ways of increasing growth.
Pritchett’s arguments are a form of the systemic change objection, which has been discussed a bit. But there are lots of different forms of the systemic change and the forms that have been raised previously are either (i) socialist or (ii) people misrepresenting what EA actually does by saying that EA is in principle opposed to systemic change or that it never does systemic change, both of which are obviously false.
Yup, agreed that none of the linked things are on growth per se. I just think the link to the systemic change objection is useful because it gives hints as to what problems there might be with the growth-focus argument, how people are likely to react to the growth-focus argument, which arguments are persuasive, etc.