I’m having a hard time understanding the mutual aid example, but maybe that stems from my relative lack of knowledge in that area. Wikipedia tells me that “[m]utual aid groups are distinct in their drive to flatten the hierarchy, searching for collective consensus decision-making across participating people rather than placing leadership within a closed executive team.” But I expect that one of the effects of such strong decentralized/diffused governance and structure is that it would be very hard for a small group of people to have great leverage. Stated differently, I sense some tension between a focus on “scalable” and “repeatable” operations and being controlled by / responsive to the local community. I’m not suggesting that there is no value there, but I would associate scalable, repeatable operations more with top-down governance.
Against that, I think we have to weigh that the appearance and/or reality of increasing politicization would make it harder for other EA cause areas to achieve their objectives.
Thanks for writing.
I’m having a hard time understanding the mutual aid example, but maybe that stems from my relative lack of knowledge in that area. Wikipedia tells me that “[m]utual aid groups are distinct in their drive to flatten the hierarchy, searching for collective consensus decision-making across participating people rather than placing leadership within a closed executive team.” But I expect that one of the effects of such strong decentralized/diffused governance and structure is that it would be very hard for a small group of people to have great leverage. Stated differently, I sense some tension between a focus on “scalable” and “repeatable” operations and being controlled by / responsive to the local community. I’m not suggesting that there is no value there, but I would associate scalable, repeatable operations more with top-down governance.
Against that, I think we have to weigh that the appearance and/or reality of increasing politicization would make it harder for other EA cause areas to achieve their objectives.