So I remain unconvinced that there’s a specific longtermist case for democracy, but I think there is a longtermist case for some kind of context in which longtermist work can happen.
What I have in mind is I’m not sure democracy or liberal democracy is necessary to work on longtermist cause areas, but liberal democracy is creating an environment in which this work can get done. So there’s an interesting question, then: what are the feature of liberal democracy that enable longtermist work?
I ask this because I’m not sure that, for example, democracy is necessary to work on improving the longterm future, however it’s also clear that something about liberal democracy has allowed people to start doing work towards bettering the longterm future, so it must have some features we care about for that purpose. Maybe it is the case that electing the government is the key feature that matters, but I don’t see an obvious causal chain there between the two, which makes me wonder what the features are that do matter that we’d want to ensure are preserved if we want people to be able to work on making the longterm future better, even if it means having a government that is not what we’d consider to be democratic.
Maybe another way to put my comment is that this post feels like it’s taking for granted that liberal democracy is good for longtermism so we want to figure out what it is about liberal democracy that makes it good, but I’d say it slightly differently: longtermism has been fostered within liberal democracies, so this means there must be something about liberal democracies that matters, but this doesn’t imply that longtermism requires liberal democracy, so we should cast a wider net and look at features of specific liberal democracies where longtermist work is flourishing without presupposing that it’s somehow connected to the system of government (for example, maybe it’s just that liberal democracies are rich and have lots of extra money to spend on “hobby” interests like longtermism, and any sufficiently rich society, no matter the government, would be able to foster longtermism; I don’t know, but that’s the kind of question that seems to me worth exploring).
Thanks for raising these points! A few of my (personal) reactions:
1. We definitely didn’t intend for the post to presuppose that democracy is good for the long term. It’s true that most of the potential effects we identity are positive-leaning – but none of these effects, nor the all-things-considered effect, is a settled case.
2. I think the question of what conditions allowed EA to come into existence is interesting, although not sure if that’s the main positive impact of liberal democracy (especially given we don’t have super strong evidence that liberal democracy was necessary for EA to arise). As is sort-of mentioned in the post, (inclusive) liberalism might be the feature most directly important to the flourishing of EA. But of course it’s hard to tell and I think it’s plausible that a combination of features reinforcing each other is key.
So I remain unconvinced that there’s a specific longtermist case for democracy, but I think there is a longtermist case for some kind of context in which longtermist work can happen.
What I have in mind is I’m not sure democracy or liberal democracy is necessary to work on longtermist cause areas, but liberal democracy is creating an environment in which this work can get done. So there’s an interesting question, then: what are the feature of liberal democracy that enable longtermist work?
I ask this because I’m not sure that, for example, democracy is necessary to work on improving the longterm future, however it’s also clear that something about liberal democracy has allowed people to start doing work towards bettering the longterm future, so it must have some features we care about for that purpose. Maybe it is the case that electing the government is the key feature that matters, but I don’t see an obvious causal chain there between the two, which makes me wonder what the features are that do matter that we’d want to ensure are preserved if we want people to be able to work on making the longterm future better, even if it means having a government that is not what we’d consider to be democratic.
Maybe another way to put my comment is that this post feels like it’s taking for granted that liberal democracy is good for longtermism so we want to figure out what it is about liberal democracy that makes it good, but I’d say it slightly differently: longtermism has been fostered within liberal democracies, so this means there must be something about liberal democracies that matters, but this doesn’t imply that longtermism requires liberal democracy, so we should cast a wider net and look at features of specific liberal democracies where longtermist work is flourishing without presupposing that it’s somehow connected to the system of government (for example, maybe it’s just that liberal democracies are rich and have lots of extra money to spend on “hobby” interests like longtermism, and any sufficiently rich society, no matter the government, would be able to foster longtermism; I don’t know, but that’s the kind of question that seems to me worth exploring).
Thanks for raising these points! A few of my (personal) reactions:
1. We definitely didn’t intend for the post to presuppose that democracy is good for the long term. It’s true that most of the potential effects we identity are positive-leaning – but none of these effects, nor the all-things-considered effect, is a settled case.
2. I think the question of what conditions allowed EA to come into existence is interesting, although not sure if that’s the main positive impact of liberal democracy (especially given we don’t have super strong evidence that liberal democracy was necessary for EA to arise). As is sort-of mentioned in the post, (inclusive) liberalism might be the feature most directly important to the flourishing of EA. But of course it’s hard to tell and I think it’s plausible that a combination of features reinforcing each other is key.