[Edit: Here is an interesting 2015 quote regarding US government spending, from Vox of all sources: “A couple of years ago, former Obama and Bush officials estimated that only 1 percent of government spending is backed by any evidence at all … Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, evaluations of government-sponsored school and work programs have found that some three-quarters of those have no effect.” Maybe I would be more enthusiastic about socialism if this were addressed, but fundamentally it seems like a tricky incentives problem.]
The strategy of “take money from rich capitalists and have citizens vote on how to allocate it” doesn’t seem to result in anything like effective altruism. $6.1 trillion is already an incomprehensibly large amount. I don’t see how increasing it would change things.
I don’t favor increasing the government’s budget unless the government is spending money well.
Individuals and institutions can be motivated to change their behaviour for the better on the basis of concern for others. (Otherwise, how could effective altruism be possible?)
My sense is that most people who hear about effective altruism aren’t going to become effective altruists. EA doesn’t have some sort of magic pill to distribute that makes you want to help people or animals who exist far away in time or space. EA recruitment is more about identifying (fairly rare) individuals in the general population who are interested in that stuff.
If this sort of mass behavior change was somehow possible at the flip of a switch, socialism wouldn’t be necessary anyways. People would voluntarily be altruistic. No need to make it compulsory.
Why not a socialist alternative, that is, one in which people are motivated to a greater extent by altruism and a lesser extent by self-interest?
I don’t think socialism will change the rate of greed in the general population. It will just redirect the greed towards grabbing a bigger share of the redistribution pie. The virtue of capitalism is that it harnesses greed in a way that often has beneficial effects for society. (“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”)
And some socialist economies have had some successes (human development in Kerala, economic growth in China, the USSR’s role in space technology and smallpox eradication, Cuba’s healthcare system).
Historically speaking, socialists often endorse economic systems that end up failing, but after they fail socialists forget they originally endorsed them. I think it’s important for those cases to be included in the dataset too. See this book.
EAs should be more willing to fund and conduct research into alternative economic systems, socialist ones included.
Yep, I favor voluntary charter cities to experiment with alternative economic systems on a small scale, and I support folks who are trying to think rigorously about alternative systems, such as radicalxchange. The big thing socialism lacks is a small-scale, working proof of concept. Without a compelling and robust proof of concept, advocating for radical changes to big developed countries which already function fairly well in the grand scheme of things seems irresponsible.
(Writing this quickly and while very sleep deprived).
I really appreciate the OP for so clearly making the case for such a big idea and everyone’s engagement with it. That said, it’s a bummer that maybe the most common/upvoted reply on the EA forum to pro-left-wing arguments is something like this because it assumes that socialism is just about making the government bigger, but it’s not, at least not necessarily. There are lots of different definitions of socialism, but I think the common thread is: a system that aims to empower the working class to build an alternative to capitalism. The most compelling and practical vision of this to me is Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara’s. His appearance on Lex Fridman is a (relatively) short articulation, and his book TheSocialist Manifesto goes into more detail.
(An uncomfortable implication of the above commenter’s perspective is that we should redistribute more money from the poor to the rich, on the off chance they put it toward effective causes.)
I don’t blame people for thinking socialism = more government, because, at least in the US, education on the topic is extremely bad (we did have a whole Cold War and all).
Some examples of policies that push in a more socialist direction that don’t necessarily involve growing the government:
Worker codetermination on corporate boards (common in Germany, which has a strong economy and a far more equal distribution of wealth than the US)
Worker cooperatives
Participatory budgeting
And there are plenty of socialist-y policies that would grow the public sector but in a directed way to improve welfare for lots of people, like:
If you look at rich countries, there is a strong positive association between left-wing policies and citizen wellbeing. I think it’s worth noting that the book linked is pretty clearly written with a serious pro-market slant (as is the comment). At a glance, the book doesn’t appear to get into examples of socialist/leftist movements in Europe, the US or Canada. But these movements and the results of their policies are far more relevant to any discussion of socialism in rich countries with strongly developed civil societies (where most EAs live). Ignoring Europe, and Scandinavia in particular is cherry-picking.
Further, almost no socialists I know are advocating for a command economy like the Soviet Union, but rather things like the above.
In general on the forum, it feels like capitalism-sympathetic views are treated with far less scrutiny than left-wing views.
(If anyone’s curious, I discussed EA and the left with Habiba Banu on my podcast a while back.)
socialism is just about making the government bigger
OP framed socialism in terms of resource reallocation. (“The global economy’s current mode of allocating resources is suboptimal” was a key point, which yes, sounded like advocacy for a command economy.) I’m trying to push back on millenarian thinking that ‘socialism’ is a magic wand which will improve resource allocation.
If your notion of ‘socialism’ is favorable tax treatment for worker-owned cooperatives or something, that could be a good thing if there’s solid evidence that worker-owned cooperatives achieve better outcomes, but I doubt it would qualify as a top EA cause.
(An uncomfortable implication of the above commenter’s perspective is that we should redistribute more money from the poor to the rich, on the off chance they put it toward effective causes.)
Here in EA, GiveDirectly (cash transfers for the poor) is considered a top EA cause. It seems fairly plausible to me that if the government cut a bunch of non-evidence-backed school and work programs and did targeted, temporary direct cash transfers instead, that would be an improvement.
If you look at rich countries, there is a strong positive association between left-wing policies and citizen wellbeing.
I’m skimming the post you linked and it doesn’t look especially persuasive. Inferring causation from correlation is notoriously difficult, and these relationships don’t look particularly robust. (Interesting that r^2=0.29 appears to be the only correlation coefficient specified in the article—that’s not a strong association!)
As an American, I don’t particularly want America to move in the direction of a Nordic-style social democracy, because Americans are already very well off. In 2023, the US had the world’s second highest median income adjusted for cost of living, right after Luxembourg. From a poverty-reduction perspective, the US government should be focused on effective foreign aid and facilitating immigration.
Similarly, from a global poverty reduction perspective, we should be focused on helping poor countries. If “socialism” tends to be good for rich countries but bad for poor countries, that suggests it is the wrong tool to reduce global poverty.
One quibble with the mode of analysis for taxation. The way to evaluate the impact, positive or negative, of government spending, would be the effect of the spending vs the average counterfactual effect of retention. Thus, for impact analysis, we would not be comparing the utility generated from government spending to the cost-effectiveness of a marginal dollar to a Givewell-endorse charity, but rather the utility generated by the counterfactual retention of the funds by the taxpayer base. In any case, that bar is much easier for government spending to clear.
The US government spent about $6.1 trillion in 2023 alone. That’s over 40x Bill Gates’ current net worth. Very little of that $6.1 trillion went to top EA causes.
[Edit: Here is an interesting 2015 quote regarding US government spending, from Vox of all sources: “A couple of years ago, former Obama and Bush officials estimated that only 1 percent of government spending is backed by any evidence at all … Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, evaluations of government-sponsored school and work programs have found that some three-quarters of those have no effect.” Maybe I would be more enthusiastic about socialism if this were addressed, but fundamentally it seems like a tricky incentives problem.]
The strategy of “take money from rich capitalists and have citizens vote on how to allocate it” doesn’t seem to result in anything like effective altruism. $6.1 trillion is already an incomprehensibly large amount. I don’t see how increasing it would change things.
I don’t favor increasing the government’s budget unless the government is spending money well.
My sense is that most people who hear about effective altruism aren’t going to become effective altruists. EA doesn’t have some sort of magic pill to distribute that makes you want to help people or animals who exist far away in time or space. EA recruitment is more about identifying (fairly rare) individuals in the general population who are interested in that stuff.
If this sort of mass behavior change was somehow possible at the flip of a switch, socialism wouldn’t be necessary anyways. People would voluntarily be altruistic. No need to make it compulsory.
I don’t think socialism will change the rate of greed in the general population. It will just redirect the greed towards grabbing a bigger share of the redistribution pie. The virtue of capitalism is that it harnesses greed in a way that often has beneficial effects for society. (“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”)
Historically speaking, socialists often endorse economic systems that end up failing, but after they fail socialists forget they originally endorsed them. I think it’s important for those cases to be included in the dataset too. See this book.
Yep, I favor voluntary charter cities to experiment with alternative economic systems on a small scale, and I support folks who are trying to think rigorously about alternative systems, such as radicalxchange. The big thing socialism lacks is a small-scale, working proof of concept. Without a compelling and robust proof of concept, advocating for radical changes to big developed countries which already function fairly well in the grand scheme of things seems irresponsible.
(Writing this quickly and while very sleep deprived).
I really appreciate the OP for so clearly making the case for such a big idea and everyone’s engagement with it. That said, it’s a bummer that maybe the most common/upvoted reply on the EA forum to pro-left-wing arguments is something like this because it assumes that socialism is just about making the government bigger, but it’s not, at least not necessarily. There are lots of different definitions of socialism, but I think the common thread is: a system that aims to empower the working class to build an alternative to capitalism. The most compelling and practical vision of this to me is Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara’s. His appearance on Lex Fridman is a (relatively) short articulation, and his book The Socialist Manifesto goes into more detail.
(An uncomfortable implication of the above commenter’s perspective is that we should redistribute more money from the poor to the rich, on the off chance they put it toward effective causes.)
I don’t blame people for thinking socialism = more government, because, at least in the US, education on the topic is extremely bad (we did have a whole Cold War and all).
Some examples of policies that push in a more socialist direction that don’t necessarily involve growing the government:
Worker codetermination on corporate boards (common in Germany, which has a strong economy and a far more equal distribution of wealth than the US)
Worker cooperatives
Participatory budgeting
And there are plenty of socialist-y policies that would grow the public sector but in a directed way to improve welfare for lots of people, like:
Public banking
Green subsidies
Public options for natural monopolies like fiber optic internet
Single-payer or nationalized healthcare
If you look at rich countries, there is a strong positive association between left-wing policies and citizen wellbeing. I think it’s worth noting that the book linked is pretty clearly written with a serious pro-market slant (as is the comment). At a glance, the book doesn’t appear to get into examples of socialist/leftist movements in Europe, the US or Canada. But these movements and the results of their policies are far more relevant to any discussion of socialism in rich countries with strongly developed civil societies (where most EAs live). Ignoring Europe, and Scandinavia in particular is cherry-picking.
Further, almost no socialists I know are advocating for a command economy like the Soviet Union, but rather things like the above.
In general on the forum, it feels like capitalism-sympathetic views are treated with far less scrutiny than left-wing views.
(If anyone’s curious, I discussed EA and the left with Habiba Banu on my podcast a while back.)
Thanks for the response, upvoted.
OP framed socialism in terms of resource reallocation. (“The global economy’s current mode of allocating resources is suboptimal” was a key point, which yes, sounded like advocacy for a command economy.) I’m trying to push back on millenarian thinking that ‘socialism’ is a magic wand which will improve resource allocation.
If your notion of ‘socialism’ is favorable tax treatment for worker-owned cooperatives or something, that could be a good thing if there’s solid evidence that worker-owned cooperatives achieve better outcomes, but I doubt it would qualify as a top EA cause.
Here in EA, GiveDirectly (cash transfers for the poor) is considered a top EA cause. It seems fairly plausible to me that if the government cut a bunch of non-evidence-backed school and work programs and did targeted, temporary direct cash transfers instead, that would be an improvement.
I’m skimming the post you linked and it doesn’t look especially persuasive. Inferring causation from correlation is notoriously difficult, and these relationships don’t look particularly robust. (Interesting that r^2=0.29 appears to be the only correlation coefficient specified in the article—that’s not a strong association!)
As an American, I don’t particularly want America to move in the direction of a Nordic-style social democracy, because Americans are already very well off. In 2023, the US had the world’s second highest median income adjusted for cost of living, right after Luxembourg. From a poverty-reduction perspective, the US government should be focused on effective foreign aid and facilitating immigration.
Similarly, from a global poverty reduction perspective, we should be focused on helping poor countries. If “socialism” tends to be good for rich countries but bad for poor countries, that suggests it is the wrong tool to reduce global poverty.
One quibble with the mode of analysis for taxation. The way to evaluate the impact, positive or negative, of government spending, would be the effect of the spending vs the average counterfactual effect of retention. Thus, for impact analysis, we would not be comparing the utility generated from government spending to the cost-effectiveness of a marginal dollar to a Givewell-endorse charity, but rather the utility generated by the counterfactual retention of the funds by the taxpayer base. In any case, that bar is much easier for government spending to clear.