In my mind, there are structural features that make this very difficult for EA in particular to do. The major font of money is a well-known Democratic donor, and the EA movement is predominately left-of-center. Almost any attempt at combatting polarization is going to come across like a operation on behalf of Team Blue, rightly or wrongly. For example, taking money from Open Phil would be the kiss of death for any potential “sincere populist leadership in the Republican apparatus” who actually wanted to gain influence in conservative circles. The only way I see offhand around this is to plow lots of money in advance into an organization controlled by a group of people proportionally representing the U.S. political spectrum—which means some people you really don’t like.[1]
Moreover, I don’t get a non-partisan feel from the proposal as currently written. Reforming the Senate would take power away from rural voters and Team Red; what are you planning to offer them in exchange? What are you expecting Team Blue to give up in the interests of depolarization, and how would you go about that? “Depolarization” can’t have the effect of moving the country leftward, or it isn’t going to be effective in places you need it to be effective.
Finally, I get the sense that some of this would require a serious revamp of First Amendment doctrine. Some recent doctrine is controversial (e.g., Citizens United), but attempts to regulate media content are generally going to be found unconstitutional based on broadly respected doctrines going back decades. You can’t even stop newspapers from publishing leaked highly classified information, for instance. There are certain people who want their hyperpolarized news, and there are people with ideological reasons to produce it (on top of economic reasons). The market abhors a vacuum, so those consumers will gravitate to those news sources. For example, the threat to Fox News appears to be to the right—when it started pulling back due to its massive libel exposure in 2020, people starting shifting to more polarizing news sources like Newsmax and OAN.
No matter what your political views, you won’t like some of the people. The range would probably need to be at least 10th to 90th percentile, and few people approve of both the 10th and 90th percentile political view in the US.
In my mind, there are structural features that make this very difficult for EA in particular to do. The major font of money is a well-known Democratic donor, and the EA movement is predominately left-of-center. Almost any attempt at combatting polarization is going to come across like a operation on behalf of Team Blue, rightly or wrongly. For example, taking money from Open Phil would be the kiss of death for any potential “sincere populist leadership in the Republican apparatus” who actually wanted to gain influence in conservative circles. The only way I see offhand around this is to plow lots of money in advance into an organization controlled by a group of people proportionally representing the U.S. political spectrum—which means some people you really don’t like.[1]
Moreover, I don’t get a non-partisan feel from the proposal as currently written. Reforming the Senate would take power away from rural voters and Team Red; what are you planning to offer them in exchange? What are you expecting Team Blue to give up in the interests of depolarization, and how would you go about that? “Depolarization” can’t have the effect of moving the country leftward, or it isn’t going to be effective in places you need it to be effective.
Finally, I get the sense that some of this would require a serious revamp of First Amendment doctrine. Some recent doctrine is controversial (e.g., Citizens United), but attempts to regulate media content are generally going to be found unconstitutional based on broadly respected doctrines going back decades. You can’t even stop newspapers from publishing leaked highly classified information, for instance. There are certain people who want their hyperpolarized news, and there are people with ideological reasons to produce it (on top of economic reasons). The market abhors a vacuum, so those consumers will gravitate to those news sources. For example, the threat to Fox News appears to be to the right—when it started pulling back due to its massive libel exposure in 2020, people starting shifting to more polarizing news sources like Newsmax and OAN.
No matter what your political views, you won’t like some of the people. The range would probably need to be at least 10th to 90th percentile, and few people approve of both the 10th and 90th percentile political view in the US.