I think you forget the biggest reason to use democracy—aligning the moral values of some entity with the moral values of its constituency.
Whether you like it or not, people’s moral values are different, even in EA. Some put much greater value on animal welfare than others for example. There is no universal or absolute way to say that yes, “my values system” is objectively better than yours.
Democracy is a way to align an organization’s moral values with its membership through aggregation. Democracy tends to satisfy more people than less through majority rule.
Your perspective on democracy in contrast is more in tune to Madisonian or Schumpeter-ian justifications of democracy.
Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure why we should consider self-identified EAs to be the constituency of EA. Unlike a state, whose objective (some people argue) is to promote the welfare of its citizens, the objective of EA is not to promote the welfare of EAs. And unlike a state, EA does not claim a monopoly on violence over EAs, nor the right to imprison and execute them. If you are contributing, it makes sense to have influence (though where you donate, or where you work, etc.), but it’s not clear to me why mere existence should warrant influence.
In my opinion democracy is more likely to be utility maximizing compared to the alternative, oligarchy. In the status quo, the funders provide the moral weights. If your goal is utility maximization, small numbers of funders are more likely to have deviant moral weights compared to the median weights of the public. Their deviancy is less likely to capture maximally satisfactory policy.
A membership-driven democracy is more likely to have moral weights aligned with the rest of the public. Membership implies multitudes and therefore diversity, which can be a huge advantage in decision making. Having dozens of decision makers is assuredly more diverse than the singular vision of a single funder.
Like it or not, funders are also biased towards their self interest and may avoid otherwise effective policies. And perhaps this drives the other primary reason to use democracy—it is possible strategy towards building EA funding that relies less on the big funders and more on smaller donors. Democracy allows small donors to exert influence whereas the status quo is set up for large donors to exert influence.
By my understanding, there are two main purposes to democracy when it comes to states:
Allowing the masses to select representatives protects against the mechanisms of state being used to loot or oppress them excessively.
By aligning legitimacy with latent capability for violence, the need for violent transitions of power can be reduced.
Neither seem very relevant to EA.
I think you forget the biggest reason to use democracy—aligning the moral values of some entity with the moral values of its constituency.
Whether you like it or not, people’s moral values are different, even in EA. Some put much greater value on animal welfare than others for example. There is no universal or absolute way to say that yes, “my values system” is objectively better than yours.
Democracy is a way to align an organization’s moral values with its membership through aggregation. Democracy tends to satisfy more people than less through majority rule.
Your perspective on democracy in contrast is more in tune to Madisonian or Schumpeter-ian justifications of democracy.
Thanks for the reply. I’m not sure why we should consider self-identified EAs to be the constituency of EA. Unlike a state, whose objective (some people argue) is to promote the welfare of its citizens, the objective of EA is not to promote the welfare of EAs. And unlike a state, EA does not claim a monopoly on violence over EAs, nor the right to imprison and execute them. If you are contributing, it makes sense to have influence (though where you donate, or where you work, etc.), but it’s not clear to me why mere existence should warrant influence.
In my opinion democracy is more likely to be utility maximizing compared to the alternative, oligarchy. In the status quo, the funders provide the moral weights. If your goal is utility maximization, small numbers of funders are more likely to have deviant moral weights compared to the median weights of the public. Their deviancy is less likely to capture maximally satisfactory policy.
A membership-driven democracy is more likely to have moral weights aligned with the rest of the public. Membership implies multitudes and therefore diversity, which can be a huge advantage in decision making. Having dozens of decision makers is assuredly more diverse than the singular vision of a single funder.
Like it or not, funders are also biased towards their self interest and may avoid otherwise effective policies. And perhaps this drives the other primary reason to use democracy—it is possible strategy towards building EA funding that relies less on the big funders and more on smaller donors. Democracy allows small donors to exert influence whereas the status quo is set up for large donors to exert influence.