That’s interesting—my current understanding is that it isn’t the norm. It certainly isn’t in the UK or the US, which don’t really have national organisations despite them being key EA hubs. However, it is the norm in the Nordic and Baltic region, and I believe the Swiss, German, and French national organisations also have national general assemblies (though my impression is that they’re less vibrant than those further north).
And if local groups and national orgs should be democratised, why not CEA? I’d argue it plays a similar role at the international level: stewarding the community it serves and providing public goods for it.
My impression is that CEA’s goal is to fund the meta cause area and the main goal of local groups is to organize events. While funding is hard to democratize unless you convince some billionaire, democratizing the organizations that run events is trivial. [Edit: Also, while it makes sense to organize local events directly based on the local community’s preferences / demand, I think it makes sense to take a more top-down (principles-oriented) approach when it comes to distributing funding, because the “demand-side” here comprises of every person on the planet who appreciates money.]
But now I do realize that in my head, I equated CEA with OpenPhil’s wing for the meta cause area, which might not be accurate. I also feel good about democratizing CEA if I imagine it implemented as an indirect democracy (i.e. with local organizations voting, instead of every EA member). This probably moves me towards the middle of the poll—i.e. I would be in favor of this kind of democracy. Indirect democracy would reduce the problem of uninformed voters, the problem of dealing with problems publicly and the problem of disbalance in the level of reflection between the average member and highly-engaged members.
Yeah, as you conclude in your second paragraph, I wouldn’t describe CEA as simply “funding the meta cause area”. They don’t control major grant budgets (unlike Open Phil or EA Funds (although they have just announced EA Funds will become part of CEA)), and they’re not primarily in the business of choosing which projects get resourced (apart from choosing which EAGx events and national orgs get funding). Instead, their theory of change centres on building community infrastructure that helps two broad groups:
People unfamiliar with EA but who might be interested (via online courses, effectivealtruism.org, media relations, and supporting organisers doing outreach)
People already in the EA community (via EAG(x) events, the Forum, community health, and supporting organisers building communities)
I agree that democratising grant-making feels more experimental than democratising community building, although I do find manifund, participatory budgeting, and other forms of democratised resource allocation to be interesting.
Thank you! Democratizing local groups sounds clearly good to me and I assumed it was the norm but I didn’t find any data on that.
That’s interesting—my current understanding is that it isn’t the norm. It certainly isn’t in the UK or the US, which don’t really have national organisations despite them being key EA hubs. However, it is the norm in the Nordic and Baltic region, and I believe the Swiss, German, and French national organisations also have national general assemblies (though my impression is that they’re less vibrant than those further north).
And if local groups and national orgs should be democratised, why not CEA? I’d argue it plays a similar role at the international level: stewarding the community it serves and providing public goods for it.
My impression is that CEA’s goal is to fund the meta cause area and the main goal of local groups is to organize events. While funding is hard to democratize unless you convince some billionaire, democratizing the organizations that run events is trivial. [Edit: Also, while it makes sense to organize local events directly based on the local community’s preferences / demand, I think it makes sense to take a more top-down (principles-oriented) approach when it comes to distributing funding, because the “demand-side” here comprises of every person on the planet who appreciates money.]
But now I do realize that in my head, I equated CEA with OpenPhil’s wing for the meta cause area, which might not be accurate. I also feel good about democratizing CEA if I imagine it implemented as an indirect democracy (i.e. with local organizations voting, instead of every EA member). This probably moves me towards the middle of the poll—i.e. I would be in favor of this kind of democracy. Indirect democracy would reduce the problem of uninformed voters, the problem of dealing with problems publicly and the problem of disbalance in the level of reflection between the average member and highly-engaged members.
Yeah, as you conclude in your second paragraph, I wouldn’t describe CEA as simply “funding the meta cause area”. They don’t control major grant budgets (unlike Open Phil or EA Funds (although they have just announced EA Funds will become part of CEA)), and they’re not primarily in the business of choosing which projects get resourced (apart from choosing which EAGx events and national orgs get funding). Instead, their theory of change centres on building community infrastructure that helps two broad groups:
People unfamiliar with EA but who might be interested (via online courses, effectivealtruism.org, media relations, and supporting organisers doing outreach)
People already in the EA community (via EAG(x) events, the Forum, community health, and supporting organisers building communities)
I agree that democratising grant-making feels more experimental than democratising community building, although I do find manifund, participatory budgeting, and other forms of democratised resource allocation to be interesting.