My honest, loosely held opinion here is that EA/adjacent money could be used to build research & lobbying groups (rather than grassroots organising or direct political donations—too controversial and not EA’s strong suit), that would be ready for such a moment if/when it comes.
This seems like a reasonable potential option to me. I think a lot of policy work works this way—you realize that there are only windows every so often, so a lot of work is around “getting ready.”
I’m not sure if we disagree on tractability for policy work here. What you said seems broadly reasonable to me.
Where I may disagree is that I’m not convinced that this strategy will be the best one, after a lot of investigation. I could imagine a lot of creative approaches, like, “do a targeted marketing campaign of a very certain kind, aimed at a specific subset of the ultra-wealthy.” Or maybe something like, “find existing charities/groups that are trying to do better things with Billionaires, and steer them to be more effective and to have better epistemics.”
I’d be excited if OP staff investigate this area more. I suspect they’ve done some early investigation around it. That said, perhaps it would be awkward with Dustin being a billionaire. (Personally I think this could be fine, but could imagine situations where it won’t be. I.E. maybe work here would get in the way of other OP work to convince ultra-wealthy people of other things.)
This seems like a reasonable potential option to me. I think a lot of policy work works this way—you realize that there are only windows every so often, so a lot of work is around “getting ready.”
I’m not sure if we disagree on tractability for policy work here. What you said seems broadly reasonable to me.
Where I may disagree is that I’m not convinced that this strategy will be the best one, after a lot of investigation. I could imagine a lot of creative approaches, like, “do a targeted marketing campaign of a very certain kind, aimed at a specific subset of the ultra-wealthy.” Or maybe something like, “find existing charities/groups that are trying to do better things with Billionaires, and steer them to be more effective and to have better epistemics.”
I’d be excited if OP staff investigate this area more. I suspect they’ve done some early investigation around it. That said, perhaps it would be awkward with Dustin being a billionaire. (Personally I think this could be fine, but could imagine situations where it won’t be. I.E. maybe work here would get in the way of other OP work to convince ultra-wealthy people of other things.)