I don’t think most EAs have an obligation to involve themselves in politics at all and I don’t think every young EA should join the GOP- but I do think :
“Young effective altruists in the United States interested in using public policy to make the world better should almost all be Republicans.”
The people I would most like to think about this post are:
EAs who are conservative/centrist. Since I think there are too few EAs within the Republican Party, I think they should keep in mind that they can probably do more good than a similar EA who is contemplating entering politics on the left. They might still conclude that earning-to-give or direct work is more valuable, but the expected value of entering politics on the US right is higher, imo, than entering politics on the left.
People who care a ton about a specific issue to the point other issues seem small and think politics/public policy can contribute to this field and think the Republican Party isn’t actively working against them on this issue. People really worried about near-term AGI risk or pandemics I think could fall into this bucket. I think animal welfare advocates or open borders advocates would not. Another exception would be YIMBYs in blue cities, where all the politicians are Democrats.
Re: acquaintance- she took a job working on the specific issue she happens to be more conservative on.
People who care a ton about a specific issue to the point other issues seem small and think politics/public policy can contribute to this field and think the Republican Party isn’t actively working against them on this issue
...does not describe a large proportion of young US-based EAs interested in policy—I would guess less than 50% for sure, and perhaps less than 25%. Yet in the post and even in your comment above, your repeated claim is that they should almost all be Republicans. That’s not a small detail in your argument, and your clarifications in the comments suggest that it should be revisited.
Thinking about my original claim that “[y]oung effective altruists in the United States interested in using public policy to make the world better should almost all be Republicans.”
I’ve been convinced that it’s overstated because of:
a) people who use public policy without engaging in obviously partisan politics like academics and other researchers.
b) effective altruists working on urban issues in blue cities or state-level issues in CA, NY, or other blue states where the Republican Party is really weak.
c) People working on a subset of issues where the Democratic Party is more promising. I personally think this subset is very small and the only issue I would confidently place here is animal welfare (if you’re involved in Republican/conservative politics let me know) but I know some EAs in the comments would add more issues.
I think a revised claim that I’m still confident of would be “young effective altruists in the United States interested in using partisan politics to make the world better should almost all be Republicans.”
This claim could still be wrong if my overall reasoning is wrong or the number of policy-oriented EAs working on animal issues or some other issues is a lot bigger than I think
Upvoted for reconsidering based on feedback and updating the OP to convey your revised viewpoint. I still think the revised claim is too strong for reasons that others have pointed out, but I appreciate that you’ve been willing to engage.
Re c) above, “People working on a subset of issues where the Democratic Party is more promising. I personally think this subset is very small”: I’m very surprised that you don’t think the Republican Party is substantially worse on climate change. I know that there is some momentum among younger conservatives to take climate change seriously, but if you look at where party leadership is right now, including the policies enacted during Trump’s term, it’s really quite bad. I would be interested to hear a counter-argument to this if you have one.
Immigration seems like another issue where the GOP is categorically worse, unless you just don’t think that immigration is a good thing at all (which seems like a very rare position in EA).
With that said, I do think you are very right that the Republican Party isn’t going away anytime soon and completely neglecting it is not a smart strategy for the movement.
I’m somebody who works with Republicans to try to promote a more streamlined process and I think it’s worthwhile. The politics behind immigration are polarizing, but Republicans still have colleges in their districts that depend on foreign students, landscapers who need workers, companies who need researchers, and hospitals who need doctors. Republicans will yell loudly about the border, but they’ll still engage on immigration issues that are less polarizing. It helps to have people speak the language of red tape reduction.
There’s no better case for reducing the influence of our administration than when you talk about our wasteful bureaucracy! This framing resonates with Republicans, but we have a saturation of immigration advocates speaking to the left about racial justice and barely anybody filling the void of bringing Republicans to the middle.
I don’t think you want to advocate for people to pursue R politics if they can’t do it in good conscience, i.e. they can’t even convince themselves that they agree with many R views. This would rule out a lot of folks, but would still leave a lot too.
If I lived in, or were inclined to move to, a red state and wanted to go into politics, I’d become a moderate Republican for the reasons you mention. Anywhere else I don’t think so. Pandemic risk already looks pretty politicized to me. Pre-2016 it didn’t; Bush did a lot of good work on it and I suspect Romney would have. But it is now. Biden came up with a decent pandemic prevention plan and the senate killed it just for fun. AI alignment so far is not, and seems like it could realistically remain apolitical if it’s mainly treated as a defense or foreign policy issue.
In a swing state, your participation in one party does seek to, and has a viable chance to, actively grow the number of jobs within that party, i.e. by replacing potential elected officials of the other party (and their appointees) with officials of your party. And in a blue state Republicans will simply be irrelevant, except in wave years where the state effectively becomes a swing state, with the same attendant problems. So there are quite real costs to this if you are broadly aligned with left-wing values. You’re sometimes replacing a generic Republican with yourself, and sometimes replacing a generic Democratic with your (by necessity somewhat more conservative) self. Maybe worth it for the benefits to AI risk but I’d like to see a Fermi estimate of what you believe the expected value of your contributions on that issue would be vs. the harm done by having to 1) work to elect other Republicans, 2) vote for or otherwise help enact Republican policies once in office (which will depend heavily on the position, so actually I’d like to see the estimates for different positions; i.e. maybe becoming a Republican is a good tradeoff if you’re going to work in specialized and mostly apolitical roles in defense or foreign policy but not so much if you’re going to have to make it through a GOP primary for Congress).
You may also be undervaluing people’s existing networks, but it depends on what unstated assumptions you are making here. If you run for office, you have to rely on your friends and family to get at least the first tranche of money. If you come from a liberal background and become a Republican, are they going to disown you? That’s not just cold uggos; it’s a serious practical problem with being able to run. Long run I think you can overcome that by building up your network within the GOP. BUT if you’re worried about AI risk, which is the one promising reason I see to do this, you may not have enough time to build your network! So this is only a viable strategy if you are primarily concerned about AI risk, AND either expect a long timeline, OR already have a ready to go GOP/bipartisan network to fundraise from. So if you’re serious about this idea, maybe you first need to present it to EAs who’d be interested in donating to a Republican EA candidate and get the fundraising machine set up, so you can solve this problem for anyone who takes your advice.
Biden came up with a decent pandemic prevention plan and the senate killed it just for fun.
It seems that the pandemic prevention plan was supposed to be part of the infrastructure bill. The people who negotiated the infrastructure bill and removed the pandemic prevention plan from it were all Democrats and not Republicans.
Nobody threatened to filibuster pandemic preparedness.
If someone cares about pandemic preparedness stopping gain-of-function research is an important issue and it’s likely easy to push for that from the Republican side. The Republican side is also less engaging in denialism about the origins of COVID-19.
Trump worked to deregulate the FDA and push for vaccine development while Biden’s FDA blocked Omicron-specific vaccines now for more than half a year.
I don’t think most EAs have an obligation to involve themselves in politics at all and I don’t think every young EA should join the GOP- but I do think :
“Young effective altruists in the United States interested in using public policy to make the world better should almost all be Republicans.”
The people I would most like to think about this post are:
EAs who are conservative/centrist. Since I think there are too few EAs within the Republican Party, I think they should keep in mind that they can probably do more good than a similar EA who is contemplating entering politics on the left. They might still conclude that earning-to-give or direct work is more valuable, but the expected value of entering politics on the US right is higher, imo, than entering politics on the left.
People who care a ton about a specific issue to the point other issues seem small and think politics/public policy can contribute to this field and think the Republican Party isn’t actively working against them on this issue. People really worried about near-term AGI risk or pandemics I think could fall into this bucket. I think animal welfare advocates or open borders advocates would not. Another exception would be YIMBYs in blue cities, where all the politicians are Democrats.
Re: acquaintance- she took a job working on the specific issue she happens to be more conservative on.
Okay, but...
...does not describe a large proportion of young US-based EAs interested in policy—I would guess less than 50% for sure, and perhaps less than 25%. Yet in the post and even in your comment above, your repeated claim is that they should almost all be Republicans. That’s not a small detail in your argument, and your clarifications in the comments suggest that it should be revisited.
Thanks, Ian (and others).
Thinking about my original claim that “[y]oung effective altruists in the United States interested in using public policy to make the world better should almost all be Republicans.”
I’ve been convinced that it’s overstated because of:
a) people who use public policy without engaging in obviously partisan politics like academics and other researchers.
b) effective altruists working on urban issues in blue cities or state-level issues in CA, NY, or other blue states where the Republican Party is really weak.
c) People working on a subset of issues where the Democratic Party is more promising. I personally think this subset is very small and the only issue I would confidently place here is animal welfare (if you’re involved in Republican/conservative politics let me know) but I know some EAs in the comments would add more issues.
I think a revised claim that I’m still confident of would be “young effective altruists in the United States interested in using partisan politics to make the world better should almost all be Republicans.”
This claim could still be wrong if my overall reasoning is wrong or the number of policy-oriented EAs working on animal issues or some other issues is a lot bigger than I think
Upvoted for reconsidering based on feedback and updating the OP to convey your revised viewpoint. I still think the revised claim is too strong for reasons that others have pointed out, but I appreciate that you’ve been willing to engage.
Re c) above, “People working on a subset of issues where the Democratic Party is more promising. I personally think this subset is very small”: I’m very surprised that you don’t think the Republican Party is substantially worse on climate change. I know that there is some momentum among younger conservatives to take climate change seriously, but if you look at where party leadership is right now, including the policies enacted during Trump’s term, it’s really quite bad. I would be interested to hear a counter-argument to this if you have one.
Immigration seems like another issue where the GOP is categorically worse, unless you just don’t think that immigration is a good thing at all (which seems like a very rare position in EA).
With that said, I do think you are very right that the Republican Party isn’t going away anytime soon and completely neglecting it is not a smart strategy for the movement.
I’m somebody who works with Republicans to try to promote a more streamlined process and I think it’s worthwhile. The politics behind immigration are polarizing, but Republicans still have colleges in their districts that depend on foreign students, landscapers who need workers, companies who need researchers, and hospitals who need doctors. Republicans will yell loudly about the border, but they’ll still engage on immigration issues that are less polarizing. It helps to have people speak the language of red tape reduction.
There’s no better case for reducing the influence of our administration than when you talk about our wasteful bureaucracy! This framing resonates with Republicans, but we have a saturation of immigration advocates speaking to the left about racial justice and barely anybody filling the void of bringing Republicans to the middle.
I don’t think you want to advocate for people to pursue R politics if they can’t do it in good conscience, i.e. they can’t even convince themselves that they agree with many R views. This would rule out a lot of folks, but would still leave a lot too.
If I lived in, or were inclined to move to, a red state and wanted to go into politics, I’d become a moderate Republican for the reasons you mention. Anywhere else I don’t think so. Pandemic risk already looks pretty politicized to me. Pre-2016 it didn’t; Bush did a lot of good work on it and I suspect Romney would have. But it is now. Biden came up with a decent pandemic prevention plan and the senate killed it just for fun. AI alignment so far is not, and seems like it could realistically remain apolitical if it’s mainly treated as a defense or foreign policy issue.
In a swing state, your participation in one party does seek to, and has a viable chance to, actively grow the number of jobs within that party, i.e. by replacing potential elected officials of the other party (and their appointees) with officials of your party. And in a blue state Republicans will simply be irrelevant, except in wave years where the state effectively becomes a swing state, with the same attendant problems. So there are quite real costs to this if you are broadly aligned with left-wing values. You’re sometimes replacing a generic Republican with yourself, and sometimes replacing a generic Democratic with your (by necessity somewhat more conservative) self. Maybe worth it for the benefits to AI risk but I’d like to see a Fermi estimate of what you believe the expected value of your contributions on that issue would be vs. the harm done by having to 1) work to elect other Republicans, 2) vote for or otherwise help enact Republican policies once in office (which will depend heavily on the position, so actually I’d like to see the estimates for different positions; i.e. maybe becoming a Republican is a good tradeoff if you’re going to work in specialized and mostly apolitical roles in defense or foreign policy but not so much if you’re going to have to make it through a GOP primary for Congress).
You may also be undervaluing people’s existing networks, but it depends on what unstated assumptions you are making here. If you run for office, you have to rely on your friends and family to get at least the first tranche of money. If you come from a liberal background and become a Republican, are they going to disown you? That’s not just cold uggos; it’s a serious practical problem with being able to run. Long run I think you can overcome that by building up your network within the GOP. BUT if you’re worried about AI risk, which is the one promising reason I see to do this, you may not have enough time to build your network! So this is only a viable strategy if you are primarily concerned about AI risk, AND either expect a long timeline, OR already have a ready to go GOP/bipartisan network to fundraise from. So if you’re serious about this idea, maybe you first need to present it to EAs who’d be interested in donating to a Republican EA candidate and get the fundraising machine set up, so you can solve this problem for anyone who takes your advice.
It seems that the pandemic prevention plan was supposed to be part of the infrastructure bill. The people who negotiated the infrastructure bill and removed the pandemic prevention plan from it were all Democrats and not Republicans.
Nobody threatened to filibuster pandemic preparedness.
If someone cares about pandemic preparedness stopping gain-of-function research is an important issue and it’s likely easy to push for that from the Republican side. The Republican side is also less engaging in denialism about the origins of COVID-19.
Trump worked to deregulate the FDA and push for vaccine development while Biden’s FDA blocked Omicron-specific vaccines now for more than half a year.