This is quite interesting, and it would be good to see the EA community look more at stories like this. A few thoughts:
1) I think praise for neoliberalism’s success should be tempered a bit—while neoliberalism updated classical liberalism, it was still rooted in classical liberalism, which is pretty baked into the Constitution and founding ideals of the U.S. (and has a major influence in Anglo-American culture). Neoliberalism has not gained nearly as much traction in Europe, where socialism or socialism lite continued to largely dominate until a recent, distinctly illiberal ideology has started to fester (e.g. Le Pen).
2) I think EAs actually engage in remarkably utopian thinking, especially relative to a few years ago when much of EA was focused on global poverty and very short-term interventions. EAs spend a lot of time focusing on avoiding “dystopia” (e.g. https://foundational-research.org/), but the focus on avoiding dystopia of orgs like FRI and FHI seems to often get into utopian areas. Still, maybe framing things differently and talking more about the positive might help.
3) Neoliberalism had the advantage, especially later in the game, of wealthy backers (like Antony Fisher). That may have enabled more money-intensive strategies, whereas more volunteer-intensive strategies might better suit an altruistic movement.
This is quite interesting, and it would be good to see the EA community look more at stories like this. A few thoughts:
1) I think praise for neoliberalism’s success should be tempered a bit—while neoliberalism updated classical liberalism, it was still rooted in classical liberalism, which is pretty baked into the Constitution and founding ideals of the U.S. (and has a major influence in Anglo-American culture). Neoliberalism has not gained nearly as much traction in Europe, where socialism or socialism lite continued to largely dominate until a recent, distinctly illiberal ideology has started to fester (e.g. Le Pen).
2) I think EAs actually engage in remarkably utopian thinking, especially relative to a few years ago when much of EA was focused on global poverty and very short-term interventions. EAs spend a lot of time focusing on avoiding “dystopia” (e.g. https://foundational-research.org/), but the focus on avoiding dystopia of orgs like FRI and FHI seems to often get into utopian areas. Still, maybe framing things differently and talking more about the positive might help.
3) Neoliberalism had the advantage, especially later in the game, of wealthy backers (like Antony Fisher). That may have enabled more money-intensive strategies, whereas more volunteer-intensive strategies might better suit an altruistic movement.