When I talked about this (and other ideas like it) in EA circles, people seem wildly confident that this idea is obviously good; the only difficulty is cost-effectiveness and implementation details. While I broadly share this intuition, I think confidence about far-reaching social changes is often misplaced.
I’d be interested in someone steelmanning a case/set of arguments against the core idea of
matching a pair of opposing campaigns and sending the money to a less-controversial charity instead.
I think the arguments definitely exist; they just haven’t been explicated or criticized in detail.
(Note to Eric et.al: Please don’t let this comment discourage you from being excited about your project and doing valuable work! Execution is hard and naysaying often easy).
For example: If there are diminishing returns to campaign spending, then taking equal amounts of money away from both campaigns would help the side which has more money.
This isn’t (much) of a problem if you think that the difference between how the two campaigns use money is in expectation neutral. It is a bigger problem if you think there might be systematic differences in how campaigns use money that correlate with better candidates/policies, especially if the correlation is positive. For example, if you think more competent campaign staff translates to more competent political appointees, or if you think it’s easier to use money to campaign for true/good things than for inaccurate/bad things, or if you think the default state (without additional money in politics) is worse.
At least anecdotally, I’ve heard that the last one is a serious problem: in some countries, opposition activists really like the option of eg, buying Facebook ads where the central information source (eg.state mass media) is regime-controlled. (I don’t know how big a problem this is in the US, or in practice in those countries for that matter).
More broadly, I think we should maybe reflect on the (the wildly unpopular, but nonetheless endorsed by the highest court in the US) idea that “money is speech,” and that limiting speech (including in voluntary ways) has a large host of unintended consequences, some of which may not be positive.
Epistemic status: likely false
When I talked about this (and other ideas like it) in EA circles, people seem wildly confident that this idea is obviously good; the only difficulty is cost-effectiveness and implementation details. While I broadly share this intuition, I think confidence about far-reaching social changes is often misplaced.
I’d be interested in someone steelmanning a case/set of arguments against the core idea of
I think the arguments definitely exist; they just haven’t been explicated or criticized in detail.
(Note to Eric et.al: Please don’t let this comment discourage you from being excited about your project and doing valuable work! Execution is hard and naysaying often easy).
It does assume the two campaigns will use money equally effectively, which may well be false.
For example: If there are diminishing returns to campaign spending, then taking equal amounts of money away from both campaigns would help the side which has more money.
This isn’t (much) of a problem if you think that the difference between how the two campaigns use money is in expectation neutral. It is a bigger problem if you think there might be systematic differences in how campaigns use money that correlate with better candidates/policies, especially if the correlation is positive. For example, if you think more competent campaign staff translates to more competent political appointees, or if you think it’s easier to use money to campaign for true/good things than for inaccurate/bad things, or if you think the default state (without additional money in politics) is worse.
At least anecdotally, I’ve heard that the last one is a serious problem: in some countries, opposition activists really like the option of eg, buying Facebook ads where the central information source (eg.state mass media) is regime-controlled. (I don’t know how big a problem this is in the US, or in practice in those countries for that matter).
More broadly, I think we should maybe reflect on the (the wildly unpopular, but nonetheless endorsed by the highest court in the US) idea that “money is speech,” and that limiting speech (including in voluntary ways) has a large host of unintended consequences, some of which may not be positive.