I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.
The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.
Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.
However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.
In the US context, I am curious how tractable mail-in ballot reform is. This was passed in Arizona in 1991 and Colorado in 2013, although I’m unsure what the progress looks like at a large scale.
I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.
The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.
Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.
However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.
In the US context, I am curious how tractable mail-in ballot reform is. This was passed in Arizona in 1991 and Colorado in 2013, although I’m unsure what the progress looks like at a large scale.