In my opinion, attempting to electioneer in 2024 by pumping money towards your preferred candidate, has little to do with democracy. It’s kind of the opposite. You’re engaging in oligarchy, trying to buy power with money, to attempt to save what democracy you have left. You’re not actually addressing the problems that led to the current crisis. As I said, mitigation and reaction.
>I think it’s generally okay to place the burden of showing that a cause area warrants further investigation on proponents,
And how can any cause area demonstrate this when you just won’t evaluate it anyways because of your limited evaluative capacity, because it’s not a priority cause area for your organization? Let’s imagine I have a proposal or a white paper. How and where can I submit it for evaluation? Take for example Open Philanthropy. Democracy’s not a cause area with any requests for proposals. Is there any organization accepting proposals?
The cause areas are driven from the top down, as far as I’m aware. Causes outside the org priorities are just not considered at all.
If you’re not proposing electioneering, what exactly is the program that you are suggesting could have prevented these USAID cuts? Because from where I’m sitting, I don’t really think there was anything EA could have done to prevent that, even if the whole weight of the movement were dedicated to that one thing.
Let’s imagine I have a proposal or a white paper. How and where can I submit it for evaluation?
>If you’re not proposing electioneering, what exactly is the program that you are suggesting could have prevented these USAID cuts?
“When should you have planted the seeds to grow a tree”? Just last year is a bit too late to grow a strong and capable democracy able to resist a tyranny.
A better year might have been 2016, when we were better understanding what the stakes were. That gives you 10 years. Or people have been complaining about the downfall of democracy since Occupy Wall Street. That’s 17 years (And people have obviously been complaining about democracy for far longer than that). But the next best thing might be now.
Throwing money at Biden/Harris 2025 is a method of last resort, particularly when it seems that money is highly ineffective in high-profile, money-saturated presidential campaigns.
Now let’s imagine that Trump actually does succeed in turning America into a dictatorship. Does that mean all hope is lost? No, there’s plenty of other countries where democracy can be strengthened.
>This forum might not be a bad place to start?
Plenty of ideas have been posted and ignored. I posted something for example on sortition which I’m a big fan of. Crickets. Neil Dullaghan made a great post about deliberative democracy here. What came of that?
Now maybe my idea is utter shit. OK sure, strikes and gutters. The silence is much more annoying.
Just so I understand you correctly, is your claim that if the EA movement had in 2016 spent resources advocating for sortition or electoral system changes, that we would not now be seeing cuts to USAID?
I’m asking because you started this thread with “These sorts of cuts highlight IMO the incorrect strategy EA has been on.” and finished with an article advocating sortition and an article advocating policies like approval voting (which EA already funds).
No, I’m requesting EA actually take the importance of improving democratic decision making seriously. Even if no action was able to stop these 2025 cuts, do you actually think “it’s over”? What about 2026? What about 2028? What about 2050? America is going to continue to make just stupid decisions until enough people get together and change the dumb way the system makes its decisions.
Moreover the second article isn’t about approval voting, I’m not sure how the only thing you got out of deliberation was approval voting.
If people in America were serious enough about improving democratic decision making, is it conceivable a reform could have stopped Trump? Imagine a new and improved Democratic Party was able to clearly demonstrate its ability to govern. Imagine a California government that was actually sufficiently competent to build high speed rail and more and more residential to attract more people into its borders. Instead Californians are fleeing because of rising costs.
Imagine an improved Democratic Party primary system that could elect a younger candidate that wouldn’t have grown senile by 2024.
Are these things *possible* within a small time frame? They certainly are. Trump himself demonstrates how quickly norms can be changed.
What’s wrong with US democracy isn’t just Trump, it’s an incompetent opposition party that people hate so much they’d rather trust something like Trump.
Finally yes, you mentioned approval voting. Would that ever be enough? Why are you putting all your eggs in just this one basket? IMO it’s a clear sign of EA’s myopia and lack of engagement with election theory, to ignore what is out there such as Single Transferable Vote, condorcet methods, and STAR voting. Even in this small niche of election reform in my opinion EA is far behind the theory.
In my opinion, attempting to electioneer in 2024 by pumping money towards your preferred candidate, has little to do with democracy. It’s kind of the opposite. You’re engaging in oligarchy, trying to buy power with money, to attempt to save what democracy you have left. You’re not actually addressing the problems that led to the current crisis. As I said, mitigation and reaction.
>I think it’s generally okay to place the burden of showing that a cause area warrants further investigation on proponents,
And how can any cause area demonstrate this when you just won’t evaluate it anyways because of your limited evaluative capacity, because it’s not a priority cause area for your organization? Let’s imagine I have a proposal or a white paper. How and where can I submit it for evaluation? Take for example Open Philanthropy. Democracy’s not a cause area with any requests for proposals. Is there any organization accepting proposals?
The cause areas are driven from the top down, as far as I’m aware. Causes outside the org priorities are just not considered at all.
If you’re not proposing electioneering, what exactly is the program that you are suggesting could have prevented these USAID cuts? Because from where I’m sitting, I don’t really think there was anything EA could have done to prevent that, even if the whole weight of the movement were dedicated to that one thing.
This forum might not be a bad place to start?
>If you’re not proposing electioneering, what exactly is the program that you are suggesting could have prevented these USAID cuts?
“When should you have planted the seeds to grow a tree”? Just last year is a bit too late to grow a strong and capable democracy able to resist a tyranny.
A better year might have been 2016, when we were better understanding what the stakes were. That gives you 10 years. Or people have been complaining about the downfall of democracy since Occupy Wall Street. That’s 17 years (And people have obviously been complaining about democracy for far longer than that). But the next best thing might be now.
Throwing money at Biden/Harris 2025 is a method of last resort, particularly when it seems that money is highly ineffective in high-profile, money-saturated presidential campaigns.
Now let’s imagine that Trump actually does succeed in turning America into a dictatorship. Does that mean all hope is lost? No, there’s plenty of other countries where democracy can be strengthened.
>This forum might not be a bad place to start?
Plenty of ideas have been posted and ignored. I posted something for example on sortition which I’m a big fan of. Crickets. Neil Dullaghan made a great post about deliberative democracy here. What came of that?
Now maybe my idea is utter shit. OK sure, strikes and gutters. The silence is much more annoying.
Just so I understand you correctly, is your claim that if the EA movement had in 2016 spent resources advocating for sortition or electoral system changes, that we would not now be seeing cuts to USAID?
I’m asking because you started this thread with “These sorts of cuts highlight IMO the incorrect strategy EA has been on.” and finished with an article advocating sortition and an article advocating policies like approval voting (which EA already funds).
No, I’m requesting EA actually take the importance of improving democratic decision making seriously. Even if no action was able to stop these 2025 cuts, do you actually think “it’s over”? What about 2026? What about 2028? What about 2050? America is going to continue to make just stupid decisions until enough people get together and change the dumb way the system makes its decisions.
Moreover the second article isn’t about approval voting, I’m not sure how the only thing you got out of deliberation was approval voting.
If people in America were serious enough about improving democratic decision making, is it conceivable a reform could have stopped Trump? Imagine a new and improved Democratic Party was able to clearly demonstrate its ability to govern. Imagine a California government that was actually sufficiently competent to build high speed rail and more and more residential to attract more people into its borders. Instead Californians are fleeing because of rising costs.
Imagine an improved Democratic Party primary system that could elect a younger candidate that wouldn’t have grown senile by 2024.
Are these things *possible* within a small time frame? They certainly are. Trump himself demonstrates how quickly norms can be changed.
What’s wrong with US democracy isn’t just Trump, it’s an incompetent opposition party that people hate so much they’d rather trust something like Trump.
Finally yes, you mentioned approval voting. Would that ever be enough? Why are you putting all your eggs in just this one basket? IMO it’s a clear sign of EA’s myopia and lack of engagement with election theory, to ignore what is out there such as Single Transferable Vote, condorcet methods, and STAR voting. Even in this small niche of election reform in my opinion EA is far behind the theory.