I looked a bit at the expected value of campaigning for Hillary in “How Should I Spend My Time” and came away thinking the cost-effectiveness and career capital value looked pretty low. As such, I’ve mostly deprioritized political work.
However, I’m open to reconsidering. The estimate I made definitely has very wide error bars and could easily be anywhere from very positive to quite net negative. I also could see that targeted legislative lobbying might improve cost-effectiveness, confidence in the impact being positive, and career capital. Definitely worth re-investigating and I’m glad some EAs are looking at this.
One of the benefits of political organizing is that many people can do it in a way that mostly uses their free time, rather than their productive time. Calling a political representative, going to a protest or hosting a meeting are all activities most people can do on top of their careers and donations. The relative costs and benefits here will be different for different people—if political organizing would cut into time and energy you would otherwise spend on e.g. EA research projects, it might not be worth it for you.
I looked a bit at the expected value of campaigning for Hillary in “How Should I Spend My Time” and came away thinking the cost-effectiveness and career capital value looked pretty low. As such, I’ve mostly deprioritized political work.
However, I’m open to reconsidering. The estimate I made definitely has very wide error bars and could easily be anywhere from very positive to quite net negative. I also could see that targeted legislative lobbying might improve cost-effectiveness, confidence in the impact being positive, and career capital. Definitely worth re-investigating and I’m glad some EAs are looking at this.
One of the benefits of political organizing is that many people can do it in a way that mostly uses their free time, rather than their productive time. Calling a political representative, going to a protest or hosting a meeting are all activities most people can do on top of their careers and donations. The relative costs and benefits here will be different for different people—if political organizing would cut into time and energy you would otherwise spend on e.g. EA research projects, it might not be worth it for you.