Hello, my name’s Bella Forristal. I work at 80,000 Hours, as the head of marketing.
I’m interested in animal advocacy, moral circle expansion, and normative ethics.
Previously, I worked in community building with the Global Challenges Project and EA Oxford, and have interned at Charity Entrepreneurship.
Please feel free to email me to connect at bellaforristal@gmail.com, or leave anonymous feedback at https://www.admonymous.co/bellaforristal :)
It can be difficult to have conversations about socialism without it becoming politically and emotionally charged.
Still, when I have been able to, my experience is that EAs generally share a great deal of the core beliefs that socialists do about what an ideally organised society looks like, and what capitalism gets wrong.
The question is then ‘should (some) EAs advocate for socialism?’ I think I’m rather more uncertain than you are on that front. Some broad intuitions driving my pessimism:
Many dedicated and talented people have tried very hard to advocate for socialism for decades, and I think they haven’t made as much progress as they might (or indeed, as EAs have on their issues of choice in much less time) → i.e. I think tractability is low
I’m pessmistic about moral suasion in general
Revolution is, to put it lightly, a fraught concept
I’m often confused about what precisely people mean when they argue against “individualistic” decision making (this isn’t to say they’re wrong — just that I’ve not yet found the arguments convincing)