Politics, foreign policy, UK & China.
DavidZhang
Karma: 370
Working in Parliament: How to get a job & have an impact
Hey! I’m not sure I have the right experience or knowledge to make the comparative claim, but it would certainly be worth considering the following:
I’ve heard that international diplomacy (e.g. at the UN) is difficult for an individual to influence, and lots of big decisions come down to domestic considerations anyway
In terms of NGOs, I think advocacy can be a great route, though more impactful if it is aimed at an influential government (the US, EU, UK)
In global terms the UK is a significant player, especially in some priority cause areas—e.g. global health policy, international development, military / great power conflict. You are probably more likely to have influence over these issues from London than from a developing country’s political system.
Whether or not you go for UK or another political system is probably 99% determined by whether you are from the UK. It is very difficult for French people to break into UK politics, and vice versa.
Hope that’s helpful!
[Question] What are the ‘PlayPumps’ of cause prioritisation?
So I guess the reason is that the example illustrates the importance of cause prioritisation more strongly. It’s the same with PlayPumps: MacAskill could have picked a much better charitable intervention and yet still argued for effectiveness, but this wouldn’t powerfully demonstrate just how important it is to get the intervention right.
I completely agree with your overall point about maximising the good we can do, and other parts of the book will emphasise how important it is to not just settle for ‘good enough’!
Becoming a Member of Parliament: potential routes & impact
[Question] EA views on the AUKUS security pact?
Thanks Aidan, super helpful. I too have cooperative instincts but am very sceptical of China and the US ever being friendly without some sort of significant political change in China, though I believe this doesn’t necessarily require the downfall of the CCP, but could at least initially take the form of a more moderate / Western-sympathetic leader. It’s unclear how that will happen any time soon though.
On France, my understanding is that its exclusion is primarily down to (a) a strong preference for nuclear propulsion technology, which is held by the US and UK, and has not been shared with anyone else until now with Australia. It’s unclear what France would add in terms of military technology; (b) the Five Eyes agreement, which means there is already information sharing between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Involving France in the information-sharing aspect of AUKUS would mean changing Five Eyes, which could be a long process and other Five Eyes members might not be up for it.
Not sure how much weight to give this, but I also sense that the UK, US and France are all particularly bad at foreign policy at the moment, in their individual respective ways. The UK has been pissing off European partners ever since the Brexit vote, and keeps getting into stupid arguments with France over things like fishing and refugee policy. The US withdrew from Afghanistan chaotically and without communicating with European allies, and it still has the hangovers from Trumpism which you mention. Meanwhile France seems to be annoying all its former colonies with failed diplomatic spats—e.g. Algeria, Lebanon—while also failing to inspire the military cooperation it wants within the EU.
Writing about my job: NGO Advocacy (UK context)
This is incredibly helpful. For those interested in a UK context, I’ve put together some shorter and less well evidenced pieces on similar themes:
Working in Parliament: How to get a job & have an impact
Becoming a Member of Parliament: potential routes & impact
Writing about my job: NGO Advocacy (UK context)
In general I think the core recommendations carry across to a UK/European context. A few of exceptions that come to mind:
I don’t think law degrees are as helpful in the UK, there was a time when many or even most MPs had them, but now they are much rarer, and in a civil service context are no better than any other degree.
Same for PhDs—I don’t think these add much unless you are in a very technical role.
There is generally less money in the UK policy world. Our think tanks are not as well funded, our parties rely less on big funders, and Parliamentary staff get paid a lot less than their counterparts in Congress. On the one hand this might mean you are more reliant on other funding, or take a bigger hit if you move away from other industries to work in politics. On the other hand, if you/other EAs do have money, my instinct is that there are a lot of low hanging funding opportunities in UK policy. E.g. funding an EA grad to work in Parliament for a year probably only costs about £30k ($40k).
The UK has fewer political appointments in the executive branch but instead a big and entirely politically neutral civil service, with its own recruitment system. This seems well suited to politically-neutral people, but it also means that within political parties there are fewer policy experts.
Goes without saying, but the UK (and other European countries) are less important than the US, both in terms of the reach of domestic policy and the influence of international policy, which means the gains are much smaller. On the plus side, there is less money and competition, and the UK probably ‘punches above its weight’ in lots of policy areas.
It is understandable that we want to prioritise those who are closer to us. It’s natural, instinctive, and often helps society to function—like when parents prioritise their kids. But it can also create harmful barriers and division.
History is full of examples of humans devaluing those who seem different or distant to them: just think about how different religions have treated each other, 19th Century slavery, or even the way people prefer to give to local charities over global development.
We should be really cautious when discounting the value of other people. Time is different to space or race, but is it that different? In the past, people thought it was natural and obvious to draw moral distinctions between people on the basis of geography, religion, race or gender. There’s a risk that we might be making the same mistake when it comes to time. After all, future humans are still humans who will live, feel, cry and laugh just like we do. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we allowed this moral empathy to cross the great divide of time as well?
Imagine people in the future could look back and see how we, today, had consciously made decisions to improve their lives. It might feel like walking into a grand cathedral and knowing that the people who built it a thousand years ago knew that it would still be used for millennia. Or it might feel like what Isaac Newton called “standing on the shoulders of giants”—like when Covid vaccine developers used findings from biology and chemistry first discovered by Victorians. Our shared story on this planet would be so much richer and more beautiful if we acknowledged that just as it doesn’t matter where you were born, it shouldn’t matter when you are born.
We should consider funding well-known think tanks to do EA policy research
Oh cool—thanks, I wasn’t aware! I think it is potentially quite rare in the UK, which is my context. London has a lot of big think tanks and I don’t know of any that have received EA funding. I agree that ‘rare’ is an unhelpful (and evidently inaccurate) word, though even in the US, as a proportion of EA policy research funding, am I right that the vast majority would still go to EA orgs?
Yes, I agree, I don’t think this is a big problem at the best think tanks, though there are plenty of (generally very ideologically motivated) half-rate think tanks in London and DC.
I think reaching out with a proposal (as Founders Pledge did with Carnegie) is probably the best bet, but it would also be worth ensuring think tanks are aware of the existence of the EA funds and that they can just apply for them. E.g. I don’t think my think tank knows about them.
Thanks both—this is really interesting and not what I expected. I think in the UK context there is policy-adjacent research being funded for CSER, CLTR and FHI, and a bit for CE, which I count as all in the EA org bucket, whereas I don’t know of any EA funding going to non-EA policy think tanks. I had also put CSET more in the EA category, but it’s great to hear that things are different in DC and there’s a real interest in funding policy think tanks!
I have added something—let me know if you think more is needed!
I agree that Putin would probably have an extended list of demands, many of which would not be worth meeting. The question is whether there was a compromise last week that would have been better than the war we are now seeing.
I’m not sure I understand your first bullet point—obviously I’d love to see Ukraine join the EU. But now they won’t anyway. What’s the pathway from this war to EU membership?
I agree in an ideal world Ukraine would decide on concessions, but they have now had these regions taken by force. Is this really a better outcome for Ukranians?
Hmm, I think I disagree. It’s different to the ‘fat man’ case because in that case the fat man would otherwise survive if you didn’t push him. In this case, the regions will be taken anyway. So the trade-off seems more similar to the classic trolley problem where you are diverting the trolley to save the five.
I agree, however, that Ukraine should be involved with the decision process. My worry is that Nato allies and Ukraine were too quick to close down those channels last week, and that concessions would have been preferable to the current situation (including for Ukrainians).
Yes, I agree that those options aren’t super practical (if they were, they probably would have happened last week), but my main point is that they would be preferable to the current situation. I also don’t want to reward Putin, obviously. However he’s currently on course to take the whole country. Surely this is worse for the West/Ukraine, and better for him?
On the last two bullet points: the first is informed by talking to analysts and parliamentary researchers in the UK. I think most people would agree there is political pressure (both domestic and international) not to be seen to concede to Putin. The question is how much of a factor this is and whether it leads to worse.
I think this broadly applies to the second bullet point too. It seems fairly clear to me that Ukraine’s leadership was not in a position to concede to Putin’s demands. To use a slightly facetious example, if China threatened nuclear war on the US in exchange for taking Hawaii, any US President would find it hard to agree to the demands, even if it could be better for the world in an EV/x-risk sense.
Thanks, these are great insights and I hadn’t considered the first before. I’d always assumed one’s impact would improve if one’s MP became a minister (albeit depending on the policy brief), partly because the (very few) friends I know whose MPs were promoted saw their own work become more interesting and important, and some became political advisers. Perhaps a big factor is whether the new minister is allocated spads and whether they promote their parliamentary staff to these roles. I think a lot of spads are former assistants, but that doesn’t imply that assistants to ministers have a good shot at becoming spads (though I still assume they’d have a better shot than pretty much anyone else!). I am considering doing a similar post for political adviser roles though I have less experience in that area.