Who is Phil, and why does everyone talk about how open he is?
Nathan Ashby
Effective Political Action
That mod was as central to r/antiwork as it was possible to be: https://tracingwoodgrains.medium.com/r-antiwork-a-tragedy-of-sanewashing-and-social-gentrification-56298af1c1a7
The anti-work interview was kind of horrible, but not because Ford misrepresented what the sub was about, or wasn’t the right person to speak on its behalf, or wasn’t sanctioned to speak to the media. Doreen Ford built the sub. There was no one better placed to do that interview or to approve anyone else to do it.
What the interview actually did was reveal what the sub was actually about to the recent flood of newcomers. They thought they were there to demand better rights for workers or something, but r/antiwork actually existed to oppose the concept of work itself.
You see these things sometimes—a group gets a lot of new entrants who haven’t really internalised the values of the group, and then there’s some kind of drama between the new blood and the old guard over the group’s core beliefs. There was a much lower-key thing on r/wallstreetbets back when GameStop stock shot up in value—a bunch of people flooded in wanting to stick it to the greedy hedge funds. This was all good for a while while they were all posting about how GME was going to the moon etc. But as time went on, you saw a disconnect—newbies saw Martin Shkreli a.k.a the Pharma Bro as emblematic of the kind of greedy capitalist they hated, while to the old guard Shkreli was a hero (they made him a mod).
The antiwork drama isn’t a lesson about the perils of media engagement—it’s an example of a community partially losing its values due to rapid growth.
I don’t understand how you talk WITH A JOURNALIST and are then surprised when they publish what you say. Like, what do you think their job is?
If Kelsey had a close personal relationship with him (e.g. family member), that gets a bit more blurry. But in this case most/all of their interactions have been in a professional context, as far as I can tell. No shades of gray here.
In my book she has done everything above board. To whatever extent he’s gotten burned, it’s by being too dumb to see the incredibly obvious consequences of his own actions. Which is becoming a real pattern.
Dear God no.
If a con artist happens to give money to a beggar, you don’t go and try to get the money back off the beggar, it’s just gone.
It’s rough, but rough things happen in this world. I’m not saying anyone deserved to lose their money, but it’s not like people were unaware that investing in crypto is inherently risky.
This is an interview that could only come from a guy who has encountered nothing but success until now and still doesn’t really understand that he’s failed.
Yikes.
As an outside observer I appreciate getting this insight, but boy oh boy I would have told her to not say it if I was her lawyer.
What thoughts do you have about older applicants?
I think direct advocacy is the most effective technique, but being an elected official is by far the most effective position.
Having a vote on legislation is nice, but it’s actually quite rare for your individual vote to be pivotal. If you get lucky you might end up being in a Joe Manchin position for one term, and leverage that to do some deals to advance your priorities, but most politicians never get into that position.
But the great thing about being an elected legislator is that you get access that most lobbyists can only dream of. People take your calls, you can get meetings, people will hear you out. A Senator has the ability to be a far more effective lobbyist than any actual lobbyist.It’s that process of building connections and alliances, influencing others, negotiating, agitating for your issues of concern that separates really effective legislators from the empty suits.
And of course if you manage to get into an executive leadership position—a Minister or a Governor for example—you get the ability to just do things. There’s always constraints, but there’s a lot that can be done within them.
So if you want to have a positive impact in politics, and you see yourself as someone with the right personality, skillset, and connections to get elected—that is the most impactful thing you can do. But also, on a personal level, if you want to go down that path please do it with your eyes open. Politics is often an emotionally brutal experience. Be sure it’s what you want.
In terms of framing—this is really important. I often say that good politics is not getting everyone to think the same way, it’s getting everyone to vote the same way. You need to tailor your message to your audience.
For example, I think with animal welfare issues there’s a lot of people who are quite supportive of reasonable, non-prohibitive measures to improve animals’ wellbeing, but are badly turned off by any sort of vegan, abolish-animal-agriculture absolutism. So for those people the message “You can eat eggs laid by chickens living a good life” is way more appealing than “Banning caged eggs is a small but important step towards ending the animal holocaust we are perpetrating every day”. I think groups like PETA are very counter-productive, and send the message to many people that caring about animal welfare makes you a crazy extremist that splashes fake blood on people.
Some people obviously have a clear moral vision and are not willing to compromise for political expediency. I understand and respect that. But those people should not get involved in politics. It’s inherently a field where success comes from working with people you disagree with and making ugly compromises.
It’s a good article. Neither hagiographic nor a motivated hit piece, but an open and honest look at the movement as it is, with all the beauty, tensions, and potential contradictions that it contains.
I think it’s unrealistic to expect voters to take a personal interest in all policy issues. There’s too many, they’re too complicated, and people aren’t interested.
I’ve just been reviewing proposed legislation the government has introduced recently. There’s a bill to replace the National Skills Commissioner with a statutory body called Jobs and Skills Australia. There’s a bill to allow Medicare fraud-prevention mechanisms to apply to non-medical practitioners. There’s a bill to remove one of two definitions of “export entry advice”.
No normal person is paying the faintest attention to these bills. They don’t have an opinion, and don’t want to have an opinion. And fair enough! I wouldn’t be paying attention either if it wasn’t my job.
The reality is that the majority of legislation is like this—unheralded, uncontroversial, technical, boring, and quite often jointly supported by both sides of politics. The issues you hear about in the media are the exceptions, the ones that animate large numbers of people. Taxes, inflation, jobs, healthcare—things that directly affect lots of people in clear and tangible ways. So the question is, are EA issues like the majority of issues, or are they the exception?
I don’t think they are exceptions, or that they should be seen that way. “Place regulatory restrictions on gain of function bio research” or “Allocate foreign aid according to objective measures of impact” fits right into that category of boring technical stuff. It’s not undemocratic, people can still get upset about it if they want to. But realistically they’re going to be happy to just shrug and say “Yeah, fair enough, I guess”, and leave it to the experts. And that’s not a bad thing.
From what I have heard from people involved in EA grant funding decisions, this is pretty typical, and yes they very much want more people to apply.
Hi,
I know some fluently bilingual english/spanish speakers who are not involved in EA (extended family members and connections—my wife is Dominican). Obviously the Dominican Republic is not a rich country, and some of them have pretty low incomes. Would it be appropriate to forward this opportunity to them?
In all fairness, I expect most people would be very reluctant to recommend that resources be directed away from the causes or organisations that give them status.
Having an aversion to “selfishness” might overcome this, but more likely it would just make them invent reasons why their organisation/area really is very important.
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Thanks for commenting, Eli.
I’m a bit confused by one of your points here. You say: “I want to clarify that this isn’t how our admissions process works, and neither you nor anyone else we accept would be bumping anyone out of a spot”. OK, cool.
However, when I received my acceptance email to EAG it included the words “If you find that you can’t make it to the event after all, please let us know so that we can give your spot to another applicant.”
That sure sounds like a request that you make when you have a limited number of spots and accepting one person means bumping another.
To be clear, I think it’s completely reasonable to have a set number of places—logistics are a thing, and planning an event for an unknown number of people is extremely challenging. I’m just surprised by your statement that it doesn’t work that way.
I also want to make a side note that I strongly believe that making EA fun is important. The movement asks people to give away huge amounts of money, reorient their whole careers, and dedicate themselves to changing the world. Those are big asks! It’s very easy for people to just not do them!
It’s hard to get people to voluntarily do even small, easy things when they feel unappreciated or excluded. I agree that making EAs happy is not and should not be a terminal value but it absolutely should be an instrumental value.