There is a big difference between working in policy institutions and in politics/campaigning directly. By working in Republican policy institutions (eg think tanks), you can have enormous impact that you couldn’t while working under Democrats. By working in Republican campaigns, you are contributing (non-negligibly given the labor shortage you describe!) to the fall of US democracy and a party that has much worse views on almost every subject under most moral frameworks.
For someone with a reasonably clear picture of the moral impacts of policy, working under Republicans is also enormously emotionally difficult. Valuable, yes, but not for the faint of heart.
Thank you for the response!
Yeah I think I have the most problem with (4), something that I probably should have expressed more in the post.
It’s true that humans are in theory trying to optimize for good outcomes, and this is a reason to expect utility to diverge to infinity. However, there are in my view equally good reasons utility to diverge to negative infinity- that being that the world is not designed for humans. We are inherently fragile creatures, only suitable to live in a world with specific temperature, air composition, etc. There are a lot of large-scale phenomenon causing these factors to change—s-risks—that could send utility plunging. This, plus the fact that current utility is below 0, means that I think existential risk is probably a moral benefit.
I also agree that this whole thing is pretty pedantic, especially in cases like AI domination.