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Why do EA’s prefer Democrats?
Dustin Moscovitz did a an AMA on twitter about EA and he had this quote:
Roughly speaking, the Democrats are better in every area. It’s not a hard question, though it might be later. (I hope so frankly!)
https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1578828433269760000?s=46&t=vJrA2cQt5gplx-0s4AOuiw
This reminds me of the old Catholic split between Paul Ryan and roughly the camp ran behind Nancy Pelosi. Where one side went libertarian and wanted private action and the other side thought capturing the government was the best way to ease human suffering.
I can see the EA argument for thinking Democrats. If we just capture the Democrats then they spend more and we can be more effective. But is that realistic or would we get more build back better which was just costs subsidizing industries that already had inflation problems. Versus keeping more of your own money to self direct.
And of course the old Milton Friedman belief that it doesn’t matter the intentions of the policy but what it actually accomplishes.
Should the EAs pursue politics and try to cause better spending (I find this doubtful) or pursue the Andrew Carnegie route of just spending his money on what he thinks benefits society.
This is what scares me about EA. It seems like it’s becoming just another group that believes if their the ones to control the government purse that we will live in a good world. As long as they are the ones in charge.
I think a quick look at who they actually support and what they write checks for will clear up any confusion about why EAs "prefer" democrats.
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One hint would be EA's connection to what they call "utilitarianism" (which is only vaguely related to the way people criticize EA's utilitarianism, most of which are strictly worse and somehow more life-denying). "the highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the overall balance of pleasure over pain". And taken literally - is a minority happy when they're starving because they didn't work? Is a gay person happy when they can't marry / can't come out? (What is happiness precisely?) EA is also related to - universalism, the idea that all people matter, no matter the differences of race or class or creed, and that we should give all we can to benefit them, prevent their suffering and deaths ... Sounds quite christian, left wing, and much more "democrat" than "republican". And not reactionary.
At least they take it seriously and take direct, complex action to achieve it though! The ability and will to do that is important, even if the goal is more bantus.
The claims that "it's just ingroup bias" and "they're just blue tribe" are failing to engage with the opposition's ideas in a way that's just harmful, not understanding something just because it seems enemy-ish is a big mistake, even if your only goal is to beat them. There's clearly a much deeper connection.
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If the EA movement wants to tie itself to the Democrats, that seems fine to me -- as a Republican, I'll treat them like I treat everything else tied to the Democrats. The why seems unimportant, but I presume it's because EAs is white and urban.
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EA seems very urban and very educated, so we should probably expect them to favor democrats just on that basis.
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Obligatory complaint that twitter is a miserable website, and a particularly bad proxy for discussing politics.
With that out of the way—I think you’re borrowing trouble. It appears EA sometimes funds politicians if it thinks they’re effective enough. And these politicians are probably Democrats, if only because EA is incredibly tied to urban California. I suppose there’s probably some ideological friction with Republicans, especially around redistribution and social obligation, but I’m inclined to agree with @Walterodim that these politics are downstream of culture.
Dustin argues that separating political from other causes is a “false dichotomy.” I don’t see signs that EA (as represented by this one billionaire’s Q&A thread) are pivoting to ignore philanthropy in favor of politics. Elsewhere in the thread he specifically says a major donor is more important than congressmen.
To put it another way, conditional on an EA grant involving politics, it’s probably favoring Democrats. That doesn’t imply a trend towards involving politics, or an ideological alignment that excludes Republicans. It’s more that Democrats occasionally pick up EA Cause Areas, while Republicans rarely do.
I took an hour to dig through what sort of political movements EA gives money to, and it is all bog-standard political advocacy, "consciousness raising" etc. etc.
Nothing particularly effective, nothing out of what you'd get if you just shoveled cash into ACT BLUE (which they did too).
It's not effective, it's not altruistic. EA is DNC politics, full stop.
Disappointing, but I’m glad you checked. Would you mind sharing those examples?
It's a comment in this thread on the reddit site: i'll copypasta below, but the links probably won't work. https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/vdwwso/a_critical_review_of_open_philanthropys_bet_on/
I don't care much about tacking made-up numbers to QUALYs to fit a policy to my preferences, so I'll ignore entirely that section and speculate purely on why they made what is obviously not a cost-effective outlay of 200 million bones. The key will be in who they gave it to. So, from the links:
1:
Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of $4,000,000 over three years to Impact Justice to support its Restorative Justice Project, under the leadership of sujatha baliga. This project partners with local community organizations in cities around America to support the introduction of restorative justice diversion, before the filing of any charges in a case, to completely remove cases from the conventional justice system.
Oh look, a Harvard grad with a pretentious spelling of an ethnic name and presumably a white-passing appearance with just enough melanin to give the DIE pipplez a lady-boner. Man, am I good or what?
"Restorative Justice" being the current term for not punishing criminals at all, but asking them nicely to apologize to their victims, and then turning them loose onto new ones. This program is going to crash and burn once the press starts talking to victims who feel hard done by this approach, or they get their first all-star recidivist.
Their site is here: Note their focus listings. Not a word about victims, only the perpetrators, criminals, inmates etc. This is the same old 1960's decarceration bullshit that helped produce the crime waves that drove the backlash they're trying to reverse. This isn't justice at all, it's criminal support. The complete lack of any shrift given to victims of crime sets the tone for the entire enterprise. This is about throwing unreconstructed criminals back onto the street as fast as possible with no record, so they can be "diverted" again and again and again.
2:
Alliance for Safety and Justice - link broken main site here
The notable victory on their home page is the restoration of voting rights to 1.4 million felons in Florida. So, a DNC vote-farming operation.
The organization focuses on reforms in eight states: Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and California.
Gee, I wonder if those states have any outsize importance in national elections.
3:
The National Council is a network of women impacted by incarceration focused on ending the incarceration of women and girls
Women are around ten percent of jail and prison populations, so this is a small minority, and notice the focus. "Ending the incarceration of women and girls". So, same as the first grantee, only sexist.
4:
Essie Justice Group organizes women with incarcerated loved ones for criminal justice reform. Essie Justice Group plans to use these funds to build its membership, train women impacted by incarceration in advocacy, and lead decarceration campaigns in California.
So, same as the first, but sexist and only in California.
5:
TOP plans to use these funds to expand its criminal justice reform and prosecutor accountability work in Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas.
TOP is a parent organization that controls and funds numerous political pressure groups, home site is here. They are a "Justice" organization, defining that into Climate justice, Healthcare Justice, Immigration Justice, Education Justice, Housing Justice, etc. etc. etc. So, bog-standard left-wing advocacy.
6:
The Open Philanthropy Project recommended two grants totaling $2,500,000 over two years to Color of Change and the Color of Change Education Fund to support prosecutorial reform and work related to the film “Just Mercy.”
Home site here. They describe themselves as a "racial justice" organization working to "build Black Power and Black joy". Given the prominence of BLM slogans and "defund the police" banners and ads on their page, I'm guessing they're on for the decarceration as well, and much more.
7:
The Open Philanthropy Project recommended three grants totaling $7,800,000 over two years to The Justice Collaborative (TJC), via the Tides Foundation and Tides Advocacy, for general support.
Home site here. It's full of word salad bullshit that is at once both vague and ridiculous. This is the last paragraph of their posted mission statement:
America’s incarceration crisis and our inability to help our neighbors meet their basic needs both trace back to a culture of dehumanization. To end that toxic politics and build an America with freedom and dignity for all of us, starting with those who are the most vulnerable, we need to rewrite the rules to shrink and transform our criminal legal system and put stability within everyone’s reach.
This is a blueprint to do it.
Narrator voice: There is no blueprint on the site. If you click on the link that says "blueprint", it just routes you back to the statement claiming there is a blueprint. Perhaps with 7.8 million dollars, they can write up a blueprint. Of course, they are a subsidiary of the Tides Foundation, itself an immensely rich organization that pulls in half a billion dollars a year.
So, now that we've looked at the various organizations, what can we deduce giving $200 mil to them might have been for? It's certainly not going to move the needle much on criminal justice reform, even if you think all these schemes are totally new and groundbreaking and haven't been tried a hundred times already and failed in flames. It's certainly not finding low-profile high-value projects that bigger funding outfits have missed, they're paying into the Tides foundation!
What do they get for $200 mil? My guess, credibility on the left as a hedge against getting painted as secret Republicans. Perhaps a seat at the table of all these wildly rich advocacy organizations that serve as funding and jobs programs for the left in general. This is "Altruism" debased to simple partisan politics. This is the Atheism + of rationalism.
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Republicans almost certainly agree with EA more on nuclear power, housing regulations, and the necessity of college, although you’re right that republicans aren’t exactly crusading on these issues.
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"A couple of kids on tumblr." variant? That is, a seemingly common refrain employed when leftist rhetoric proves indefensible and one instead has to marginalize its importance.
A statement about Twitter's quality of discourse is very different than a statement about the importance of its discourse.
I suppose you do prove your own point, in a way, by demonstrating that stupid takes based on poor reading comprehension can be found here, not just Twitter. And I, in turn, will do my part by demonstrating that dunking on dumb posts can happen here, just like Twitter.
Go us. 👍
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Yes. You’ve got me. I am just embarrassed that a billionaire has said the quiet part out loud, so I have no choice but to minimize Twitter.
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If you've talked to a Blue Tribe person who is complaining about all the things the government has done, and suggested that perhaps they should vote for the Republican (who perhaps has been at least claiming he'll do the opposite of those things), you'll have noticed the reaction is horror. Or perhaps they just don't think you're serious. Maybe they'll fish around for an issue they disagree with the Republicans (and maybe not that specific Republican!) on to justify their revulsion. But it really is just revulsion.
Blue tribers don't vote for Republicans; It's Just Not Done.
What sort of things do you have in mind?
Depressing as it is, I’m rather used to the parties defining themselves by what the others don’t. By extension, this particular gotcha doesn’t seem to come up often—if Dems are mad about it, the Republicans are probably neutral at worst.
For example, crime in Seattle has gotten much worse over the past decade. Property crime is so rampant that you’re lucky if the police show up to take a useless report. Murders are way up, though still nowhere near the worst American cities.
Last year there was an election for city attorney, who among other things, is responsible for prosecuting misdemeanor crimes. The county handles felonies.
One candidate was a Republican who wasn’t QAnon or Stop The Steal adjacent. She promised to prosecute crime, especially repeat offenders that sometimes would have hundreds of crimes on their record and still be released after arrest.
The other candidate was a police abolitionist that gave DUI as an example of crimes she would refuse to prosecute.
The police abolitionist nearly won.
While the definition of Blue Tribe and Red Tribe is always pretty nebulous, subject to constant shifting of focus related to the argument etc... Wouldn't the clear majority of people of Seattle still qualify as Blue-Tribers as most standards? That would indicate that many blue-tribers did, indeed, vote for the Republican, since the other candidate lost (which is what "nearly won" means).
Yeah, that stood out to me too. On the one hand, you can still construct a narrative out of "look how bad it had to get before things hit a tipping point"... but that's generally way less valuable than "look how bad things have gotten, and it hasn't tipped."
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Regardless of the wisdom of that preference...it sounds consistent.
I’m not contesting the existence of tribalism, but of D voters who loudly claim to want R talking points.
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Politics remain downstream of culture. Effective Altruism is the bluest of blue tribe things to be into. I'm sure there are EAs that are economic libertarians for the expected rationalist-adjacent reasons, but you really can't expect one of the bluest elements of the blue tribe to contradict mainline blue tribe political preferences all that strongly.
The "economic libertarians" of this sort are, as far as I've understood, generally blue-tribe, unless one defines it as "blue tribe is left-wing, red tribe is right-wing" (which is admittedly how these terms are usually used).
Yes, this is what I'm getting at. Things like top marginal tax rate, capital gains rates, price fixing, and so on just aren't inextricably bound to personal and political identity as culture war issues. Economic issues can become their own identity if someone off into full Marxist territory, but within the bounds that I would hear a typical EAer arguing for classically liberal economic policy, this really is just a cold, analytical preference rather than something that captures emotional bandwidth. Put another way, "we should cut capital gains rates" alienates many fewer people at blue parties than "there is no such thing as a trans kid". The same is true on the other end as well - "rich people could pay a few more bucks in taxes" pisses off many fewer red-tribers than "reparations are morally necessary".
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Then they are just tax and spend Democrats (with some cult like groups) that wanted a more exclusive branding and not really any kind of movement. Which is a label I don’t believe they want but is perhaps true.
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