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Notes -
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.
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.
"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. đź‘Ť
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