A Newcomer's Critique of EA - Underprioritizing Systems Change?

This is my first post, so I’m eager to hear feedback. Hope it stimulates discussion!

I would like to share my perspective as a newcomer to the EA community–someone who has read a couple external articles about EA from larger news sites and a dozen or so forum posts. From this position, my useful contributions will probably be limited to a couple categories:

1. Reporting my perception of EA from the outside to provide anecdotal evidence that may aid recruiting or outreach efforts
2. Introducing relatively novel discussions

In this post, I am hoping to do both, by giving an initial reaction to the priorities and methods that I have gathered that the EA community favors. 

From what I have seen, EA is not very involved in the political sphere, with a spoken or unspoken consensus that the most pressing issues are the following:

1. Global extreme poverty
2. AI risk, nuclear risk, climate risk, biorisk, and general technological regulation

To address these priorities, EAs (seem to) favor extremely direct interventions: direct donation via GiveWell and similar organizations and direct, specific advocacy for greater international and domestic cooperation to keep potentially dangerous technologies under control.

Again, I could be missing huge parts of the average EA’s agenda. This is just my interpretation of the community’s priorities. With that said, I would like to offer some constructive criticism of this approach, which to me reflects an attitude of “trust the system and make the greatest impact on the world you can from within the system” that may lead to overlooking the potential to do high-impact work by changing the system itself.

After all, in a world that already has the productive capacity to feed and house everyone, mustn’t both the source of and solution to our most pressing problems come from underlying systems of governance, culture, and ideology? And, if these systems will determine the majority of future human happiness, as well as humanity's resilience to existential risks, then is it not worth investing more time and social capital, if not money, into improving those systems? 

For example, it appears to me that economic and political inequality within both developed and developing countries is one the most significant chronic failures of the global system. The conclusion I jump to is that, to have the greatest impact, it is worthwhile to expend certain resources on reducing inequality and democratizing institutions, rather than focusing exclusively on work done from within the system, such as earning-to-give. 

I want to explore the issue of inequality further because I think it is an integral concept for a movement that advocates giving from the globally well-off to the globally worse-off. I will argue that reducing this inequality through underlying structural means, in addition to manual corrections via the private sector, is a very high priority for humanity for two main reasons:

A) This is what a world with this level of inequality looks like: a group of the benevolent global rich trying to band-aid the issue, while most of the world faces stagnating or reduced buying power and influence over their own future, and most of the powerful look the other way. Given that the status quo has not produced desired results, there must be substantial issues with the status quo, and although earning to give may help alleviate the suffering caused by the status quo, it may not have a significant impact on the structures that led to that suffering in the first place. Essentially, some mixture of plugging holes in the boat and using buckets to throw out the water that already seeped in must be optimal, and I worry that we should be spending more time plugging holes. 

B) A global system that tolerates the political and economic disenfranchisement of many of its constituents is one that is extremely likely to cause the “lock-in” of a negative set of values. If this is really our most important century, it is of paramount importance for us to develop institutions that are capable of cultivating human wellbeing. Also, dramatic inequality makes us more likely to suffer either a debilitating global war or an intense internal political and cultural instability that makes addressing anything difficult. Political instability and the general breakdown of social cooperation are existential threats not only in of themselves, but also in regard to their potential to damage our ability to collaborate on other existential risks like AI or bioengineering.

1. The long-term impact of institutional crises affecting the developed world

Ironically, this belief leads me to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions behind a heavy prioritization of global extreme poverty. Obviously, this issue is of huge importance–the average person living in poverty experiences far more harm and probably less happiness on a daily basis than the average person not living in poverty. It is also undeniably true that to lift someone out of poverty in Zimbabwe is cheaper than to lift someone out of poverty in the U.K. 

However, with regard to the long-term impact of direct-transfer type interventions, I am more skeptical. Political and social change seems to pose the solution to the issues facing both the U.K. and Zimbabwe. An injection of cash or even a life saved may make less of an impact in the long run than an investment in democratic norms and the rule of law in the case of Zimbabwe, or an expansion of state capacity and the social safety net in the U.K. 

Going further, it is conceivable that the maintenance/creation of a strong democracy and an egalitarian economy in a rich country will have more compounding effects than efforts to introduce democracy in developing countries. This may be true for two reasons: a higher ROI on institution change in rich countries enabled by greater rule of law and stability in the region, or global economic dynamics, wherein the rich country commands a larger share of global capital and skilled labor, and therefore plays a more leading role in resource allocation. 

Obviously, investments in the stability of developing regions and in the institutional quality of developed regions are both extremely high-impact, and the former may provide more opportunities that will yield a high dollar/impact rate. However, I do think that the latter should not be overlooked, especially given that most EAs live in developed countries, speak the local language, and generally make their lives there, which provides them extra opportunities to make an impact.

I think that this is a time in which local community-building and political organization in developed countries may be particularly impactful. Many high-income countries are currently experiencing crises of faith in their most foundational institutions, and a historic share of the populations of these countries are experiencing high financial and general stress. Real median wages have declined across most of the developed world and the quality of democracy has declined in the United States, Europe, and South America according to Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/democracy. Anglophone countries, particularly the US and UK, are feeling the effects of chronic underinvestment in public services and infrastructure, while many East Asian countries and Southern Europe face a looming demographic crisis and attendant economic decline. Some developed countries, notably the US, also chronically violate civil rights at home and abroad, which threatens the integrity of their institutions.

These issues seem to pose risks to the general functioning of the institutions that enable EA in the first place, like free, democratic societies and equitable economic growth that ensures “Progress” actually improves lives. As effective altruists, are we not hoping that the whole world’s institutions eventually come to resemble those of our favorite developed countries? If so, should we not be concerned when those institutions show signs of decay, or simply fail to grow and improve over time?

I realize that these goals are inherently political, and perhaps EAs shy away from them for that reason. Maybe it is most efficient, from a bird’s eye view, for groups who think political interventions are the most important priority to silo themselves off from those who favor essentially politically-agnostic interventions. In theory, this allows each group to maximize their impact without being paralyzed by ideological disagreement. 

Unfortunately, it may be impossible to know what the net impact of the movement adopting more political or social positions will be until it is actually tried. However, I think that if there is any chance that taking a greater interest in modifying institutions would improve most EAs’ moral impact, it is worth seriously examining the possibility of making it a greater focus, especially because the combined influence on institutions that EAs could have through concerted effort is probably quite substantial. 

If certain forms of social stewardship in one’s local community/workplace become signals of commitment to effective altruism in the same way that taking the Giving What We Can pledge signals commitment, I can envision the long-term impact of EA being especially great. For example, geographically-concentrated EA groups hold monthly or quarterly evaluations of the highest-impact ways to make a local impact, with members expected to invest at least some time in the projects selected by the group. 

2. Local Community Building as Effective Altruism

Inspiring more people to join and retaining current EAs might be closely tied to one another: both depend on powerful traditions and forms of organization that can be replicated internationally and tie local and global stewardship together.

It may be surprisingly impactful to lead by example and spend time and energy contributing to community or invite-only events. Especially if one believes one’s worldview and habits (such as donating to high-impact causes) ought to be more widespread, investing in one’s own wellbeing and social involvement could lead to those beliefs getting far more attention, potentially multiplying one’s own moral impact while simultaneously maximizing personal happiness. 

I think this vision of an ideally moral person differs from the one outlined in Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. By emphasizing cultivation of the self, this approach trusts in the human desire to do good in all areas of one’s life, assuming that the individual who donates a modest to moderate amount of their income without neglecting the rest of their life will have the highest moral impact through occasionally indirect, difficult-to-quantify means, many of which center around the creation of new, better social realities.

For EAs, I think adopting a more community-oriented approach would demand relatively little of the time and money currently spent on farther-flung, high impact per dollar aims. Far from encouraging a reduction in donation quantity (unless one’s donations were so high that they were unavoidably damaging their physical health and social life), this philosophy might motivate more involvement in organizing community events, more time at the local climbing gym, or making more trips by bike, foot, or bus rather than by car. 

More contentiously, it might suggest, for example, a preference for the government-related job that pays $10,000/year less but enables one to make a significant local impact over the private sector job that would free up $10,000/year more to give. I suspect that minor reductions in donation quantity that result from taking on a personally preferable or more locally impactful career, or from spending a bit more money hosting social events or obtaining hobby-related goods (assuming that these events wouldn’t have happened otherwise and the hobby wouldn’t be accessible otherwise) will be repaid in the end via faster spread of EA ideas to friends and acquaintances, as well as higher personal future earnings resulting from higher physical and mental health. The best community building tools are those that both save money AND improve quality of life, like going to the park instead of the movies, biking to a local 5k instead of driving to a gym to run on a treadmill, or volunteering with friends instead of doing an expensive activity. I think that most of us still have a lot of low-hanging fruit in these areas, and baking these sensibilities into EA groups could bring said groups together.

I really enjoyed the post from a while back about taking inspiration from the Quakers. Building novel subcultures among EAs and like-minded people could be hugely impactful over time by building deliberately-welcoming and resilient communities. The primary barrier for admission might be something like taking the Giving What We Can pledge and uniting forces might include regular community events and group volunteering. Other uniting factors could be building coworking places for remote workers, sharing tools and expertise with regard to house/car/bike maintenance, watching each other’s children, etc. Groups that elicit a high degree of implicit trust of other group members are relatively rare and potentially powerful.

3. Applying Logical Analysis of the EA Caliber to Political Positions

This is a somewhat different way that EA could make a large positive political impact without violating its sense of political neutrality and openness to debate. 

When people first become interested in politics, they often have a years-long road ahead of them to generate even mildly-informed opinions on the issues of the day. Few have time for this, and even those that do could have saved a lot of time at the beginning of their journey by viewing the entirety of various informed people’s political beliefs in a thorough, categorized, searchable database of political positions. 

I don’t have the technical skills to create such a tool, but if someone could improve upon this general idea and flesh it out, I think the EA community would be an ideal starting point for acquiring data on political positions and opening discussion on which policies are most promising. The quantitative, relatively anti-partisan, and debate-oriented bent of EA would make this community great stewards for the concept. I envision a system where a policy that is endorsed by, say, 80% of EAs, would qualify for an official recommendation by the community. Of course, it wouldn’t just be EAs using this tool–it could expand far beyond the movement, and people would have the ability to create their own subcommunities with their own recommendations on the platform. 

With regard to the kind of overtly political national policies I think EA could unite around, some examples of policies to advocate for might be voting rights and universal healthcare (for American EAs) or investment in public infrastructure (including infrastructure following the principles of New Urbanism). By prioritizing the quality of the underlying systems of government, defending civil rights, and advocating for the most thoroughly-evidenced economic policies, a considerable impact could be made by applying consolidated EA influence and expertise to institutions change. It is only logical for EA, as a movement with an intense interest in effective resource allocation, to attempt to improve the most powerful resource-allocating organizations to ever exist on Earth: governments.

Again, I’m excited to join this community and I welcome feedback and/or counterarguments.