Should Democracy be an EA Focus Area?

Is democracy a cause area EA has been wrongly ignoring, or a political minefield we're right to stay out of? Are there interventions that pass the test for importance, tractability and neglectedness? We'll dig into the arguments on both sides.

Selected articles and podcasts that you may want to read/listen to in advance are listed below. Try to engage with at least one of them if you can - or you could pick something that's not on this list.

Content related to whether promoting democracy should be an EA focus area:

• Safeguarding liberal democracy by 80,000 Hours (5 mins)
• Why isn’t anti-fascism a bigger topic at EAG events (or on this forum)? (9 mins)
• Destabilization of the United States: The top X-factor EA neglects? (47 mins)
• What I Learned Trying to Find the Most Effective Democracy Charities (5 mins)
• The Effective Altruist Approach to Politics (Effective Altruism Definitions Sequence) (10 mins)
• Casting the Decisive Vote by Toby Ord (11 mins)
• Democracy Promotion as an EA Cause Area (8 mins)
• Podcast: Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country (2hrs 36 mins)

Content related to AI's impact on democracy and political systems: 

• Podcast: Rose Hadshar on why automating human labour will break our political system (2hrs 14 mins)
• Podcast: David Duvenaud on why ‘aligned AI’ could still kill democracy (2hrs 31 mins)

Content on alternative systems to democracy / different approaches to doing democracy:

• Podcast: Glen Weyl on uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society (2hrs 44 mins)
• Podcast: Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan’s experiments with how to do democracy (2hrs 5 mins)