Create global distributed governments.
Governments as they exist today seem antiquated to me as they are linked to particular geographic regions, and the particular shapes and locations of those regions are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Meanwhile some governments are good at providing for their people – social security, health insurance, enforcement of contracts, physical protection, etc. – so that’s fine, but there are also a lot of governments that are weak in one or more of these critically important departments.
If there were a market of competing global governments, we’d get labor mobility without anyone actually having to move. The governments that provide the best services for the cheapest prices would attract the most citizens.
These governments could draw on something like Robin Hanson’s proposal for a reform of tort law to incentivize a market for crime prevention, could use proof of stake (where the stake may be a one-time payment that the government holds in escrow or a promise of a universal basic income to law-abiding citizens) for some legal matters, and could use futarchy for legislation.
They could also provide physical services, such as horizontal health interventions and physical protection in countries where they can collaborate with the local governments.
An immediate benefit would be the reduction of poverty and disease, but they could also serve to unlock a lot of intellectual capacity by giving people the spare time to educate themselves on matters other than survival. They could define protocols for resolving conflicts between countries and lock in incentives to ensure that the protocols are adhered to. (I bet smart contracts can help with this.)
That way, they could form a union of autonomous parts sort of like the cantons of Switzerland. Such a union of global distributed governments could eventually become a de-facto world government, which may be beneficial for existential security and for enabling the Long Reflection.
Such a government could be bootstrapped out of the EA community. A nonpublic web of trust could form the foundation of the first citizens. If the system fails even when the citizenry is made up largely of highly altruistic, conscientious people who can pay taxes and share a similar culture, it’s probably not ready for the real world. But if it proves to be valuable, it can be gradually scaled up to a broader population spanning more different cultures.
Out of all the ideas, this seems the most shovel-ready.
MacArthur will (presumably) be letting go of some staff who do nuclear policy work, and would (presumably) be happy to share the organisations they've granted to in the past. So you have a ready-made research staff list + grant list.
All ("all" :) ) you need is a foundation and a team to execute on it. Seems like $100 million could actually be deployed pretty rapidly.
Possibly not all of that money would meet EA standards of cost-effectiveness though - indeed MacArthur's withdrawal provides some evidence that it isn't cost effective (if we trust their judgement).
Here's the interesting, frustrating evaluation report: https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/nuclear-challenges-synthesis-report_public-final-1.29.21.pdf[16].pdf
Looks to me like a classic hits-based giving bet - you mostly don't make much impact, then occassionaly (Nixon arms control, H.W. Bush's START and Nunn-Lugar, maybe Obama JCPOA/New START) get a home run.
To clarify, this is $100m over around 5 years, or $20m/year - which is a good start, but far less than $100m/year.
I agree with this. As the article says, multiple funders are pulling out of nuclear arms control, not just MacArthur. So it would be a good idea for EA funders like Open Phil to come in and close the gap. But in doing so, we should understand why MacArthur and other funders are exiting this field and learn from them to figure out how to do better.
I misread this as "nuclear power", not "nuclear arms control" 😂