I do agree that every ban should be well-justified and well thought out. I think it is worth noting that this law has been two years in the making. They have received written evidence from 88 different stakeholders, most of whom are Big Tobacco or Big Vape backed organizations. Honestly, I think the big problem with the bill is that they only applied the generational ban to cigarettes; vaping and other nicotine products will still be available to them. EDIT: Turns out the law bans both cigarettes and vapes. EDIT2: Only cigarettes will be banned. Some outlets seem to have mistakenly reported that vapes are included in the generational ban. 

(Protecting civil liberties is a popular argument for Big Tobacco / Vape lobbyists to use against stricter laws. )

First, to be clear, I am not saying illicit tobacco trade does not exist. It certainly does and is a problem.

But when it comes to tobacco, it helps to always be a bit paranoid about every claim that you hear. Big Tobacco does often argue that raising taxes / making laws more stringent is risky, because it could lead to increased illicit trade. But this argument does not actually hold up. Illicit cigarette sales in the UK over the last few decades: 

When it comes to Australia: well, it does seems that the article I linked above does not really hold up here, right? Australia does have a massive problem with illicit sales. Now, there certainly are some former law enforcement officers often appearing on Australian media who say that the only way to deal with this problem is that the tax should be lowered. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, turns out that they are usually funded by Big Tobacco, even if they don't disclose it. 

I am no expert on the best way to crack down on illicit trade, but I do believe that if the UK could deal with this issue, so can Australia, if it tries harder. I do wonder if lobbying for more funding / helping the AU government come up with novel ways to solve this problem could be an effective intervention. I do not believe that the correct answer to this problem is that we should just give up and let the tobacco companies get the excise lowered. Tobacco taxes are the most effective way to drive behaviour change, after all.

The UK is set to pass a law that bans the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2008. Once the king signs it into law, the UK will become the second country in the world to introduce a generational smoking ban, after the Maldives did so last November. (New Zealand also considered such a ban a few years ago, but did not go through with it.) 

My takeaways from reading the NYT article:

1. Social expectations have (at least in the U.S., which the piece mostly focuses on; it might be a bit different in Europe and other parts of the world) somewhat shifted away from supporting ultra-high-net-worth individuals from doing a lot of philanthropy and doing it publicly. This is sad. We should think if we could somehow help change that. People giving a lot of money to effective causes is something that definitely deserves to be praised and celebrated.
2. There is a lack of accountability for the pledgers. My guess is that Giving Pledge could benefit from scaling up their team significantly to contact and engage donors more regularly. On the other hand, I think society should hold the pledges more to account, and call out people who do not start donating.

Another, less plausible explanation for the slow-down in Giving Pledge sign-ups might be the growth of Founders Pledge in recent years. Some people who would have signed the Giving Pledge in the past might now sign the Founders Pledge instead.^[1] Anecdotal evidence from my own country supports this hypothesis: no person has signed Giving, but four billionaires / UHNWIs have signed Founders.

1. ^{^}

   Giving and Founders are not perfect substitutes; Founders also targets early-stage founders who are not yet (ultra) wealthy.)

The European Citizens’ Initiative is an underutilized tool for driving policy change in the EU, happy to see someone using it.

How do you plan to reach 1,000,000 signatures?

This is probably not a great idea, but throwing it out here anyway: since Netflix now has ads, we could buy commercials that run before the start of each episode. We could use this to give viewers a very brief intro to what effective altruism really is.

Great and well-researched post, thanks for writing!

Maybe someone should start an incubator program to help people start EA-aligned YouTube channels.

I wonder if this could be a potential intervention strategy to help quit addictions: we pay people to continue to do something they have so far been doing for free because they are addicted, and thus make it feel like work and less fun. Probably this would not work for everyone, but maybe for some people, as was the case with you, it could be an effective way to help them quit their addiction.

What do you think are the most important actions that could be taken to fight corruption in Nigeria right now? This is obviously a really big question, and I do not expect you to have a complete solution to this problem; I'm just curious to get your thoughts.

Is it about making the budget and how the government spends money more transparent, so people know exactly how much money is supposed to be going to any particular thing? Is it about better law enforcement to crack down on corruption (or is there also a problem that many of the people who are supposed to fight corruption are also likely to be corrupt themselves?)? Do we need more independent journalism to discover and highlight acts of corruption? Is there a problem that much of the illicit proceeds from corruption are channeled overseas, so we need governments in Europe, U.S., the Middle East, to help discover illegal flows and freeze these assets? Or something else?

My understanding is that for a country to successfully get rid of corruption, it really takes a mindset shift from the society at large: acknowledge the devastation that corruption causes and stop thinking of taking bribes or grifting public funds as something normal and acceptable. Getting to that point can take a long time, but one has to start somewhere.