[imtringued]

> but does not himself provide an argument for it, just an assertion that political change is "the most obvious and powerful tool we have." (I think that's far from obvious!)

Argentina, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are basically nations that destroyed themselves through bad political reforms. If there had been a way to prevent those reforms you could have prevented millions of people from slipping into poverty and needing micro interventions.

[zucker42]

Effective altruists would generally be open to the idea that political reforms might theoretically be the best way to spend money in some cases.

But in the case of despotic or otherwise terrible leaders, the problem is that it's unclear what to do to stop them even if you have control over a large military, let alone if your only resources are a relatively small amount of money and the time of a relatively small group of people.

It remains an unsolved problem how to evaluate causes like political advocacy that have very long-term or very uncertain effects. Combine that with the rancor and division that talking about contemporary politics causes and its no wonder EA as a movement chooses to eschew political advocacy for the most part. I guess the overall sentiment is that the money some people donate to feed the Democratic or Republican party machines could probably be spent better.

That said, I've have seen (relatively) small EA grants given to organizations advocating and acting to improve governments in undeveloped countries. For example, the first one I came across was this: https://www.givewell.org/research/incubation-grants/innovati...

[29athrowaway]

Countries, not nations. There are many nations living in Argentina and Venezuela, some do have political representation, some do not. e.g.: the Mapuche nation in Argentina lacks political representation.

Then, Argentina is working extremely well, except for themselves, that is.

They are in a treadmill of unpayable debt that works in the following way:

- The left is tasked with buying people's complacency with borrowed money.

- The right is tasked with giving away sovereignty: privatization and military bases.

People are expected to pick a side and stay busy fighting over which side is right. Meanwhile, the country is taken over. Divide and conquer.

It is working extremely well. There are now US military bases near Ushuaia, Neuquen and the Guarani acquifer, the 3 most strategic locations in Argentina. Everything that can be privatized has been privatized, and provisions have been made so that Argentineans can never pay off their debt, so that they can continue to lose their sovereignty. What should they privatize next? the sky is the limit.

[astrange]

Have they tried selling themselves back to Spain?

[29athrowaway]

Argentineans are happy with their limbs and they surely are not in need for illegitimate children, so no.

[matkoniecz]

"the most obvious and powerful tool we have." is not the same "if it worked then it would be useful in some cases".

Author makes extremely strongly claim and expects to believe it without any support.

[chriswarbo]

One problem with politics is that it's adversarial: if a political cause has opponents, spending resources on that cause can turn into a war of attrition (e.g. the amount spent on US election campaigns)

[mensetmanusman]

It has to be adversarial, because politics by its very nature is how people control the behavior of other people.

[jjk166]

> Argentina, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are basically nations that destroyed themselves through bad political reforms. If there had been a way to prevent those reforms you could have prevented millions of people from slipping into poverty and needing micro interventions.

Now imagine if the people championing those bad reforms had simply stayed out of politics? The more powerful a tool is, the more cautiously it should be wielded.

[k_bx]

Yes, but how much would such a reform cost and is it even possible with only money? Being effective means counting how much good you’re doing per one dollar.