[Linkpost] A Peter Thiel-Linked Startup Is Courting New York Scenesters and Plotting a Libertarian Paradise

Ali Breland, a writer for the progressive magazine Mother Jones, has published an investigative piece into a startup with connections to the far-right. This startup was funded in part by Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research. I think this is a significant case-study of EAs doing harm (even indavertently) and should be used by the Effective Altruist community to identify other similar but yet-unidentified harmful support for far-right causes, and to exercise greater care about where it donates money to.

The key points Breland raises are that:

• Former employees of Praxis Society allege its CEO is "interested in fascist authors and occultism and has touted a book that argues Black people are intellectually inferior to whites"
• The startup's key product is a free-market Mediterranean city-state designed to appeal to anarcho-capitalists
• Alameda Research invested alongside other cryptocurrency investors in Series A round funding, totalling $15 million. Other investors include Emergent Ventures, a Thiel-backed fund led by economist Tyler Cowen. EV is known to cofund the Charter Cities Institute which has similar stated aims.

A spate of other recent perceived connections between Effective Altruism and the far-right have been published in various outlets:

• Pronatalist.org which identifies and assosciates itself with the EA movement. Note, the Collins's disavow racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, but were recently key speakers at a conference linked to the far right.
  •  This orgnisation has been funded by Jaan Tallinn, cofounder of the Future of Life Institute and Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
• Richard Hanania, a far-right blogger who has identified his Tech Right ideology as a new Silicon Valley-based conservative movement that, among other beliefs, embraces transhumanism and “longtermism.”
• An initial grant offer (although never paid out) by the Future of Life Institute to a pro-nazi group.