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.

Yeah, it looks like the impact is probably not that big, if compared to say lives that could be saved via alcohol or tobacco control policy advocacy.

Honestly, I think you did a great job and tried your best. But your environment did not provide the support you needed.

I understand that the Nigerian government doesn't provide much funding for universities and scientific research work. One plausible reason for this (apart from corruption, theft, waste, etc) is that the Nigerian government collects a very low percentage of its GDP as taxes, less than 14 percent^[1]. For comparison, the OECD average is 34 percent^[2]. If the government is able to increase tax collection and enforcement, this should hopefully increase the budget and free up more money to fund research. Getting to the OECD level could take decades, but Nigeria is at least making some progress, the tax collection rate has increased in recent years, which is a good sign (even though increased taxes probably are not fun to pay, no matter one's country!).