Ulf Graf 🔹
Bio
Participation2
I am a lecturer in public health at Halmstad University, Sweden. Since 2019, I have been helping Happier Lives Institute. My main interests are systemic change, tax policy, global health, climate change, tipping points and public health. I made a forum post about green basic income, and it was the base for this input to the UN together with Cool Earth and Equal Right. Later I co-authored a post about systemic change. It would be nice to become a researcher in the future.
How others can help me
I am university teacher who gladly collaborate to make teaching better. It would be nice to do some research about ecological crises, tipping points, inequality, systemic change, global health or something.
How I can help others
I am good at finding articles, I have much knowledge about public health and I have quite many connections in the EA community. I am also doing a little research and I have knowledge about things that may not be very common in the EA community. E.g. welfare systems, income equality, global mental health and so on. I am also good at teaching at the university. So I would gladly help if you need it!
Posts 4
Comments57
Hi Madeleine!
Thank you for your post and for bringing up this topic! I am interested in systems change and I can probably give you some hints about what is being done there. I think there are many people in EA who are interested in systems change. I was a co-author to a forum post about systems change. There are EA groups that are interested in systems change as well. I do not “work” on systems change, but I volunteer in that field, so I am up for it! Lead Exposure Elimination Project is probably the best example. But we also have some EA organisations focusing on policies in fields like alcohol, tobacco, soda, sodium and also Global Policy Research Group. I am not sure if everything I list here is what you are looking for, but I will make a summary about each organisation.
I would say that One Day Health is a promising organisation since they are creating primary health care in a cost-effective way to fill in health delivery gaps. But I don’t know about “systems change” in that case. But I think it is quite a small step to systems change in that case.
Essential Emergency and Critical Care has a similar approach but focuses on critically ill patients. They have a Government led national programme, and they are cost-effective.
I know that State of Life made an impact report about Tearfund who is a Christian charity that mobilises churches for community transformation. I think they are quite cost-effective even if they are not EA.
Teaching at the Right Level Africa is one of the world's most cost-effective programs for increasing children's ability in mathematics, language, and literacy and it is promoted by The Life You Can Save. The program is used in over 18 countries, of which 17 are in Africa, reaching 7 million children, and one is India, reaching 76 million children. There are many other programmes at The Life You Can Save that might be into systems change.
We have multilayered programmes like Breakthrough Trust, which is a top charity according to The Life You Can Save. Breakthrough Trust combats violence against women and girls in India and creates changes in attitudes. The program works on several levels:
- Collaboration with the government, which has included gender equality in the school curriculum and trained school staff and created mass media campaigns.
- Training programs for volunteers and activists who change attitudes and norms in the local community and individual families / individuals.
- Youth engagement by training young people in gender equality so that they can be youth leaders in schools and the local community.
- Media engagement, where there are workshops and training for journalists on highlighting violence and sexual harassment in the media.
- Influence groups that have strategic collaboration with various groups that drive gender equality issues to strengthen these groups.
- Campaigns where young people have created events and campaigns where they highlight violence against women and online campaigns.
- Because the program works at multiple levels and with different stakeholders, Breakthrough Trust has created a 76% reduction in intimate partner violence as well as positive changes in attitudes among boys and men regarding sexual harassment.
Strategic Alliance for a Viable Earth is an organization that matches experts with people in power so they make better decisions in various global problem areas. They have the same idea as you, about right people at the right moment, but they focus mostly on tipping points at the moment.
Cool Earth was a top charity before but not now. They support local and indigenous peoples to protect rainforests and combat the climate crisis. They use basic income for nature and climate - which means giving basic income to communities that protect rainforests and help them in different ways to empower these communities and save the rainforests.
Equal Right has the same approach as Cool Earth but also promotes a global basic income, global carbon tax, cap and share policy and global wealth tax. They are testing their ideas at the national level in countries with small populations. Their CEO knows what EA is but thinks systems change is better.
There are also organisations like the Social Change Lab that is EA-aligned and does research about social change and Initiative for Safeguarding Democracy that tries to find the best ways to protect democracy. There are organisations working on task-sharing in the field of global mental health. Strongminds, Friendship Bench and Vida Plena are some examples of this. Even if they are focused on direct delivery, task-sharing and their aim to make it part of national programmes might be helpful.
Other organisations that might be interesting but are not connected to EA (as far as I know) but focus on systems change are Odyssean Institute, Club of Rome, Earth4All and Global Commons Alliance.
I hope my comment is helpful! You are warmly welcome to DM me if you have further questions!
Thank you for a very important forum post! Have you read the article "Income inequality and the erosion of democracy in the twenty-first century"? I just wanted to put it here in case you have missed it.
Thank you for sharing! I think this is a very important topic, and I am glad that you wrote about it. I share your thoughts about having a child that might not reach adulthood, since my son is two years old and I hold lectures about global problems / catastrophes, so this is something I think about every day. But it doesn't bother me very much because I use to think something like this:
* Even if the risk that my son die because of global catastrophic risks are unacceptably high, it is still a good chance that things will turn out okay. It is a higher probability that my son will reach old age than the opposite. My son was in NICU during his first time in life and had worse odds back then. But now he is a happy, healthy and wonderful kid.
* What I do will probably not turn the tides. I am doing what I can, and it will probably not be enough. But many other people are doing what they can and I think many people in this community are capable of doing really great things together. It is beautiful that every day, so many people are trying to make the world a better place, and many of them succeed in amazing ways.
* The knowledge about future risks has positive sides as well. I am probably more aware as a parent and more grateful for every moment with my son because of this knowledge, than I would have been without it.
* I worried much and had a lot of anxiety when I was younger. After many years I stopped worrying and stopped having anxiety. I guess over 95 % of my problems disappeared because of the realisation that worrying is a problem that you can do something about, and that risks are risks, they might not happen. Either you can do something about things= No need to worry. Or you can't do anything about things= No need to worry.
I think that your list is really great! As a person who try to understand misaligned AI better, this is my arguments:
- The difference between a human and an AGI might be greater than the difference between a human and a mushroom.
- If the difference is that great, it will probably not make much difference between a cow and a human. The way humans treat other animals, the planet and each other makes it hard to see how we could possibly create AI alignment that is willing to save a creature like us.
- If AGI has self-perservation, we are the only creatures that can threat their existence. Which means that they might want to make sure that we didn't exist anymore just to be safe.
- AGI is a thing that we know nothing about. If it cane a spaceship with aliens, we would probably use enormous resources to make sure it would not threat our planet. But now we are creating this alien creature ourselves and don't do very much to make sure it isn't a threat to our planet.
I hope my list helps!
Over the last decade, we should have invested more in community growth at the expense of research.
I think it might have been worth to invest in community growth in the same way as The School for Moral Ambition. I know Rutger Bregman has taken the 10 % pledge but I don't know how much Moral Ambition collaborate with EA organizations. But it would probably be very valuable to collaborate with them and possibly give them some funding in exchange for help with community growth. They made Harvard students consider a meaningful career instead of a high paid career.
Happier Lives Institute, since I have volunteered for them since 2019 and that their work is great. Cool Earth, who I collaborated with last year, and I think basic income for nature and climate is an awesome idea. Giving What We Can, because of their multiplier effect. GiveDirectly, since they won the donation election I had with my public health students and I promised to donate from my own money to the charity of their choice (and I think GiveDirectly is a great organization).
First of all, I want to thank you for your posts. Many of them have given me new perspectives and knowledge that I appreciate. I want to mention that the two-parameter ortega model probably is a better measurement for inequality, but it isn't used very much so it is hard to find any numbers.
I also want to mention that income inequality is problematic, since it correlates with almost all societal problems. Social mobility is greater in countries with low income inequality, since they have more robust welfare systems. It is easier to achieve the "American dream" in the Nordics for example. Many rich people use tax havens (but most don't) for avoiding taxes. Another problem is when rich people use their wealth for lobbying, changing public opinion, changing politics in ways that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. An example below is a comparison between the United States and Sweden. A country with a high degree of inequality and a country with a low degree of income inequality. As you can see, Sweden has higher taxes, and also a higher union density, which might reduce the power of the rich. Which also makes those two things targets when rich people uses their power to increase their power and wealth. Sweden also has a more robust welfare system that helps people in poverty and also increases social mobility. I hope that my comment is helpful and that you appreciate it. I am happy to answer if you have any questions.
Income tax for people earning below 50 000 USD: 10-12 %.
Income tax for people earning over 50 000 USD: 22-37 %.
Value-added tax on goods and services: None.
Instead some states have sales tax on around 6 %.
Income tax for people earning below 50 000 USD: 31 %.
Income tax for people earning over 50 000 USD: 51 %.
Value-added tax on goods and services: 25 % and all purchasers pay value-added tax. It amounts for 47 % of the total budget for the Swedish state.
GINI-index: 0.395.
Federal spending 23 %.
Employed in public sector: 15 %.
Share of people belonged to unions: 10 %.
GINI-index: 0.281.
Federal spending: 48 %.
Employed in public sector: 29 %.
Share of people belonged to unions: 65 %.
Net childcare costs for a couple with average wage: 32 %.
Cost for one year in college: Over 9 000 USD / year.
Health care: Mostly expensive.
Net childcare costs for a couple with average wage: 5 %.
Cost for one year in college: None, you get money for that.
Health care: Practically free.