Yelnats T.J.
Bio
Co-founder of Concentric Policies
Talk to me about American governance/political systems/democracy
My journey to EA:
- 2009: start arriving at utilitarian-adjacent ethics
- Dec 2012: read Peter Singer’s Famine Affluence and Morality
- Circa 2013/14: find my way to EA through googling about Singer and FAaM
- 2014-2019: in the orbit of EA. i.e. will talk to people about morality and utilitarian stuff but not very engaged in the community aside from attending uni club meeting every once and while.
- 2020: EAGxVirtual (I’m starting to move from the orbit closer to the actual community)
- 2022: Dive deep into the community. And now we arrive at the present day.
Posts 5
Comments70
Topic contributions1
I'm of the opinion EAs are underutilizing ballot/voter initiatives. This is something I plan on writing up on the Forum at some point. (If anyone is interested in exploring voter initiatives as an intervention, please reach out)
The veto of SB 1047 should also raise the salience of ballot initiatives in EA.
I see one piece of important analysis is missing: the money differential
Campaigns that lost in 2024 (TLDR: 4 of the 5 were outspent)
- No on Measure J (California) outspent the yes campaign 8 to 1 (according to the yes campaign). Measure J is losing by 70 percentage points with 75% of the vote reported.
- As of Sept 30: in favor of Initiatives 308 & 309 (Colorado) spent $244,000; Hands off my Hat (this biggest group opposing 308 and which also opposes 309) spent $368,000. 308 lost by 16 percentage points.
- As of Nov 4: proponents of Iniaitive 309 spent $0.6 million whilst opponents spent $3.8 million. 309 lost by 30 percentage points.
- Proposition 127 (Colorado) had $2.3 million spent against it and had $2.8 million spent for it. It lost by 10 percentage points.
- Yes on Amendment 2 (Florida) outspent the opposition $1.1 million to $0.1 million. It won by 34 percentage points.
Previous campaigns that won (TLDR: 0 of the 3 were outspent)
- Advocates for Proposition 12 (California, 2018) outspent opponents $12.5 million to $0.3 million. It won by 26 percentage points.
- Advocates for Question 3 (Massachusetts, 2016) outspent opponents $2.7 million to $0.3 million. It won by 55 percentage points.
- Advocates for Proposition 2 (California, 2008) donated $10.6 million to $8.9 million donated by its opponents. It won by 26 percentage points.
The correlation between money spent/outspending your opponent is clear.
This is devastating to find out. My interactions with Marisa were very limited but quite significant to me.
I rescued a two-month street kitten while on the EA Zanzibar residency. When I got back stateside, she tested (faint) positive for a disease and my partner did not want to risk exposing the other cats to her. I urgently needed to find a place to stay with her while we waited to re-test her, and I was running out of options.
I had only met Marisa once in-person before. A mutual friend suggested talking to her. She was visiting family for the Easter weekend and let me stay with my kitten at her place. Marisa was invaluable in that moment of personal crisis for me.
Joey has answered this before elsewhere (i.e. why doesn't CE just open programs instead of spin-off charities). The answer is that starting a chair leads to more ownership and thus better results.
I'd also add that many programs in one charity raises the stakes of the leadership's judgement/decision-making. More charities in a way acts like diversification.
I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.
The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.
Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.
However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.