"Years ago, I sketched an analogy between think tanks and organized religion. After all, what are advocates but evangelists of a secularized social gospel dedicated to apostolic reform? " now do it for EA!
This is the clearest expression I've heard yet of these ideas. Well done!
I wonder about this diagnosis though:
"Of course, as a collective action problem, the advocacy arms race could be easily forestalled by amending nonprofit law or the US tax code. But who would fund that whitepaper? The endogeneity of US policymaking to organizations dependent on private philanthropy makes reforms aimed at reining in the sector nearly impossible to imagine. As a result, nonprofits and foundations remain deeply undertheorized compared to, say, corporate governance or public administration."
Instead of thinking of this as a supply problem—what can we do to rein in these nonprofit advocacy orgs—could we think of it as a demand problem instead? The orgs are influential because they're stepping into a representation vacuum. If we could get authentic representation of marginalized groups into our decision making, that would drain a lot of the groups' power to set the agenda. Are there intra-party decision making processes you could use to make that representation more effective, and less prone to capture by affinity or identity group elites? Approval voting for at large seats on the platform committee, policy juries, that kind of thing?
fantastic piece
"Years ago, I sketched an analogy between think tanks and organized religion. After all, what are advocates but evangelists of a secularized social gospel dedicated to apostolic reform? " now do it for EA!
Bravo!
Thanks Bill!
This is the clearest expression I've heard yet of these ideas. Well done!
I wonder about this diagnosis though:
"Of course, as a collective action problem, the advocacy arms race could be easily forestalled by amending nonprofit law or the US tax code. But who would fund that whitepaper? The endogeneity of US policymaking to organizations dependent on private philanthropy makes reforms aimed at reining in the sector nearly impossible to imagine. As a result, nonprofits and foundations remain deeply undertheorized compared to, say, corporate governance or public administration."
Instead of thinking of this as a supply problem—what can we do to rein in these nonprofit advocacy orgs—could we think of it as a demand problem instead? The orgs are influential because they're stepping into a representation vacuum. If we could get authentic representation of marginalized groups into our decision making, that would drain a lot of the groups' power to set the agenda. Are there intra-party decision making processes you could use to make that representation more effective, and less prone to capture by affinity or identity group elites? Approval voting for at large seats on the platform committee, policy juries, that kind of thing?