Summary for Voters and Activists

To promote welfare for all sentient beings and ensure the safety of human civilization, America should do the following:

  • Bring domestic policy in line with standard economic thought and basic moral decency by implementing strict animal welfare protections, reductions in pollution including carbon dioxide and lead, expanded legal immigration, better protections for undocumented migrants, criminal justice reform, legalization of apartments everywhere, cash-based poverty relief, expanded healthcare supply, and expanded school choice.
  • Actively engage in foreign policy to protect human rights, build good international institutions, and cooperate against existential risk. This includes expanded foreign aid programs for global health and democracy promotion, active and empathetic diplomacy, free trade with all democracies and very poor countries, defense of vulnerable democratic nations, serious punishment of crimes against humanity, responsible nuclear deterrence, perpetual efforts to tighten nuclear and biological arms control, and maintenance of a strong conventional military.
  • Reform the political system with measures like replacing first-past-the-post voting with STAR voting, granting statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., respecting self-determination for Greater Idaho, giving more resources to Congress, abolishing the filibuster, reducing local zoning authority, and replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote.

The highest priority issues for activism and career choices are animal welfare, foreign aid, emerging technology risks, nuclear security, and US-China relations.

Introduction

The page is meant to guide voters and activists who recognize the importance of total welfare. I aggregate research and expert opinions on policy impacts from a wide range of domains. If evidence and argument generally point to one point of view, I take that position. If a dispute is unsolved then I remain agnostic. With this central reference based on the latest research and ideas, scattered arguments and shaky narratives about politics can be replaced with reliable consensus knowledge. As much as political disagreements may seem intractable and subjective, acknowledging the correct ethical and methodological principles can go a long way in simplifying disagreements and producing decisive conclusions.

This guidance is not only for the basic questions about what policies are better than others. It is also important to determine how much better certain policies are, and to determine just how robust these political judgments are, for the sake of priority setting. Coherent prioritization allows us to score political parties and candidates with combined scores reflecting all their political strengths and weaknesses.

Hopefully this will set an example for better political judgment and debate. Carefully maintained central collections of research and arguments are much better for the political community than informally memorizing social media slam dunks, lone cherrypicked studies, blogs and videos, journalism, or other dubious media. If someone still disagrees substantively with the content of this report, they can create a clone and show how they can do things better. It would even be possible to combine multiple reports and compute mutually beneficial compromises, using Will MacAskill's moral uncertainty framework.

For more description of the general doctrine lying behind this project, see my post on The Political Prioritization Process.

I have done four comparisons of politicians using this policy platform. I have analyzed the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral election, the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, and the 2020 presidential election, providing recommendations for voting and activism.

This page is a constant work in progress, I am frequently making changes based on new research, ideas, and feedback.

Methodology

Goal

When judging among the political policies which are agreeable and lawful enough to be accepted by a notable portion of voters, we must decide on the basis of how close they come to maximizing total expected welfare for all sentient beings. For an explanation of why this point of view is philosophically correct, and an explanation of how many typical differences in ethics wouldn’t change much of this report, see this document.

While the overall thrust of this report is clearly normative, the remaining work to be done – predicting which specific policies will lead to increases in welfare – can be understood as a factual descriptive inquiry, in the most basic sense.

I’ve selected the goal of maximizing well-being. However, I think it would be inappropriate to assume that this is a moral fact in the sense that it can be used to make predictions about how people will behaveIn other words, I don’t think it’s extra likely that philosophers, laymen or superintelligences in the future will actually endorse this idea and follow it, even if they are basically rational and smart and kind. Instead, I assume that there is no logically deterministic arc aligning agents with any particular moral values. This can matter for making a few long-term judgments; specifically, we cannot assume that our descendants and successors will have good goals..

Approach

Determining the correct point of view in each topic

For each topic, I start by identifying preferred political positions. I generally do this according to several sound principles.

Explicit welfarism

Even after agreeing in theory with the goal of maximizing welfare, some people still believe that explicitly focusing on welfare outcomes is not as reliable a guide to welfare as evaluating policies in terms of principles of rights, fairness, and other nonconsequentialist ideas. However, this view is flawed.It is most plausible by default to presume that attempts to maximize X are in fact the best way to maximize X; arguing otherwise requires demonstration of specific patterns of irrationality or other failure modes. But as far as I can tell, the philosophical thought experiment of self-effacing utilitarianism has not been substantiated by any serious empirical evidence or modeling. Historical examples (such as the Soviet Union being an example where utilitarian decision making arguably caused mass suffering, or welfarist policies in liberal democratic countries being examples where utilitarian decision making apparently works well) are flawed because there are confounding institutional and social determinants of how things unfold, and there is no available comparison between societies which differ only in terms of philosophical methods. No philosophical framework has produced consistently good results in the real world. It's certainly plausible that utilitarianism is self-effacing in the context of simple day-to-day decision makingFor instance, if we decided what to wear, eat and say all thru the lens of maximizing aggregate happiness, we might not be very happy. That being said, this is just an intuition that many people have, and I haven't seen strong reasons to believe that it is actually true. Hedonism seems to have no impact on happiness, but that is a different matter, focusing solely on the individual rather than the community., but that's not relevant in the context of serious policy analysis.

Besides, since this report only looks at politically plausible ideas in America, every policy choice supported here also has support from a sizeable fraction of the American population, which suggests that there are some intuitive and nonconsequentialist ethical arguments in favor of all of them anyway. It usually isn't the case that I am considering policies that are deeply at odds with the intuitive beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, because the democratic system prevents such policies from entering the stage of federal politics in the first place. While the academic philosophy community often seems to believe that nonconsequentialist ethics overwhelmingly point to the left-wing side of many partisan disputes, I think this is substantially driven by implicit political bias as highly educated people tend to be more liberal, nonconsequentialist ethics leaves great room for subjective interpretation and nonconsequentialist arguments for many right-wing ideas are academically underexplored. Plus, my conclusions lean liberal anyway, so they are somewhat consistent with what nonconsequentialist philosophers tend to think. Therefore, this report is not extremely sensitive to the choice to exclude typical nonconsequentialist arguments.

Epistemic modesty and cautious deferral to expertise

Ideally, one should select views thru epistemic modesty – looking at the views of experts and taking an average. To do this properly, we need to understood what "expert views" actually are and aren't:

Additionally, there are some caveats for trusting the experts:

In practice, the dilemma of trusting the experts versus oneself is not as hard or important as it may seem. Once you take the time to understand both expert beliefs and the actual arguments and evidence on the subject, you'll find that the two usually coincide or if not, you'll find that it is pretty straightforward to understand why and how the supposed experts are wrong (or not even experts in the first place). Anders Sandberg says that epistemic deference is "complicated, error-prone, looks a bit magical but once you start getting real evidence much of it becomes irrelevant". In any case, on frankly the majority of issues, expert surveys are not available.

So in general I refer more directly to meta-analyses and literature reviews if available. Individual studies are the next best source, with some methodologies sometimes being more rigorous than others. Bear in mind the general unreliability of social science. After that come (in no particular order) editorials, web blogs, comments, and the original arguments of myself and other people I consult.

However at the end of the day, if other people have the same values and outlook as me, investigate the same evidence and come to different conclusions, then I return to the principle of epistemic modesty and try to find a sensible middle ground. This is especially important for fuzzy issues like guessing the quantitative importance of a particular policy issue.

Ideologically neutral decision making

There is a narrow sense in which global welfare maximization might be considered an ideology insofar as it is a goal that is notably distinct from others, like living a tranquil life or maximizing the national interest. However, that is a poor definition of the term 'ideology.' I take ideology to mean a worldview that encompasses further descriptive claims about how the world actually works and how we can achieve various goals.

In that sense, it is wrong to assume or reject any grand worldview on the nature of evidence, human nature, human society, the kinds of bias that are or aren’t present among most people, and other dubious assumptions that are common in political and social commentary. It’s better to maintain eclectic mindset that is open to any ideas and arguments that may be useful for answering the questions at hand. This follows from epistemic modestyIf ideological divides are really insurmountable, then presumably we should be open to the possibility of any of them being true, and take whichever actions make the most sense in expectation across all the possibilities., and is also supported by some prominent scholars in their fieldsSee two papers by international relations theorist David Lake, criticizing the ideological self-segregation and fighting in the field. Another paper by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson describes how great laws and theories about capitalism are not illuminating. Finally, Phil Tetlock’s research has found that ‘fox’ forecasters who draw lightly upon many ideologies and theories outperform ‘hedgehogs’ who are deeply focused on one perspective.. My standard for success here is the accuracy of my predictions of politicians’ and policies' impacts on global well-being, not satisfying academic nitpicking about whose worldview is conceptually/philosophically better.

I do not base my views on dogmatic assumptions or flimsy rhetorical commentary about whether America needs a “progressive” government, a “neoliberal” government, a “conservative” government, or anything along those lines. In fact I try to not even assume or reject out of hand the basic tenets of America’s shared political ideology, like enlightenment liberalism and republicanism. Discourse on such matters is usually not tractable, accurate or robust. Often it is also has to be divorced from the realities of statesmanship. If it is the case that a particular political ideology is systematically good or bad, then we can uncover that fact with a bit of patience after first establishing this foundation of which policies are good or bad.

Similarly, when it comes to foreign policy, I don't have any particularly coherent proposal for American grand strategy. While foreign policy experts like to propose unified foreign policy doctrines guided by clear internal logic, I think this is not conceptually necessaryI just evaluate each specific policy in terms of how it will benefit or harm the world - guided by some broadly relevant concrete ideas like "economic growth is good", "self-determination is good", "authoritarianism is bad", etc. I don't find any major difficulties with this approach., invalidated by the political reality where policy is never guided by any one particular point of view and therefore is inevitably internally inconsistent (Tanner Greer thinks that "'grand strategy' does not really exist, but is largely a post-hoc reconstruction of historians"), and often founded on false assumptions that particular doctrines will be more politically acceptable to the American peopleConsider the idea that we need to define a new foreign policy that "works for the middle class" or other rhetoric along those lines. I think such commentary overestimates the extent to which popular support for or backlash against foreign policy is driven by principles about the actual content of foreign policy. In reality, Americans primarily support foreign policy when they see it as successful and they oppose it when they see it as unsuccessful. American perceptions of which wars were righteous or dubious are more closely correlated with whether or not America won those wars than with any normative properties like whether those wars were truly fought in the interests of common Americans. The global system is so complex that politicians and pundits can tell plenty of convincing stories about how a given course of action is in America's long-term national interest, but victory, defeat and stalemate are unequivocal. So when devising foreign policy strategy, we actually don't have to abide by principled constraints in order to get buy-in from the American people; its better to just try every good idea that is likely to actually work.

One exception where Americans do have ideological views about foreign policy is our relationship with Israel and Palestine..

Some people argue that ideological bias is inescapable. I’m not sure of the details of these critiques, but would like to emphasize that I do not care about hidden ideological commitments if they don’t actually make the conclusions of this report inaccurate. For instance, if the use of quantitative cost-benefit analysis subconsciously reinforces my audience’s faith in capitalism, or something like that, I’m not concerned (such an effect would be tiny and not necessarily bad). Only if such a practice can actually give me wrong answers about which political actions will improve global well-being will I be worried about it. While this probably won’t answer all worries about potential implicit ideological commitments in this report, it at least indicates how such objections should be framed and explored for productive reconciliation.

Even if it's not realistic to be properly free of contentious ideological assumptions, it is still better to try to minimize them as much as possible. The next step would then be for multiple people to attempt similar policy analyses, so that we could investigate the differences more closely and see which policies and candidates would be prudent compromises across multiple plausible worldviews.

No distractions

One of the biggest problems in political rhetoric is simply distraction.

Some political discourse misleads by dismissing a policy change on the grounds that another policy change could do the same thing more effectively, or by saying that the policy change would be unnecessary if other policy changes are implemented instead; of course I avoid this. For instance, if someone criticizes immigration expansion by saying that it would raise the government deficit, I cannot completely dismiss their objection by saying "we can solve that by raising taxes at the same time", because it is not likely that the government will actually do that in the short run. And if someone says we should spend more money on healthcare for Americans, I cannot dismiss their view by saying that the same funding would be more beneficial if we spent it on foreign aid, because it is not likely that the the government will actually divert funding in such a manner. Sometimes we can have some expectation for these kinds of adjustments, but we cannot rely on them as assumptions.

I avoid whataboutism, which is the practice of dismissing a bad action because someone else is doing another bad action elsewhere.

I also avoid the staple ideological distraction which is talking about the motives and moral qualities of the people who agree or disagree with me. This includes accusations of hypocrisy, which are usually intellectually useless. Talking about the motives and moral qualities of political actors can be a good idea in history and cultural studies, but the conclusions should not be taken as logical arguments that particular modern-day views are incorrect.

Judging the priority of solving each issue

After the policy position for an issue is selected, I assign a weight which denotes the general importance of improving American governance on the matter. This weight will come from published research on policy impacts, if available. If such a figure is not available then I make my own estimate. To improve the reliability of estimates, I sometimes gather survey responses and informal input from other people, particularly from Effective Altruists. The figures are estimates of possible policy outcomes that do not fully take into account dynamics such as counterfactual changes in policy (e.g., other countries funding more foreign aid if the US pulls out, or Republicans winning the midterms in reaction to a Democratic president). This means that they may lack validity for comparisons with more thorough policy impact measurements outside this report.

Also, these figures are a general purpose guide. In some elections, particular issues matter more than others. For instance, local elections make a bigger impact on housing policy, and presidential elections make a bigger impact on foreign policy.

Limitations

  • Shallow literature reviews. I don’t have time or expertise to properly read and evaluate most studies in this report. Instead I often go by abstracts/conclusions/skimming, look at experts’ informal opinions on the soundness of the literature, and weigh the literature against the general opinions of the field. More careful investigation could overturn some of my current conclusions. The main risk is that there may be systematic methodological flaws in some areas of social science literature. It’s one thing to be aware of some general methodological criticisms of social science, but quite another to evaluate dozens of studies to see how vulnerable they might be to the critiques and to adjust their conclusions accordingly.
  • Lack of expertise. I don’t have a strong background in researching or practicing any particular subject, let alone all the ones relevant to this report. I also haven’t lived or worked in most kinds of communities and institutions relevant to these issues.
  • Lack of critical review. I have faced little serious debate over the content of this report. A fair number of value-aligned people have read this report and broadly like it, whereas a few other people have seen it and dismissed it with shallow rejection. Neither of these is a substitute for hard vetting. Without that, errors and questionable ideas could still be slipping thru.
  • Dynamic effects. Multiple policy measures enacted at the same time may compound or diminish each other’s effects. Insofar as political gridlock will prevent much change from happening at the same time, dynamic effects will not be large. Still it is relevant to note that the value of a holistic policy vision can differ substantially from the sum of its parts. I would suppose that, contrary to the popular demands of purity politics, such a holistic analysis should probably demand a more centrist policy platform than is suggested by naive aggregative scoring, due to the diminishing returns of passing multiple policies with similar goals. For example, while universal public health insurance seems very needed now, it would not be as important if we also passed other policies such as deregulation of medical supply, more funding for pharmaceutical research, and basic income. So overall, the recommendations of this report might turn out to be a bit too ambitious and radical if they were all implemented at the same time. But as the audience of this report doesn't have the power necessary to actually implement such a vision, it's fine to advocate ambitiously for all these policies, in the hope that any of them might be implemented.
  • Compounding effects. In some cases I score policies for how they can shift the American political system in other contentious ways. For instance, based on the conclusions of this report, I generally think that Democrats are better than Republicans, so I think that one of the benefits of granting statehood to Washington D.C. would be to elect more Democratic congressmen, so I give more points to Democrats since they generally want to grant statehood to DC. This can create a circular logic. To avoid this problem, I could split the report into two parts, one for first-order effects and one for second-order effects. However this is unwieldy and not necessary since such compounding effects count for a very small fraction of the overall scoring. I never advocate something purely for the cynical reason of helping the Democrats, it is only something that shows up in parallel with other, more objective policy goals.

Garbage in, garbage out?

The weights and issue scores allow for mathematical comparisons of different politicians or political parties. Sometimes I also do more calculations for things like electability. It should go without saying that the use of math doesn't automatically make this analysis correct. More generally, per the adage of 'garbage in, garbage out', the results of an algorithm are limited by the quality of the inputs. However, it would be a severe mistake to dismiss the results of this analysis simply because it is conceivable that they are incorrect. Any approach to judging the world, whether premodernist, modernist or postmodernist, can lead to false conclusions if done wrong. The reason to trust the results of this analysis is that the inputs - specifically, my judgments of the appropriate policies and weights assigned to those policies - are not garbage.

There are two ways that the inputs may be challenged. First, you could say that they are wrong - for example, that I should not think positively about charter schools, or that I have assigned too much weight to the goal of reducing air pollution. That is a case of straightforward disagreement, and if neither of us can convince the other then the only productive thing left to do is for you to revise the analysis according to your own views and see how the results change.

Second, some people dismiss the results of analyses like this one by claiming that the inputs are arbitrary. For instance, if I give the issue of housing a weight of 7 points, that is just a shaky estimate. I am not at all confident that housing deserves a weight of 7 points as opposed to 5 or 10. But fortunately, changing the weights of these issues by such a minor amount generally has no impact on the results. Because this calculation is a simple summation of expected values, slightly changing the inputs only slightly changes the outputs. If one candidate gets a winning score when housing is 7 points, then that candidate will almost certainly still get a winning score when housing is 10 points.

In rare cases, the results can change from plausible variations in inputs. Suppose that one candidate is good on housing but mediocre otherwise, and gets a score of 0.73 with a competitor getting 0.75. Then if we slightly increase the weight of housing, that first candidate may leap ahead from 0.73 to 0.77, placing her in the lead. But in this case, it would be foolish to place much stock in the results either way. If the candidates' scores are so close, it is essentially a tie, and no activism or donations should be given either way due to the narrow differences and uncertainty. It's also no big deal if one votes for the wrong candidate, and voting may even be considered a waste of time. I only recommend people to take political actions when the scores are sufficiently different as to warrant those actions. I usually do some sensitivity analysis to verify that the results do not change from reasonable changes in inputs.

The results can change more decisively if you make large changes to the inputs. For example, if you think that housing deserves a weight of 0 points, or 30 points, that could substantively change the results. The problem here is that such large changes are not arbitrary. There are in fact good substantive reasons to think that housing is important but not so important as to merit 30 points. If you have substantive reasons to think that housing is much more or much less important than I think it is, then the source of your disagreement with my analysis is not that I happen to do it with math and subjective probability, the source of your disagreement is that we have substantively different views about policy priorities.

After all this clarification, one may wonder: what's the point of using math at all, if small scoring disagreements are unimportant and large scoring disagreements are rooted in substantive qualitative arguments? I could simply make a list of policy preferences, intuitively consider the importance of each one, and then come to a holistic assessment of which politicians and parties are preferred. It would still be pretty good. But the use of math moderately enhances the analysis by providing some extra clarity and precision. Aside from the negative reaction provoked among misguided people who dislike the practice of quantitatively analyzing social issues, it has no real downside.

Foundational priorities

  • Reduce risk of civilization failure - if our civilization remains indefinitely confined to Earth, never using the vast majority of resources available in our corner of the universe
    • Examples
      • Civilizational collapse (from total nuclear war for instance) leaving humanity in primitive conditions with no ability to recover
      • Human extinction caused by nanobot 'grey goo' scenario
      • Human extinction caused by pathogens - would require pathogens specifically bioengineered to end humanity in order to approach 100% contagion and lethality
      • Permanent population stagnation and decline
    • Impact
      • Under the Grabby Aliens model, humanity failing to become grabby implies the loss of potential civilization in our corner of the universe for probably the next 0.2 - 2 billion years
  • Accelerate global economic and technological progress and population growth
    • Creates robust improvement to quality of life around the world in the near future
    • Under the Grabby Aliens model, faster progress leads to a larger civilization for the next 0.2 - 2 billion years until we encounter alien grabby civilizations; after that, the counterfactual gains accumulate more slowly and then arguably stop accumulating as our civilization's resources would counterfactually be colonized by aliens instead
    • In the unlikely chance that humanity is all alone, faster progress leads to a larger civilization for a much longer period of time, until we reach the limits of the accessible universe
    • The three factors are interconnected - economic growth and technological innovation feed into each other, population growth feeds into the other twoDespite controversy about 'overpopulation', I'm relatively confident that a larger population leads to stronger sustained economic growth, outstripping the economic damage caused by pollution and resource depletion. Among economists surveyed in 2014, 19% agreed that the economic benefits of an expanding world population outweigh the economic costs, 29% agreed with provisos, and 48% disagreed. See also papers from two Effective Altruist researchers, Hilary Greaves and Toby Ord.

      However, the easiest approach is to look at the social cost of carbon. American GDP per capita is $59,500, but this does not include some services such as childcare, so let’s say the true figure is $64,000. With the average future American emitting an estimated 12 tons of carbon emissions per year (it will probably fall from the current 16 tons), the social cost of carbon would have to be $5,300/ton for her carbon emissions to outweigh her economic productivity. While there is some controversy and uncertainty over how to set the social cost of carbon, and SCC calculations normally don't take into account other kinds of pollution and their consequences beyond climate change, a figure of $5,300/ton is so outrageous that it can be handily dismissed (climate economics literature usually pegs the social cost of carbon at between $25 and $500 per ton; if we emplaced a $5,300 carbon tax then gasoline would cost $50 a gallon and a round trip economy flight from NYC to London would cost $7,000). Thus, the average American seems to contribute much more to the world thru labor than what they destroy via air pollution. This does not even take into account policy response; ten U.S. states have enacted limits on carbon emissions, suggesting that the real impact of additional people in those states on the climate is far lower. Meanwhile, people in developing countries are much less economically productive, but also cause much less pollution.

      We can also estimate net population impact based on mortality from climate change. The best guesses for the number of deaths caused by climate change in the short and medium run are that one person, both calculated by members of the EA community, are that one person will die for every 15,600 or 4,400 tonnes of CO2 emissions. The latter seems like a more rigorous source so I would give it a higher weight. However, because of the likelihood of strong economic growth outstripping conventional estimates in the medium term future, we cannot robustly expect climate change-induced mortality to continue thru-out the century. And mortality later in the century constitutes the majority of estimated death (see Figure 4 B from the Nature paper). So I guess that the reality will be at least one death per 10,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Average per-capita emissions in the US are 16 tonnes per year, but we may guess that this will fall to 12 for future people. Life expectancy is 80 years, but we may expect climate change to be properly solved after perhaps 50 years. Therefore, additional people will each cause an estimated 0.06 deaths.      , economic growth seems to loosely increase population although this relationship is much more nuanced
    • Unclear whether they increase or decrease the risk of civilizational failure
      • Common-sense view is that slower tech progress gives humanity more time to figure out social harmony and safety measures to survive the risks
      • New tech can provide solutions to other technological problems, such as human enhancement making us smarter at solving risks, or clean energy solving climate change
      • Faster growth could ensure we achieve important breakthroughs before depleting nonrenewable resources
      • A recent global priorities paperSee Aschenbrenner (2019). Discussion of the paper can be found here. modeled the relationship between economic growth and existential risk, and found that faster economic growth decreases x-risk. The model does have some questionable assumptions, such as neglecting competitive dynamics (like arms races) and treating existential risk as wholly dependent upon the level of consumption when technology/innovation probably play a role as well
      • Larger population may increase or reduce the risk, more likely reduces it
      • Interplanetary space colonization has no clear impact on risks like warfare, biotechnology, and nanotechnology; interstellar colonization probably decreases risk
    • Ways to accelerate progress
      • Boosting economic growth, technological innovation, and fertility thru various policy measures
      • Improved cognitive traits such as intelligenceThe significance of IQ is demonstrated by an extensive body of psychological research at the individual level and some economic research at the national level. Intelligence is also associated with a slightly lower risk of psychopathology. and conscientiousness
      • Prudent fiscal policy - finding the optimal balance of debt and spending to GDP. Heterodox theories that very large debts are not harmful, or that the budget must be balanced, are both wrong. Keynesian spending is not a good argument for implementing policiesCertain policies are sometimes supported by arguments which simply apply the general Keynesian logic that any increase in government spending boosts the economy. For example, this has been done for basic income: see this Roosevelt Institute report, which was heavily criticized on r/badeconomics. It has also been done for Medicare-for-All. These arguments apply about equally well to any kind of government spending. However, the validity of the naive Keynesian assumptions is strongly doubted by many economists.. Excessive budgets can also be politically deleterious, as the public conception of the government changes from a meritorious service to a jobs program, making it unreasonably difficult to implement spending cutbacks and efficiency improvements
    • Peripheral impacts
      • Unemployment doesn’t clearly cause crime; often it has no effect or even reduces crimeThe introduction to this 2009 paper goes over some empirical studies which have shown that unemployment variously has a weakly positive or negative impact on crime rates. The paper itself gives a theoretical argument for an ambiguous relationship between unemployment and crime. Another empirical study, not mentioned, argued that increases in unemployment lead to decreases in motor vehicle theft. depending on the type of crime and apprehension rates
  • Reorganize society in ways that put us on a long-term trajectory to a better-organized, higher-quality society
    • If social change is determined by economic factors then it doesn't have a direct counterfactual long-run impact. For example, women's suffrage seems like it would have happened sooner or later anyway, regardless of whether the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted in 1920
    • Social change may happen periodically with no determining factors, in which case it has no direct long-run impact - you can make the world different for a generation or two but eventually it will change again anyway
    • Political economy is important - the distribution of wealth and the structure of the economy could have durable impacts
    • Accelerate comparative economic and population growth in certain countries
      • Accelerate comparative growth in countries which are more responsible and ethical players in the international system
        • My country rankings give points to countries for being democratic, being on the right side of military disputes, protecting animals, protecting LGBT freedom, protecting economic freedom, and having an EA community. The scores are adjusted for the level of economic development (PPP-adjusted GDP per capita). So the goal is to prioritize countries which are good relative to their level of poverty
          • Countries which uniquely deserve to be mader richer and more powerful: India, the USA, Japan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, France, the UK, Tanzania, Italy, South Korea, Spain, Ukraine, Canada, Poland, Australia, Niger, Taiwan
          • Countries which should not become stronger: China, Russia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Vietnam, Iran, Burma, Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, Venezuela
        • (The Good Country Index is badly flawed)
      • Accelerate comparative growth in poor countries so as to improve long-run well-being and promote a more egalitarian international system
      • Is it ever good for a country's economy to slow or decline?
        • If we are roughly agnostic about whether we should accelerate worldwide progress, and can identify some countries which ought to be economically accelerated relative to others, then naturally there are other countries which theoretically ought to be economically harmed relative to others
        • If a bad country is growing quickly then slowing its growth seems like a good priority
        • Economic contractions can be politically and socially pernicious, so we should not try to cause them even in bad countries, except in extreme (e.g. wartime) circumstances
          • Mixed evidence (considering prior literature) about whether hard times cause more or less compassionate policy preferences

Short-term, robust welfare impacts

Robust, verifiable evidence of policy impact is important because of the optimizer’s curse. Near-term impact is important because it provides feedback that can be used to improve future efforts. Here I rate policy goals in terms of their robustly known short-term impacts, and also consider how likely they are to have large downsides in the long run.

Long-term trajectory

Economic and technological advancement

Global growth

On a conventional view where humanity will see steady exponential economic growth, accelerating our economic and technological progress could have major long-run benefits, comparable to reductions in existential risk. The future of economic growth is uncertain, but on one model, humanity appears to be on a trajectory of super-exponential economic growth and will bump into the limits of nonrenewable resources, thermodynamics, lightspeed, or other phenomena in the 21st century, which implies that accelerations to economic and technological progress are far less important than reductions in existential risk.

Modernization theory (that economic growth creates liberal democracy) is basically not correct; that said, there seems to be a weak preponderance of evidence that economic growth is overall more likely to promote liberal democracy than to undermine it, if we generalize across different circumstances.

Chronic poverty does not provoke unethical economic behavior, but acute poverty does, suggesting that averting crises such as personal bankruptcies and recessions is important even if economic growth and redistribution in general is not.

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Overall, economic growth, population growth, environmental improvements to intelligence, and fiscal health are all modest long-run priorities.

Differential growth

  • Improve domestic economic mobility and equality
    • Improve economic mobility
      • Insofar as there is inequality (and there always is), we should prefer that this is due to short-term outcomes and merit rather than entrenched economic classes. Entrenched economic classes lead to an unhealthy political economy
      • Economic immobility is positively correlated with inequality and may exacerbate it
    • Accelerate comparative economic growth for lower classes so as to improve long-run well-being and promote more egalitarian domestic politics
      • Uplift poor people, to reduce vertical inequality (inequality among individuals, as measured by the Gini coefficient)
      • Uplift disadvantaged minorities, to reduce horizontal inequality (inequality among groups)
        • Even holding vertical inequality constant, horizontal inequality has pernicious social and political effects
        • Holding vertical inequality constant, horizontal inequality does not directly impact overall economic welfare
      • Measuring inequality
        • In the short run, inequality is best conceptualized as consumption inequality, as consumption is what really matters most for human happiness. In practice, income inequality is an easier-to-measure proxy for consumption inequality. For long-run social and political impact, wealth inequality may be most important, but ordinary measures of wealth inequality are badly flawed because they ignore the net present value of people's labor
        • Inequality should generally be measured with adjustment for taxes and transfers

Politics and society

  • Political institutions
    • Political reform
      • The history of America and other individualist societies - Britain (our ancestor) and France - suggests that the primary problem with our political culture is the failure to reform or replace existing institutions, with examples including slavery, Jim Crow, and the ancién regime. There have also been instances of reactionary blowback as with elements of the US ConstitutionThe Constitution was generally a great improvement over the Articles of Confederation, but in some ways it was a counterrevolution against the liberal principles being laid down by many state constitutions, which included broader suffrage and weaker executive branches. and the undoing of Reconstruction, which were not exactly failures to reform in a proximate sense, but can still be understood as part of a general resistance to change. This has generally been a greater domestic problem than bad turns such as dictatorship (discussed below)
      • We should have political institutions which are generally better; if a reform improves the way that an institution treats people today then probably it will also improve the way that the institution treats people in the long-run future
      • Reforming institutions to be more explicitly long-term-oriented seems valuable, but not necessarily the best way of making institutions work better in the long run
      • Reforming institutions to be more accommodating to further institutional reform seems important
    • Prevent political institutions from getting worse
      • Bad turns in American political history include the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II and the expulsion of migrants in Operation Wetback; avoiding such repressive actions is of course important
      • It is somewhat plausible that America might become a corrupt pseudo-democratic state like Russia or a 'banana republic', or endure violent political instability followed by a bloody but limited short-term dictatorship (like the rule of Cromwell or Robiespierre); of course it is important to avoid this
      • Fears that America may experience a totalitarian regime are very poorly foundedAn ethos of guarding America from forces that would allegedly impose fascist or communist ideology is in some ways a bedrock tenet of American political culture, but a sober understanding of the histories of totalitarianism shows that this worry is rather misplaced.

        America has never been totalitarian and has no meaningful totalitarian political movements. Neither the right nor the left today have the characteristics of the Nazis or Bolsheviks or other such movements. When fascism and communism rose to national power in the early 20th century, small numbers of Americans were sympathetic to one or the other, but they never became a powerful political movement. Any warning of future totalitarianism must address the problem of why, if such movements can gain traction in future America, they could not gain traction in historical America at a time when totalitarian ideology was fresh and yet to be so thoroughly discredited in mainstream political culture. However I have not seen anyone make such an argument.

        The rise of totalitarianism was not random, but a consequence of the conditions of certain countries at particular times. First, there is an anthropological argument by Emmanuel Tood: totalitarian regimes have arisen only in societies which arose with certain family structures - the authoritarian family for fascist regimes, the exogamous communitarian family for most communist regimes, and the anomic family in Cambodia (with the Khmer Rouge). Societies rooted in the nuclear family, such as the United States, have never become totalitarian. And this trend can be explained by reference to the psychological and social characteristics of the family structures.

        Second, there can be institutional explanations for totalitarianism. One of the key factors in the Nazi rise to power was the fact that the military and justice system were very politically biased and disloyal to the republic, and Japanese fascism similarly arose because the military was politically active and disloyal to the civilian government; these conditions are not the case in America. Other totalitarian regimes also arose in the context of very flawed states. As far as I know, no totalitarian regime arose in a country with a long history of democracy, as the US possesses.

        Third, totalitarianism arose largely in the early part of the 20th century, and while there have been a few totalitarian developments since then, it overall appears that fascist and communist revolutions were products of a particular time period with a level of economic and social development that no longer applies in most of the world, certainly not in the United States.        , and fears that America may see mass killings are very poorly foundedMass killings are usually associated with some of four phenomena: absence of state authority, territorial conquest, persecution of minorities, and persecution of social classes. Fortunately, none of these problems are very pertinent to the modern United States.

        The absence of state authority is a feature of most mass killings, but the American government is quite strong and stable.

        Territorial conquest was the essential factor in America's own genocide of Native Americans, and played a key role in many mass killings thru-out history, such as the Nazi conquest of eastern Europe, the Japanese conquest of eastern China, and the Italian conquest of Ethiopia in the 1930s. But territorial conquest is generally rare in the current international system, and the United States seems particularly unlikely to be either the perpetrator or the victim of territorial conquest for the indefinite future. To the extent that it is possible to view part of the history of fascist rule separately from their lunatic programs of colonization, by isolating examples such as the prewar years of the Axis powers, the behavior of the Axis powers towards people within their nominal borders even during World War II, and the behavior of Francoist Spain, it is apparent that these regimes do not kill large fractions of populations when conquest is not part of the equation. Based on Timothy Snyder's account of eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust, it is apparent that the mass extermination of Jews would not have occurred (even in Germany) had the Nazis refrained from territorial conquest.

        A large portion of mass killing is associated with the persecution of distinct minorities (see for instance the Armenian Genocide, Anfal Genocide, Rohingya Genocide, and current genocide in Tigray), but America's minorities are much more geographically dispersed, are integrated into the national society and institutions, and have no separatist inclinations, making them unlikely targets for mass killing. While America has a history of racism towards many minorities, and implicit racial bias seems to linger in some of America's institutions, Americans are generally not racist in the overt sense.

        A large portion of mass killing is associated with the persecution of social classes, as with the actions of Stalin, Mao Zedong and the Khmer Rouge, but America does not have such strong class divisions as were present in those countries.        , but of course if there is any such risk then that is very worrisome. Considering that most mass killing is associated with state collapse, preventing state collapse seems like the main priority here
      • A technological dystopia (any of various hypothetical scenarios where drones, surveillance, genetic engineering, etc lead to a bad society) is theoretically possible but less worrisome compared to other political risksAuthoritarianism and atrocity do not seem to have increased overall despite technological progress in recent human history, and technology seems more commonly associated with social progress. Brutal regimes have used technology but have not been more technologically advanced than liberal countries existing in the same time period. Moreover, even if a society has both advanced technology and a dystopian regime that does not mean that the former is actually the enabler of the latter. Most of the victims of Nazi extermination and Bolshevik terror simply died by starvation, and Nazi killing squads were even more 'efficient' than the industrial death camps.
      • Dystopian governance may appear in forms currently unknown to us, just as fascist and communist dictatorships were hitherto unknown
      • Ultimately, the project of safeguarding America's democracy should be grounded firmly in the here and now. We should look at contemporary political trends with frankness and common sense in order to see which trends are worrisome, avoiding ideological brainworms as well as naive bothsidesism
  • Society and culture
    • Greater moral status for animals is extremely important
    • Reducing credentialism is quite important
      • Credentialism can lead to inefficient hiring practices; credentials are a signal of competence but they are sufficiently noisy, and there are sufficiently useful and underutilized alternativesCognitive aptitude tests, domain-specific knowledge tests, simulations, track records at forecasting, brief internships, and costly signaling of passion for a job (e.g. old fashioned cold call networking), that hiring probably could be done better. Considering the history of racist and sexist hiring practices, it's not hard to believe that even the free market could be afflicted by credentialist biases contrary to financial sense
      • Credentialism creates an unhealthy division of society
      • Credentialism creates (very understandable) perceptions of unfairness
      • Credentialist bigotry, arrogance and microaggressions inflict a small amount of direct social harm
    • Reducing political polarization is moderately important
    • Improving race relations is moderately important
      • African-Americans
        • Black-white racial tension is one of the most troublesome divides in America today. For example, race riots inflict substantial property damage, and racist rhetoric and hate crimes provoke anger and sadness. More generally, the sheer quantity of time, money and cognitive energy expended by both sides on racial issues is a serious drain on American life. And the toxic aspects of America's black-white race relations seem to spill over into disputes about other races and other countries
        • The biggest priority is policy which directly enables African-Americans to be more successful, such as cleaning up lead from poor inner-city neighborhoods; this mitigates racial problems without imposing social tradeoffs
        • Greater African-American representation in state and local political offices might be beneficialI am aware of no real research on this, but common sense says that it is healthy to have political representation for racial minorities which reflects their proportion of the population, at least as long as race relations in society are fraught.

          Fortunately, African-Americans already have proportional representation at the federal level of government. 13% of Americans have African descent; by comparison, Congress is 11% African-American. Two out of nine (22% of) SCOTUS justices are African-American and two out of ten presidential and vice-presidential elects/reelects from 2000 to 2020 have been African-Americans.

          State government is more unbalanced. Currently there are no African-American governors, and there have only been four across American history. African-Americans comprise 9% of state legislatures as of 2009. Specific state legislatures may underrepresent African-Americans more strongly, or may even overrepresent them in a few cases.

          Different city councils overrepresent or underrepresent African-Americans, but the examples of underrepresentation appear more numerous and striking.
        • Racial polarization, where blacks overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party and whites tend to vote for the Republican Party, seems unhealthy. Of course, the immediately important thing is for people to vote for the Democratic Party regardless of their race, but secondarily, it would be nice if more blacks supported the Republican Party in exchange for more whites supporting the Democratic Party
    • Greater female representation is moderately important
      • Female political representation can improve political systems, reduce maternal mortality and reduce conflict in many countries - although as a downside, it can also reduce fertility. These studies tend to look at previous historical periods or the developing world, and it's unclear whether such impacts can apply in the United States where female suffrage and political leadership are already well established. That said, with American political leadership still having a significant male majorityThree-quarters of Congress is male, four-fifths of governors are male, and we have never had a female president. But the Supreme Court is approximately balanced with four women out of nine justices. it stands to reason that more equal female representation would have further benefits. Note that it's even possible that women are systematically better politicians than men and we should prefer female majority leadership, however this seems very dubious
      • Gender diversity tends to increase productivity in nations which value gender diversity, such as the US. The original cultural assignment of value to gender diversity seems to make it feasible for companies to unlock these benefits. Female empowerment clearly adds many people to the workforce while detracting from household labor such as child-raising; ultimately the breakdown of gender norms is likely to create a more efficient labor allocation. However, cultural empowerment of women reduces birth ratesSee comments by cultural critic Ross Douthat and demographers Brick and Ibbitson.
      • Women tend to be less happy than men, which suggests a social inequality
      • Recent advances in female empowerment have not substantially improved happinessA 2018 metanalysis found that gender equality in a country predicts greater job satisfaction for women, but not life satisfaction. A 2009 study showed that women's happiness relative to men in the United States has been declining since the 1970s, despite this being a time of increasing gender equality. A 2016 study suggested that increases in gender equality lead to increases in intimate partner violence. These results may be due to harm inflation: as older, more severe forms of oppression disappear, people become more sensitive and vulnerable towards milder infractions. Another explanation is that the expansion of the female gender role to include economic activity as well as family life has created more burdensome expectations for them. It is also important to consider the other side of the equation which is how gender equality impacts men; I'm unsure about the nature of those impacts.. While there have been many historical cases where feminist progress was clearly good for society, the direct benefits of further change are dubious in America today, where the gender disparities attacked by feminism tend to be implicit/structural (and therefore difficult to fix and debatable in nature) or just small in magnitude. But the MeToo movement did increase reporting of sexual crimes
      • "Gender relations" aren't a problem in the same sense as race relations; by nature, people generally do not form separate cultures and communities on the basis of gender (although this is changing a little bit with queer gender identities)
      • While the political parties are not currently very polarized by gender, we should be careful about the risk that they become so in the future. Tanner Greer expects men to trend heavily for the Republican Party with women trending heavily for the Democratic Party. Still, this may be the lesser evil compared to Black/Hispanic versus White racial polarization
    • Eliminating other cultural bigotries is also important, but these issues don't pertain to policy discussions very often; the only upshot for politicians is that they should be good role models of tolerance
      • Lookist bias, a general prejudice against unattractive people, is possibly the most prevalent and destructive kind of individual discrimination in America
      • Prejudice against 'rednecks', 'SJWs'It is normal to be hostile to people over a political disagreement, but the American right also has a rampant problem of lookism against people who appear stereotypically 'SJW'., 'tech bros', 'Karens', sex workers, furries, landlords, etc is all quite bad, despite (or especially because of) the fact that our culture and institutions often overlook these problems relative to the more classic race and gender prejudices
      • More generally I would like to point out that systematized bullying in one form or another is a central aspect of human culture in general, and eliminating a short list of particular prejudices will not be sufficient to form a seriously inclusive society. Narrowly tailored anti-bigotry movements often foster prejudice in the reverse direction, and while the good in such movements does outweigh the bad, what we ultimately need is a collective de-escalation of the viciousness displayed by many people on nearly all topics. Possibly our best hope here is to take some of the ideas of postmodern social justice, like promoting inclusivity, stopping hate speech and stopping microagressions, but apply them in a consistent and compassionate way for the entire human community rather than using them as one-sided cudgels in the culture wars

Long-run weights

The overall weight of long-run issues compared to short-run issues and x-risk is based on a small survey of EAs. A plurality of respondents believed that long-run trajectory should be tied as the highest priority, with many others calling it the highest or the middle priority. One person said it was tied for being the lowest priority, and no one called it the lowest priority. Overall, long-run trajectory should have approximately similar overall weight to existential risk. The sum of all existential risk issue weights is 150, so long-run issue weights should be scaled to approximately this sum.

I don't have any decent methodology for directly estimating the weights of various issues. It is possible to make estimates based on specific criteria such as economic growth and political equality, but combining impacts across these metrics into an overall long-run-trajectory weight is just too difficult to do quantitatively. Instead, I rely on subjective estimates. I issued a survey of EAs in which 14 people (including me) estimated the importance of various issues for the long-run trajectory of global welfare. I normalized each person's weight estimatesDivided a person's weighting for each issue by the sum of that person's weightings of all issues. and took an expertise-weighted average of these estimates.I gave everyone a weight corresponding to the sum of their self-reported expertise in US politics, EA affairs, and understanding of this particular political analysis. The resulting ratings ranged from 8 to 20. Then I multiplied everything by 150 to scale them properly as described above. I use these as the long-run weight for nearly all policy issues.

I still use the long-run weight sections to describe the scope of issues with various estimates of concrete long-run impacts in certain metrics. These sections don't impact the weightings (except that they informed the subjective estimates of myself and perhaps some other respondents of the survey), but they give the reader a sense of context and understanding that will usually make the subjective estimates look more plausible.

Policy issues

These policy issues are listed in order from most important to the least important.

Foreign policy

Policy position

General priorities

The need for safe AGI development also demands non-turbulent political relations around America and other great technological powers. The risk of an intelligence explosion means that nations should cooperate more tightly, because reducing the number of competing actors will improve AI safety. The goal is better cooperation, stability, security and international understanding among the powers in the future when AGI is closer to development, with effective international institutions to manage the development of highly advanced systems. Similar reasoning can apply if genetic improvement of humans could provide distinct rapid advantages.

Merely softening the US and accepting questionable behavior from other powers would not necessarily count as proper cooperation in the long run; judgments here require more nuanced policy expertise on what truly counts as effective steps towards a cooperative and stable world order.

EAs generally believe that we should maintain commitments to defending our allies and reinforcing the liberal international order. See this survey.

Arms control should aim to reduce both the probability and severity of nuclear conflict. Perkovich and Vaddi offer comprehensive guidance on how we should pursue nuclear arms control.

China

Russia

  • Fully support the Ukrainian war effort
    • Russia's invasion is harmful both in aggregate and on the margin
      • The vast majority of people living in the directly affected territories - Ukraine proper, excluding Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk which were already under Russian protection - are very much opposed to the invasion. And even if one were to include all people in those other territories, a very large majority of 'greater Ukrainians' would still oppose the invasion
      • The Russian invasion is hugely increasing the amount of death, suffering, and oppression in the area
      • While Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk deserve the right to self-determination contrary to the demands of the Ukrainian government, they could and still can count on Russian protection with or without the ongoing invasion. Opening water supply to Crimea is probably a benefit of the invasion but very minor in comparison to the severe costs inflicted upon Ukraine
      • Ukraine's government and military are not rife with fascists (as Russia claims)Previously, the only significant component with significant fascist influence has been the Azov Detachment, but this was a unit of less than a thousand men, of whom only a subset (probably a minority) were actually far-right, and their leadership avoided taking a fascist stance. More recently, the Azov Detachment has been incorporated into the regular military and far-right influence has waned further, although some of its far-right members have moved elsewhere. Note that Ukrainian far-rightists tend to believe in Ukrainian ultranationalism as distinct from the actual Nazi ideology.
      • Weakening Russia creates a risk that Russia will fail to protect the republics of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Artsakh from new irredentist invasions by Georgia and Azerbaijan. Additionally, it creates a risk that Russia will fail to protect Armenia's internationally recognized territory against Azerbaijani aggression on the border. However, there are much smaller populations at stake here relative to Ukraine, and it's still entirely plausible that these areas remain largely peaceful until the conflict is over. Conversely, setbacks in Ukraine could force Russia to weaken their position in Syria, where their influence is malign
    • Sanctions on Russia and military aid to Ukraine are justified
      • 97% of IR scholars support sanctioning the Russian government and/or its leaders, 87% support halting oil and gas purchases from Russia, and 88% support sending additional military equipment to Ukraine
      • Both sanctioning Russia and bleeding their military are harmful in direct humanitarian terms, but they can produce offsetting humanitarian benefits by protecting Ukraine, they are good for the security position of the liberal world against Russia, and their punitive effect may deter future invasions by many countries
      • Sanctions are driving some Russian money and brainpower into neighboring countries, and while the evasion of sanctions may be unfortunate it is at least good to shift wealth from belligerent Russia to their weaker neighbors, especially Armenia
    • Give payments and citizenship to Russian soldiers who desert (this blog proposes it as an EU move, but America could also take part, at least indirectly)
  • Push for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war
    • Offer to recognize Crimea's accession to Russia, and pressure Ukraine to do so too for a peace agreement - it's simply the right thing to do on top of being a useful bargaining chip
    • Offer to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk in their pre-2022 borders as sovereign states, and pressure Ukraine to do so too for a peace agreement - it's arguably the intrinsically right thing to do on top of being a useful bargaining chip
    • Demand security and self-determination for the remainder Ukraine, including the right to join international agreements like the EU and NATO; unfortunately Russia may be too stubborn to properly grant this concession, but try to get as good a deal as possible
    • The above concessions are unlikely to satisfy Russia so the war will probably continue anyway, but it's worth trying
  • Nuclear arms control
  • Maintain America's commitment to NATO but at a modest level
    • A Russian invasion of a NATO country is a risk but a very unlikely one, Russia's military is pretty badSee their performance in Ukraine and consider how much they've been weakened. That said, they may recover. Note that the Russian military performed extremely poorly in the 1940 Winter War, fueling Hitler's confidence that Germany could win a war with Russia, but by June 1941 the Russians had reformed sufficiently to survive the German invasion. and European countries have decent militaries with which to defend themselves
    • American military presence in Europe is incidentally helpful for averting the risk of intra-European military competition
  • Push for positive steps in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, including refugees' right to return, an end to Russian/separatist adjustments of border fencing, and an end to kidnappings of Georgians. Do not try to change the status of the territories except by referendum of the people there; forcible Georgian reunification should be off the table
  • Push for a binding referendum to determine the status of Transnistria
  • Resist Russian interference in the Middle East
  • Push back against Russian assassinations, cyberattacks and election interference in other countries
  • Criticize Russia's human rights violations and political repression

Other countries

  • India deserves high foreign policy attention given that it has the 2nd-largest population in the world and is predicted to become the 2nd-largest economy in the world in the coming decades
  • Indonesia deserves high foreign policy attention given that it has the 4th-largest population in the world and is predicted to become the 4th-largest economy in the world in the coming decades
  • North Korea
  • Iran
    • I have nothing really to say about Iran policy, just broadly continue the current policies. (The JCPOA is dead)
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Israel
    • A one state solution would be worse than the status quo and should be simply opposed, at least as long as Israel opposes it
      • Likely to lead to some form of degradation or outright genocide of the Jewish minority
      • International pressure on Israel to capitulate to a one-state solution would violate Israel's right to self-determination
      • Uncertain and worrisome future for Israel's nuclear weapons
    • A mutually agreed-upon peace deal with a two-state solution or a binational confederacy is attractive, but there are no realistic prospects for both sides to agree on a deal
      • Palestinians do have a right to self-determination
      • With internationally recognized borders, violence can be controlled
      • With mutual recognition of sovereignty and rights, and legal certainty about the status of Israel and Palestine, the motivation for violence can dissipate
      • A confederacy could in many ways be more convenient and realistic than a two-state solutionSupported by many informed commentators: Dahlia Scheindlin (liberal Israeli strategic consultant), Peter Beinart (leftist Jewish-American writer), Muhammed Cohen (Jewish-American writer), and Jason Shvili (Jewish-Canadian writer).

        It would better facilitate gerrymandered borders, to let ethnic communities stay in their preferred nations. It would better facilitate porous borders, for commuting and visits between nations, and for travel between Gaza and the West Bank. It would allow for straightforward cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian authorities to fight terrorists.        , but it just seems insane for Jews and Palestinians to share a state when the majority of Palestinians quite literally have genocidal views
      • The triple problem of hardened Israeli attitudes, hardened Palestinian attitudes, and the complete lack of a legitimate, united Palestinian diplomatic front makes peace negotiations unrealistic.
    • Given that 'solving' the conflict with a peace deal is impossible, press for unilateral steps forward
      • Help Israel win the Second Yom Kippur War
        • In order to achieve long term peace and sanity, the ideal course of this war is for Israel to utterly crush Gaza before rebuilding it, just like what America did to Germany and Japan in WW2. Anything else short of Israeli capitulation (which is intolerable) will lead to more violence in the long run. While Israel is unlikely to go that far, it could at least get something accomplished in that direction. Therefore, America should broadly support Israel's campaign
          • Claims that Israeli actions radicalize Palestinians into more terrorism are pretty stupid at this point when the majority of Palestinians are genocidal anyway. Israel cannot win hearts and minds either way so the only way to bring Palestinians to heel is dominance
        • Soft pressure on Israel to tone down the most egregiously destructive edges of its campaign is worthwhile for reasons of broader Middle East politics even if the Palestinians are implacable either way.
      • Put an absolute halt to Israeli settler violence in the West Bank
      • An Israeli government operation to commit ethnic cleansing of Jewish settlers across the West Bank (as they did to Jews in Gaza) would probably be a bad idea, but the settler movement should be controlled and boundaries rationalized, allowing Palestine to govern itself, and paving the way for heads to cool after a few generations (maybe with land swaps to compensate Palestine for lost land)
      • Allow the West Bank more autonomy in arenas such as economic development
      • Hot take: consider the possibility of installing a secular Arab dictatorship over Palestine, one which would be cordial toward Israel and compensate for its lack of political legitimacy among the Palestinian people by cracking down harshly on all forms of terrorism, radicalism and dissent. Among the three goals of Israeli security, Palestinian independence, and Palestinian democracy, it seems like only two out of three can be achieved at the same time, and the sorry state of Palestinian 'democracy' makes it the easiest one to sacrifice.
  • African countries
    • America should pay attention to demographic and economic projections which show a growing importance for Africa in the coming decades, and should not treat African nations merely as pieces of a competition of greater powers. We should allocate substantial diplomatic and related resources to supporting peace, prosperity and freedom on the African continent
    • Ethiopia
      • Continue to provide no military assistance to either Ethiopia or Tigray
      • Pressure both sides to stabilize the conflict with minor adjustments to the line of control, so that the TDF retains control of Tigray (except for Amhara, I'm unsure what should be done there) without controlling proper Ethiopian territory
      • We could push for an internationally supervised binding referendum to allow Tigrayans to decide on secession, but this might have very negative geopolitical consequences by offending many African governments, so it's debatable
  • Turkey
    • Take a tougher stance towards Turkish misbehavior, and expel them from NATO if they don't improve
      • Desired policy changes
        • Turkish-Armenian normalization
          • The idea of Turkish-Armenian normalization has been repeatedly floated by politicians and the foreign policy commentariat, but faces serious hurdles stemming from Turkey's anti-Armenian racism, genocide denial and active support for Azerbaijan's military campaigns against Armenians, things which provoke reciprocal hostility among Armenians
          • If successful, normalization could lead to a more comfortable existence of Turkey with the liberal West, and would allow Armenia to escape its dependency on Russia in favor of integration with the West (which is what Armenians tend to want), thus reducing Russia's illiberal sphere of influence
          • America should try to rectify the impasse by pressuring Turkey to acknowledge its genocidal history and disengage from taking sides in Artsakh, thereby opening the way for a process of reconciliation
        • All countries should cease falselySee Wikipedia. Obviously the rulings of courts are far more reliable than the politically influenced decisions of governments. designating the PKK as a terrorist organization
        • The Turkish government should curtail its human rights abuses and make general steps towards more democratic and liberal governance
      • Expel Turkey from NATO
        • It's basically wrong to commit to defending Turkish territoryIf we focus on the original and true purpose of NATO, that of being a mutual defense pact (not an all-encompassing, freewheeling security and political partnership) we need to ask whether other NATO countries morally ought to send their soldiers to die in the defense of Turkey. The answer is no; Turkey lacks the democratic and liberal traditions which we seek to protect in Europe, it would not necessarily be a bad thing if Turkey suffered a regime change or ethnic fracture, its foreign policy track record is no better than average, and if it gets into a war with Russia it is just as likely to be its own fault as to be Russia's. Maybe it would even be better to help Russia fight Turkey than to help Turkey fight Russia, there is no clear moral superiority on either side here.

          There is also a small risk that some kind of border clash with Armenia could lead to Turkey calling for Article 5 assistance, which would be a gross and morally dubious power imbalance against a country which could be a victim of Turkish provocation.
        • Turkish membership makes NATO slightly more powerful against RussiaOn the plus side, Turkey contributes military power, and Turkish cooperation in the defense trade and control of the Bosporus is helpful. On the down side, Turkish presence complicates and delays the accession of Finland and Sweden, which are together probably more useful allies than Turkey, while also preventing the accession of Armenia which could be a very minor ally. It's also worth noting that even if Turkey were expelled from NATO, they wouldn't simply pivot to Russia, they would continue to try to pursue their own interests. So altogether, while Turkish presence does make NATO more powerful, it's not a very big deal., but this is not important considering Russian weaknessLook how poorly Russia has performed in the war in Ukraine and the weakened state of their military after losing so much equipment. Continental Europe alone has the theoretical military and economic power to balance against Russia, and with America in NATO, Russia is fully outmatched., and may even help make NATO so powerful that it imposes wrongful demands on RussiaIf Russia falters badly then NATO may sponsor harmful revanchist invasions of Crimea, Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.
        • Turkish presence in NATO prevents NATO from accepting Armenia and more generally obstructs pro-Armenian diplomacy, leaving Armenia wrongly vulnerable to Azerbaijani invasions
        • Turkish presence within NATO may degrade the alliance's credibility, as the relationships with Turkey are unusually strained compared to those among other NATO countries, and Turkey presents higher risks of either ignoring an Article 5 request or making one that gets ignored. However, it's debatable whether the presence of one unreliable member of the alliance does anything to diminish the credibility of commitments among the other alliance members
        • Turkish presence in NATO discourages other NATO countries from opposing Turkey's misbehavior and human rights abuses (described previously). Not only is this directly bad, but Turkey's presence as a racist dictatorship whose faults are overlooked for the sake of realpolitik undermines the perceived moral credibility of NATO to many audiences
        • Expelling Turkey from NATO is legally possible
        • Note that expelling Turkey from NATO would hinder Turkish-American relations and thereby make it harder for us to push the desired policy changes listed in the previous section, so we'll have to pursue one or the other approach, possibly using NATO explusion as a threat to coerce better Turkish behavior. Ideally though, we should kick them out of NATO and be done with them, considering that it seems unrealistic to expect Turkey to improve enough as to justify their presence in NATO
    • Armenia
      • The main policy goal with Armenia/Azerbaijan should be to lock down the internationally recognized border between the two states, making zero concessions to Azerbaijani ambitions. Military assistance to Armenia is a high priority
      • Calling for the right of Armenian refugees to return to Nagorno-Karabakh is obligatory per international norms, but it is unrealistic and unlikely to help Armenians in any meaningful way; it is more useful as a cudgel to give Azerbaijan the stink of being a genocidal state rather than working as an actual policy ambition. Since the international community will never do anything meaningful to reverse Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing and racism, it's better to not let Armenian policy get distracted with false hopes.
    • Morocco

    Intergovernmental organizations and multilateral treaties

    Diplomatic tools

    The State Department must get renewed priority so that we can solve more problems without going to war. We should adopt Elizabeth Warren’s plan for revitalizing the foreign service and pass the Department of State Student Internship Program Act.

    American foreign policymaking has an empathy problem and should not be dominated by an Ivy League monoculture focused on a liberal hegemonic approach to international politics. We need representation from different parts of America, different parts of the world, and different sects of the academy, with conceptually eclectic and anti-ideological thinking. We also need ‘genuine cognitive diversity’ to understand the complex modern world.

    Weight

    Existential risk

    The mean expectation of the risk of human extinction by 2100 is 15%. Natural causes of human extinction are extremely unlikely, and climate change is not an existential risk, so this chance is almost entirely constituted by emerging technologies and nuclear war. (Nuclear war almost certainly won’t kill the entire human species, but is often falsely expected to, and could end advanced civilization anyway.) The United States might cut this risk in half by playing everything well for the rest of the century. I can then estimate that government actions in four-year term could eliminate a 0.4% risk of extinction.

    Another approach is to look directly at the probability and expected consequences of nuclear war. Effective Altruist Luisa Rodriguez estimates a 1.17% chance of nuclear war per year, including a 0.39% probability of US-Russia nuclear war. If a major nuclear war occurs, there would be a significant chance for most of humanity to be wiped out. The deaths from a US-Russia nuclear exchange are 3 billion in expectation, with a 5% chance of killing more than 7.5 billion people. The deaths from a US-China nuclear exchange are 5.5 billion in expectation, with a 5% chance of killing more than 7.5 billion people. The deaths from a Russia-China nuclear exchange are 7 billion in expectation, with a 45% chance of killing more than 7.5 billion people. The deaths from an India-China nuclear exchange are 1.7 billion in expectation with no significant chance of killing most of humanity. The deaths from an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange are 1.4 billion in expectation with no significant chance of killing most of humanity.

    With the above figures in mind, it seems reasonable to expect a 0.05% annual risk of losing advanced civilization due to nuclear war, with a 0.01% risk that could be predictably prevented by plausible changes in US policy. Factoring in the risks of emerging technology leads me to increase this figure to 0.04% existential risk.

    Long-run

    I estimate a weight of 18 points for long-run trajectory.

    Emerging Threats

    As a general measure to reduce the risks of emerging technologies, consider narrowiing the divide between scientists and statesmen.

    Policy position

    Transformative new technologies such as AI and genetic engineering may pose existential threats to humanity, while also holding great promise for benefits.

    AI research

    AI safety standards should eventually be established with a nuanced and serious view of benefits and risks, but now may be too early for that.

    American government research (both defense and non-defense) is typically governed by more safety-conscious incentives than private sector research or research in some other countries, so it should be at the forefront of technological progress.

    However, too much heady emphasis on AI progress could simply be a diversion of funds from more useful projects. We don’t need a Manhattan Project for AI, at least not one which is generically based on the buzzword instead of a concrete goal.

    Surveillance and privacy

    Surveillance could be useful for minimizing x-risk from emerging technology. There is no need to conduct any surveillance now; the issue is just that strong privacy rights would be difficult to reverse and we need to preserve the political option for the time being. Historically, it has been very rare for rights to be taken away once granted. Once people come to possess a right, they gain a sense of entitlement and fear over what they could face without it, and fight more strongly to preserve it.

    Therefore, political candidates should not take a strong stance in favor of privacy rights. Whether it is better to be moderately pro-privacy, neutral or moderately authoritarian is unclear. Strict authoritarianism is bad, partly because it's pernicious in its own right and partly because it could backfire in the long run by igniting public hostility to surveillance.

    The 2020 Census has been worsened by bogus privacy fears.

    To do: add other pros and cons of privacy policy.

    We should make the FISC more transparent.

    AI disparate impact

    Disparate impact refers to cases where an AI system provides benefits to members of a presumed dominant demographic (such as whites or males) while providing less benefit, no benefit, or harm to low-status demographics. Often this is indirect and implicit, resulting from phenomena such as superior recognition accuracy towards white or cisgender people. This is sometimes described using the terms ‘fairness’ and ‘bias,’ but these terms are problematic as they may be defined such that many controversial disparate-impact systems could be said to be fair and unbiased.

    Some politicians have expressed a specific opposition to AI that has a disparate impact on minorities. Worrying about this may indicate that a candidate has more general concern for AI issues which could extend to an interest in long-run safety. In addition, interpretability and explainability are rather useful technical aspects of AI safety, and are sometimes pushed by concerns over AI disparate impacts.

    However, in practice, disparate impact concerns don’t always come alongside a technical interest in advancing the state of the art in AI safety and interpretability. Furthermore, activism against AI disparate impact actually has many problematic dimensions.Activists generally intend to block the implementation of any systems which do not improve the relative status of protected minorities, and mainly intend to keep training data and results consistent with liberal assumptions about the characteristics of people of different races. These desires are apparent in the Axon Ethics Board’s first report, for instance. Neither of these practices provide any apparent benefit to long run AI safety, and they may be harmful in the short run as well.

    It will also reduce (but only slightly) the competence of AI systems, as fewer systems will be deployed, engineers will spend less time on performance and more time on compliance, and systems will be prevented from using all available data and techniques. In addition, at the social level, fears of bias introduce political partisanship into the issue, which interferes with AI development in various ways. For instance, it contributed to outrage that caused Google to dissolve its ethics panel entirely. And Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib recently stated that only black people should be hired for operating facial recognition software. These types of trends may marginalize and discourage centrist and right-wing people from contributing to the discipline. While it is good to exclude serious bigots from the AI industry, these practices threaten to go much further and create an unhealthy ideological disparity between the creators of AI and the rest of the population.     Moreover, worry over disparate impact is already commonplace in the AI industry and university research, receiving a high degree of attention relative to the magnitude of the problems. Adding additional impetus to this effort is more dubious.

    To summarize, there is a chance that worries over AI disparate impact will lead to some additional work with mild relevance to AI safety, but also a chance that they will create other problems. Overall, the matter is unclear.

    Pandemics

    Other issues

    Some have argued that AI weapons should not be created. The US government is in a position to try and negotiate an international treaty pausing their development. It’s not clear whether AI weapons are good or bad overall, but treaties to restrict certain classes of AI weapons appear promising.

    Weight

    Short-term welfare

    Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I assign some weight to this issue for short-term welfare. I guess a figure of 1 million QALYs; I will have to substitute a more serious estimate later.

    Existential risk

    The mean expectation of the risk of human extinction by 2100 is 15%. Perhaps half of this risk is constituted by artificial intelligence with lesser risks posed by biotechnology, nanotechnology, and currently unknown technologies. Natural causes of human extinction are extremely unlikely, and climate change is not an existential risk (see my air pollution weight section). Nuclear warfare is quite unlikely to render humanity extinct, but it could catastrophically derail human civilization.

    80,000 Hours estimates the risk of a “serious catastrophe” from advanced AI at between 1 and 10%, and theoretical issues such as the corrigibility problem and utility preservation imply that if advanced AI is sufficiently misaligned as to be seriously catastrophic, then it will likely continue pushing us to extinction or something comparably bad. Diminishing returns to research and slowing rates of technological progress make it seem unlikely that AI advances could lead to an intelligence explosion; however, if we go by the history of human cognitive progress then it seems more likely.

    The US is a world leader in these kinds of high-risk high-reward technologies, as well as a political leader in setting international norms and institutions that shape technological cooperation, though its status is usually expected by experts to weaken or possibly end. So our actions on this issue can be very important.

    However, concrete policy actions to reduce x-risk from tech are fairly difficulty to define and justify. It’s hard to come up with actionable guidance to leaders who take these risks seriously, and what I have written now is somewhat speculative.

    With a 4-5% overall probability of tech-caused extinction between now and 2100, I estimate that better domestic policy by the federal government for a year could reduce risk by 0.01pp.

    Long-run trajectory

    My survey gives an average weight of 18.8 points. This is a rare case where I radically disagree with almost all other respondents; my normalized estimate was 3.2. The problem here is that there is most emerging tech oversight issues apply to x-risk and the only clear issue where something affects our long-run trajectory is the coronavirus pandemic. To be fair, the coronavirus pandemic is pretty important. But it's not clear how it could be several times more important than foreign aid and macroeconomic policy, as many other respondents estimated, especially when a vaccine will presumably clear everything up within a year.

    Respondents may have been thinking about issues of AI alignment that are very important but not x-risks. For instance, they may be very worried about S-risks. But I don't see how the tech policies discussed in this section could affect this.

    Alternatively, they may have been thinking about accelerated tech development, which I would normally include in the R&D section. This would be a mistake on their part. I also suspect that, in spite of my instruction to ignore impacts on x-risk, survey respondents were still thinking about it explicitly or implicitly.

    I intend to revisit this issue with more dialogue, but for now I estimate 9 points for long-run weight.

    Foreign Aid

    Policy position

    Overall, global health aid is clearly worthwhile.

    Other developmental aid, like projects to build new infrastructure in poor countries, is more controversial. It certainly isn't a highly effective way of accelerating economic and humanitarian development. However, that doesn't mean it's a waste of money. EAs are typically aware of the limitations and hazards of traditional developmental aid, but have a 68% average credence that it is still a better use of funds than the average U.S. government expenditure. See this survey; 15 people answered this question.

    The Mexico City Policy caused some damage to aid efforts and actually seemed to inadvertently increase the rate of abortions (especially unsafe ones).

    Female legislators tend to increase foreign aid. A 10% increase in female representation is on average associated with a 30% increase in aid per capita. This study shows causation by controlling for the levels of private aid flow and controlling for prevailing political ideology, by looking specifically at bilateral aid which is more directly influenced by legislators, and by employing time-varying instrumental variables.

    Weight

    Short run

    As an example of possible variations in policy impacts, President Trump’s proposed PEPFAR cuts threatened 300,000 deaths and 1.75 million HIV infections each year, generally in poor countries. For each death I assign -20 QALYs and for each infection I assign -4 QALYs over the person’s lifetime, for a total cost of 13 million QALYs.

    Further cuts to other programs could increase this sum, but it’s not clear what kind of total impact is possible. I can estimate it based on the overall foreign aid budget. The US spends $25.6B per year on economic and developmental aid as of 2016. Out of this total, $6.8B was spent on PEPFAR, plus $1.8B more in global health.

    GiveWell’s evaluations of charities provide an intuitive sense of variations in aid effectiveness – see the 2019 Cost-Effectiveness Model and Your Dollar Goes Further Overseas. Informed by these estimates, I assume that other global health programs are ½ as effective as PEPFAR, with other economic/developmental aid being 1/8 as effective (per dollar). This implies that PEPFAR constitutes 69% of the impact of US foreign aid. If foreign aid in general were affected to the same degree as PEPFAR, a total of 19.8 million QALYs would be threatened. Foreign aid might be increased instead, though presumably at a lower level of cost-effectiveness, leading to an overall range of 30 million QALYs in direct impacts. However, many of these policy impacts will not be felt by people in severe poverty. Therefore, I evaluate the issue as 18 million QALYs per year, giving a weight of 18.

    Long run trajectory

    Some people believe that foreign aid is just a “band-aid” that does not improve long term macroeconomic outcomes. This may be true for some kinds of developmental aid. However, for global health funding and some other programs, it is false. There is decent evidence of macro-level and long-run benefits from health and social programs. To the extent that big outcomes are sometimes absent, this can typically be traced to the inadequate levels of aid that are granted in the first place. In any case, skepticism about long-run benefits of these kinds of programs would apply at least as strongly to alternative uses of funds such as domestic healthcare and education.

    The survey result is 7.4 points.

    Animal Farming

    Policy position

    Effective Altruist Luke Muelhauser estimates an 80% probability for morally persuasive consciousness among cows and chickens. Thus, improvements in farm conditions should be presumed valuable; the costs to human industry and consumers will be tiny in comparison due to the large number of animals raised for food.

  • Reducing factory farming is important

    • We should launch a moonshot for meatless meat.

    We should cut farm subsidies, firstly for basic economic reasons, but it could also reduce animal farming.

    The Humane Society Legislative Fund has maintained scorecards for legislators’ votes on animal issues since 2005. Unfortunately the scoring methodology is flawed. The relevant issues to look at are: horse soring, puppy mills, class B dealers, pet violence, animal cruelty, cosmetic testing, animal fighting, downed animals, antibiotic use, checkoff funds, farm bills, and funding letters. Even though some of these do not apply to farms, they can still indirectly help the issue by increasing people’s general respect for animals and heightening the perceived disparity between the way that pets are treated and the way that livestock are treated, they are still good actions in their own right (however small in scope), and they are still reliable indicators of how strongly a lawmaker feels about humane treatment of animals. Other components of the HSLF scorecard are not worth worrying about here.HSLF makes judgments about environmental conservation, hunting and other issues where the correct policy is unclear due to the uncertainties surrounding wild animal suffering, so it's better to exclude those issues when scoring politicians on animal farming. Horse slaughter might actually be positive as it may reduce the demand for farmed meat and the horses are being raised for other purposes anyway, often in good conditions, so it's better to ignore those votes too. It's also appropriate to ignore votes on service dog programs, primate pets and chimpanzee research because the scope of these issues are small and the appropriate votes from a welfare perspective are unclear. Generic increases in federal regulatory power are a sweeping issue that cannot be reduced to the impact on farm animals, so I would exclude those too. Finally, the HSLF also scores actions that relate to climate change, which is inappropriate for inclusion here because it would constitute double counting with the climate change section.

    HSLF ratings suggest that women in office tend to be more supportive of animal welfare than men in office.

    Weight

    Short run

    At any given time the US has 1.9 billion chickens and 160 million livestock. (Fish welfare is not significantly affected by government laws.) We guess that about 1/3 of the overall short run value of helping humans lies in benefits for others, which doesn’t obtain for animal-saving initiatives. Therefore, the 2.06 billion figure drops down to 1.37 billion for comparative purposes.

    Given that a moratorium on new factory farming is being seriously considered, this issue could be very important in the near future.

    Variations in the government's guidance might result in a +/- 7pp range in livestock welfare and numbers, implying that 192 million animal QALYs per year are at stake, which would be a weight of 192.

    Long run

    Animal issues don’t have any significant direct impact on our economic and political trajectory. But expanding our moral circle over more species is a very important social issue.

    At any given time, the US has 1.9 billion chickens and 160 million livestock, 26.7% as many individuals as the global human population. But animal welfare could become a bigger or smaller issue in the far future.

    Trends in humane farming and plant-based food production seem likely to mitigate the importance of animal welfare policy, perhaps entirely. However, fish welfare may become a subject of political concern in the future with significant ramifications; fish aquaculture produces much more suffering per quantity of food than other types of animal farming.

    Wild animal welfare may also become an issue of broad concern in the long-run future, and human actions could greatly impact it. A basic calculation of the number of animals in the biosphere with plausible estimates for sentience will suggest that wildlife encompasses far more total welfare and suffering than humanity (my rough estimates suggest a difference of two orders of magnitude). We can presume that the biosphere will shrink as the economy and technology grow, but probably not by orders of magnitude for the foreseeable future. And if humanity expands to other planets, it’s possible (though unlikely) that large numbers of animals will populate terraformed worlds before humans urbanize them to the same extent that we urbanize Earth. So improvements to human attitudes towards animals could have enormous long-run benefits. On the other hand, it’s ambiguous that getting people to care about animals and oppose farming will actually make them more supportive of efforts to reduce wild animal suffering; it may even interfere.

    Also, general progress in knowledge, social freedom, and security also contribute to self-expression attitudes and social/technological capacity, which can generally help wild animals in the long run as well. So maybe every issue will impact wild animal suffering anyway.

    But moral concern for animals may contribute to better attitudes about sentient AI or other entities in the long-run future.

    My survey gave animal farming a long-run weight of 16.4 points.

    Governance

    Policy position

    A note on political preferences

    Changes to political institutions frequently benefit one or another side of America's political divide, making them very contentious. It is possible to judge questions like "should we abolish the Electoral College?" from a purely nonpartisan view which imagines that we are behind a veil of ignorance about the details of American politics. I do this objective, neutral evaluation for the following sections. However, we can also evaluate some of these issues in more partisan terms, like whether a reform tends to help Democrats or Republicans. In such cases, it is better to help the Democrats. This is for two reasons. First, the political system currently has a substantial bias against Democrats, and regardless of which party has better policies in theory, it's politically unhealthy and dangerous for a country to have such a mismatchPolitical scientists Levitsky and Ziblatt write "A political system that repeatedly allows a minority party to control the most powerful offices in the country cannot remain legitimate for long". Historian Thomas Zimmer says “America is nearing a crisis of democratic legitimacy because [the GOP] is trying to erect one-party minority rule.”. The second reason to help Democrats is that they are simply better at governance.

    Of course, if somehow the opposite of this is correct, then that would threaten some of my judgments about political reform. However, my recommendations here are usually appropriate under both neutral and left-partisan understandings of the political system anyway. And this may not be coincidental - when a political system is unfair, perhaps we should expect the disenfranchised majority to represent better interests.

    Some people argue more specifically that we need to reduce pro-Republican bias in our political system because doing so will force the Republican Party to be more moderate and reasonable, but there are some reasons to doubt that idea.

    Voting

    • First-past-the-post voting is a poor system and should be replaced
      • EAs mostly agree In this survey, 11 out of 17 agreed, 2 disagreed, and 3 were unsure or moderate.
      • Political scientist Larry Diamond believes that replacing it is the single most promising reform for fixing American democracy
      • General agreement among voting theorists and political scientists that first-past-the-post voting is one of the worse systems
      • FPTP does a particularly poor job of representing voter preferences and gives no incentive for candidates to heighten or broaden their appeal beyond increasing their number of supporters
      • Many alternative voting systems could cause the two-party system to decline in favor of a multiparty system, which seems like a mildly good thing
        • The multiplicity of parties could ensure that states which are very ideologically different from the national aggregate, such as California, will have a competitive political ecosystem instead of remaining stagnant one-party states
        • Smaller parties would have less internal political diversity, thus allowing them to have stronger leadership (a good thing)
        • Voters will feel more satisfied with the political system
        • Proponents of multiparty systems imagine that a multiparty system will also cause parties and policy outcomes to more closely match the aggregate views of the population or to simply be better just by dint of having more options; I have seen no good reason to believe such narratives
      • Many good alternatives to FPTP voting
    • Move local elections on-cycle (i.e. to Election Day in November)A civil rights attorney who is a fellow at Data For Progress calls it "the most important democracy reform in blue states". The ostensible goal is for more ordinary people to vote and prevent activists and NIMBYs from dominating local politics
    • The voting franchise should be expanded
      • The historical track record of expanding the voter franchise shows consistently positive results (landless people, African-Americans, women), and a bigger voting franchise is most consistent with the principles of democracy
      • Substantial caution is warranted before expanding the voting franchise because it's a one-way ratchet; if we ever expand the franchise too much it will be nearly impossible to claw it back
      • We should extend voting rights to more felons, though not all of themExtending voting rights to more felons would directly include more people’s interests in politics, and would help correct pro-Republican bias in the electoral system. It seems likely that felons tend to have worse judgment and less ethical preferences on average compared to the majority of the electorate, but it won't be a big difference in their political judgment. Felons do tend to be more disadvantaged in society meaning that their political interests may be more important.

        Some people support voting rights for felons with the argument that the judicial system is biased to convict blacks (meaning the ban on felon voting creates racial bias in the voting franchise). However, the magnitude of this discrimination is not very large (see my criminal justice section), and it would be very naïve to suppose that voting rights for felons will subsequently be removed after the criminal justice system is reformed to eliminate the bias.

        Different states have different rules for which specific felonies do or don't cause people to lose the right to vote; at least some of these crimes seem like poor grounds for removing the right to vote.

        Voting rights for felons in prison are somewhat sensible, since they are being isolated from society, but more felons should be allowed to vote while on parole or probation, and more felons should especially be allowed to vote after their sentences are complete.

        Regardless, the government must give felons better notification about their voting eligibility and must not punish them for illegally voting if it's not proven that they did so knowingly
      • We should lower the voter age to 17Lowering the voting age to 17 would reduce GOP bias in the electoral system and would directly include more people’s interests in politics. High schoolers are very inexperienced in life and less involved in society, but considering how much responsibility teenagers have traditionally had in most human societies, it seems silly that we think them incapable of wise voting.

        One argument for lowering the voting age is that it would include more representation from future generations, and thus improve society’s policies towards the far future. However, this logic is very debatable as voting patterns are more complex than that; see this post by William MacAskill and the following comments.
    • Typical issues pertaining to the ease of voting are relatively unimportant

    We should nationalize the way we run our elections.

    Statehood

    EAs mostly support statehood for Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. In this survey, 13 out of 17 agreed, and 4 were unsure or moderate.

    The basic principles of fairness and self-determination suggest that any territory which realistically could be a state should be allowed to become one. It's not fair to grant political rights to our traditional 50 states while denying them to other Americans, and a more fair political system will lead to more effective, inclusive policies.

    The main candidates for statehood are Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico (PR). Neither have had a politically motivated expulsion of residents who object to statehood, neither would become a pernicious law or tax haven for the wealthy, and both are large enough to support the political functions of a stateThe smaller one, Washington D.C., is more populous than two current states, more populous than almost every American state in the 1790 census, and more populous than dozens of current countries., so the ordinary complications of self-determination do not apply to them.

    Adding new states would impact the federal government. First, DC and PR would both get seats in the House of Representatives approximately proportional to their population size. This would make the congressional system straightforwardly fairer. Second, DC and PR would each get two seats in the Senate. Using the Gini coefficient of Senators per person for Americans in all 52 states/territories,For the calculation, see the 'Senate fairness' spreadsheet in this Excel model. statehood for Puerto Rico would make the Senate more fair (-0.06 to Gini coefficient) whereas statehood for Washington DC would actually make the Senate less fair (+0.05 to Gini coefficient). PR would also gain votes in the presidential election approximately proportional to its populationThe Electoral College gives a little too much weight to small states, but since Puerto Rico would have an approximately average population size for a state it would be fine., which would be straightforwardly fairer. Finally, DC and PR congressional delegations would each get one vote for the purpose of resolving Electoral College ties; just like the Senate, this system is malapportioned in favor of small states, so it would be a benefit of PR statehood and a downside of DC statehood.

    Statehood for DC and PR would increase the political power of the Democratic PartyThis isn't consistently the case, as Puerto Rico's non-voting congressional representative is a Republican. But on average these territories lean Democrat.

    It's possible that the act of granting statehood will shift their political views. Most likely, the party that grants them statehood will be rewarded with political loyalty from voters, and the Democrats are the party that is most likely to grant statehood.    . This is objectively desirable as a partial correction to the biases of the current political system. All branches of government and especially the Senate grant disproportionate power to the Republicans; statehood for DC and PR would reduce this bias. Leaving aside questions of whether the Democrats or Republicans actually have better policy ideas, reducing the disparity would be an improvement in terms of making America a more healthy and fair democracy. Note however that this may change in the medium or long run as political parties realign.

    Additionally, per the rest of this report, Democrats do have better policy ideas, so granting statehood for DC and PR would have specifically positive impacts on national politics. Again, this may change in the long run as people change their political views.

    Puerto Rico is relatively poor compared to the rest of the country and has lower educational attainment. Conversely, Washington, D.C. is wealthy and well-educatedD.C.-Alexandria-Arlington has higher educational attainment than almost all cities, and presumably a greater gap compared to states, but D.C. itself may not be as high. compared to the rest of the country. There is reason to worry that voters with low educational attainment and human capital degrade the federal government by making inferior judgments, but this is counterbalanced by the importance of ensuring that the federal government is especially responsive and inclusive of those people's interests. Based on the relative importance of these issues, one could argue for only granting statehood to Puerto Rico or for only granting statehood to Washington, D.C. But either option would be by far the greater evil. Equally representative democracy may be suboptimal but it is still better than any option which involves the categorical denial of political rights.

    Statehood for DC would correct the congressional underrepresentation of people who work for the federal government; 1 in 10 D.C. workers are employees of the federal government, compared to 1 in 65 nationwide. Given DC's disproportionate Senate power, this would also be an overcorrection and federal employees would now become overrepresented. Extra political power for public sector employees has dubious impacts, as they understand the government better but also have vested interests within it.

    Statehood for DC would also provide a second case (after Nebraska) of experimentation and demonstration of the promising idea of unicameral legislature for state governments.

    Overall, statehood for Puerto Rico would be a very positive step. Statehood for Washington, D.C. is more ambiguous because of the problem with Senate malapportionment but the pros still outweigh the cons. Politically speaking, it is a more realistic and pressing priority than abolishing the electoral college.

    U.S. Virgin Islands statehood is also a good way to help the Democrats in the short run, and surprisingly popular. But adding Senate representation for states with such small population would give them undeserved power in the longer run. I make no judgment on the matter.

    Electoral college

    • Quick fix to make the Electoral College more resilient to shenanigans
    • Elect the President via nationwide popular vote
      • Majority of experts seem to think we should replace the electoral college with popular vote
        • Political scientists seem to agree. Some experts (broadly construed - including historians, economists, and highbrow editorialists) do support the Electoral College, but they only ever seem to be Americans, and nobody ever seems to talk seriously about introducing a similar system in any other country, which suggests that support for the Electoral College is actually driven by status quo bias or political brainworms rather than sound arguments
        • EAs mostly agree In this survey, 15 out of 17 agreed, 1 disagreed, and 1 was unsure or moderate.
      • The electoral college is a blatantly unfair distortion of the popular willThe winner-take-all system in the electoral college means that votes in safe states are irrelevant, whereas votes in swing states are critical. Replacing the electoral college with a nationwide popular vote would make elections more representative of popular interests.

        This would be debatable if we believed that states are the morally sovereign actors in the federal government rather than people. But that view is nonsensical. It is not supported by any serious conceptual or empirical arguments, only historical tradition, and violates the basic principle of democracy.
      • The Electoral College currently exacerbates Republican minority rule with a 3-point bias in favor of the RepublicansThis paper just before the 2020 election estimated that the Republicans had a 2.2 point advantage in the Electoral College. However, the 2020 results suggest a 3.7 point advantage: Biden won the popular vote by 4.4-4.5 points, and if he uniformly performed 0.6 points worse in every state, there would have been a tie leading to a Trump victory thru congressional delegations. However he could have performed by a non-uniform average of 0.7-0.8 points worse and still been the probable victor, because he would have a higher chance of winning at least one of WI/GA/AZ than of losing PA, and every other state was won or lost by a larger margin., although this could easily change in the future
      • The Electoral College has a bad track record; that is, every time it has produced a different outcome compared to the popular vote, it made the wrong choiceThere have been two recent instances where the presidential winner lost the popular vote, Trump in 2016 and Bush in 2000. It is clear from the content in the rest of this report that Trump was a poor president. I have not scored George W. Bush, but the invasion of Iraq was very bad (though PEPFAR was very good) and he performed poorly in domestic policy.. Keep in mind however that if we had a popular vote, the parties might nominate different (probably better) candidates in the first place
      • The Electoral College worsens perceptions of political legitimacy compared to national popular votePeople can lose confidence in the American government and President when the election method is so widely regarded as arbitrary and unfair, at least when the popular vote winner loses the election (as happened in 2000 and 2016).

        Conversely, Allen Guelzo claims that a nationwide popular vote could lead to presidents being elected with small portions of the vote, thus undermining perceived legitimacy. He imagines a president getting only 10% of the vote, which is an absurd hypothetical. In reality, winners of nationwide popular votes tend to have larger portions because citizens still vote strategically for candidates who have better shots at winning the popular vote. As far as I know, the only good-performing democracy with direct plurality election of the president is Mexico, and their presidential winners in elections since 1988 have received between 36% and 53% of the popular vote, with half of them receiving more than 50%. This is little different from America, where presidential winners since 1988 have received between 43% and 53% of the popular vote, and nearly half received less than 50%. Guelzo's worry seems spurious anyway: in the 1992 election, Bill Clinton won only 43% of the popular vote due to the Ross Perot campaign, but as far as I know people didn't perceive Clinton as some kind of illegitimate president on this basis. The problem of 2000 and 2016 where the popular vote winner loses the Electoral College clearly does far more to undermine legitimacy. In any case, we might implement a runoff system with our national popular vote to ensure that the winner always gets more than 50%, something which is done by most developed presidential democracies (Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Palau).        . This is not a significant problem though, as Americans still seem to accept victories by popular vote losers fairly well and one could even argue that too much legitimacy in the presidency is a bad thing given the omnipresent danger of aggrandizing this office.
      • Much popular debate over the Electoral College assumes that it gives extra political power to rural voters, but this is false; currently it actually seems to very slightly disenfranchise them, which is very slightly bad in theory but also helps counterbalance the pro-rural bias of the Senate
      • Bad arguments about the Electoral College
        • Economist John Cochrane claims that the Electoral College encourages politicians to focus more on persuasion rather than turnoutHere is his article. He gives no argument to show how this would actually be the case. Just because the Electoral College gives disproportionate weight to voters in small states and swing states doesn’t mean it changes the calculation in favor of persuasion rather than turnout. Cochrane imagines that it would be feasible get 70% of votes in friendly states merely by pumping up turnout. This is in fact absurd. In reality, energizing turnout like that is very hard. Merely being ideologically extreme doesn’t seem to help much (as demonstrated by vote patterns in the 2020 Democratic primaries, where turnout for Bernie Sanders fell short of expectations), and it typically comes with a significant loss in moderate support. The primary barriers to young voter turnout are practical, not ideological.
        • Cochrane further argues that it will make politics more polarized, because the incentive to get huge majorities in states like California or Texas will encourage politicians to appeal to extreme left- or right-wing views. He further argues that this is particularly pernicious because our states are ideologically/geographically clustered, so polarization could deeply threaten the unionHere is his article. Allen Guelzo echoes the idea.

          There are two flaws with this point of view. First, Cochrane has no basis for assuming that marginal votes in ideologically extreme states are similarly extreme. The 60-70th percentile of safe state voters are probably just as moderate as the 45-55th percentile of swing state voters. For instance, while California has a reputation for being a very left-wing state, it only has this reputation thanks to about 60% of the population being left. Extending the vote margin beyond this would require appealing to lots of moderates and then right-wingers, who do exist in large numbers in the state.

          The second flaw is that he only looks at the potential incentive for politicians to play electoral offense in safe states, when there would also be an equal and opposite incentive for electoral defense. It’s true that a Democratic candidate would have more incentive to take large majorities of states like California. But Republican candidates would now face a serious incentive to try to hold onto as much of a minority in California as possible.
        • Michael Uhlmann says that abolishing the Electoral College would empower mass media campaigns over state and local political organizingHere is the article. He asserts that abolishing the Electoral College would empower mass media campaigns over state and local political organizing, but doesn’t properly justify the claim. Abolition would actually empower more state and local organizing in safe states, and mass media campaigns can already be focused at swing state voters via targeted online ads. Even if the premise is true, it’s not clear that mass media is a worse foundation for politics than local party structures, and even if it was, this would be a pretty minor issue relative to the serious downsides of the Electoral College. Uhlmann further argues that the Electoral College forces candidates to appeal to a geographically broader swathe of America; not only is this a dubious premise (as noted, the Electoral College does not give more power to rural voters), but even if it’s true, it’s not a real benefit – politicians should appeal to as many people as possible; people who live in sparse rural areas do not deserve more political power than anyone else.
        • Many more bad arguments by Allen Guelzo in National AffairsAllen Guelzo claims that the Electoral College is necessary for America to be a federalist system. This argument just doesn't make sense. There is no contradiction between electing the president by popular vote and having a federal division of powers. Just because federalism requires a division of powers doesn't mean that any particular aspect of the federal government must be decided in a state-based manner. Moreover, in practice, the Electoral College doesn't give any power to the state governments anyway, since state governments universally allow the popular vote to guide the electors. Even if a state tried to change this, they would face fierce resistance from democratic norms. Guelzo claims that if you abolish the Electoral College, then you may as well abolish the Senate. But this is just a slippery slope fallacy - we probably won't abolish the Senate even if we do abolish the Electoral College. And even without a Senate, we could still easily have a federal system which divides government authority between states and the central government. Guelzo seems to simply misunderstand what it even means to have a federal system. Moreover, even though federalism is "in the bones of our nation" as Guelzo says, it's still not clear that it is actually a good system anyway.

          Guelzo claims that abolishing the Electoral College would not create a democratic system because some countries without electoral colleges are not fully democratic. This argument is a logical non sequitur. It's also partly driven by his dubious assessment that parliamentary systems are less democratic than presidential ones.

          Guelzo claims that the Electoral College is good because its cumbersome nature increases our checks and balances. But the vote calculus of the Electoral College does not add checks and balances to our political system, it only changes the way that votes are counted for the presidential election. The potential for legislators to object to electors provides one 'check', but it's apparently only ever used to threaten the integrity of our democracy (as we saw in 2020-2021). Generally speaking, we have too many checks and balances.

          Guelzo also claims that the Electoral College discourages voter fraud because it means that votes in most states don't matter. But of course it strongly incentivizes voter fraud in swing states. The overall probability that an election will be decided by fraud - already very low in any case - probably doesn't change.

          Guelzo claims that "ridding ourselves of the Electoral College would not automatically install a national popular vote for the presidency; that would require a highly complicated constitutional amendment," and "simply doing away with the existing process without putting a new one in its place could create the biggest political crisis in American history since the Civil War." The matter may be avoided by having states join the NPVIC. Moreover, nearly everyone seems to recognize that national popular vote is the default alternative to the electoral college, so there probably wouldn't really be much controversy here. Anyway, while this is certainly a serious issue to think about, it is a practical matter which will naturally be addressed by any serious effort to abolish the Electoral College, and doesn't count as a reason to not oppose the Electoral College.

          Guelzo raises the possibility of breaking up states to be more equally sized rather than abolishing the Electoral College. But it is not practical to do this, and even if it were, it would only be a half-measure. It could never be realistically done enough to give equal power to every voter - consider that New York City has 15 times as many people as Wyoming; Los Angeles has 4 times as many people as Delaware. Even before we hit the technical and administrative limits of altering our states, we would hit totally intractable political barriers, as most states wouldn't want to be divided. And even if we could rework the states in such a manner, it would have many unfortunate downsides. Moreover, there would still be an unfair bifurcation of safe states and swing states even if all had an equal number of people. Note that the Electoral College is not just unfair to voters in California, it's also unfair to voters in Oregon. And it is simply unfeasible to gerrymander every state to be a swing state, even if we assume that the opinions and demographics of voters in each state will magically be fixed over time. Then, even if we somehow created states where everyone's vote did have roughly equal power, the winner-take-all method would still be a point of unnecessary complexity and nondemocracy compared to an actual popular vote. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but it does mean that the need to abolish the Electoral College won't go away regardless.

          Guelzo quotes the Founding Fathers' arguments for the necessity of the Electoral College to show how seriously they thought about the matter, but these arguments are clearly premised upon the idea that electors will make their own decisions rather than listening to the popular vote in their state, which generally doesn't happen (except in cases of right-wing attempts to overturn election results as we almost saw in 2020-2021). Finally, Guelzo dismisses 'one person, one vote' arguments for the Electoral College by saying that such a democratic principle was nowhere to be found in the constitution; this is obviously not a meaningful argument.
        • Ian Shapiro claims that abolishing the electoral college would strengthen the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress. However it’s not clear how he could support this idea. Just because presidents are elected by the national popular vote doesn’t mean they have more flexibility and independence
        • A popular defense of the Electoral College is that the Founding Fathers designed it and they must have known what they were doing, but this is really falseFirst, the general problems with relying on the Founding Fathers' judgment are described in my article on sources.

          Second, some of their specific arguments for the electoral college - that a nationwide popular vote would be too hard to administer, that the electoral college would insulate against partisanship, and that the electoral college would be a fruitful area for states to experiment with different ways of picking electors - have been straightforwardly falsified by history.

          Third, the idea of an Electoral College was not a general desire, it was not implemented in the Articles of Confederation nor in any state constitutions for gubernatorial elections, nor was it proposed in the Virginia Plan – it only came as a late-stage compromise. In fact, the framers understood that George Washington would be the first president no matter what, so they were willing to do whatever it took to pass a constitution while leaving the presidential election process to be relitigated at a later date.

          Fourth, the electoral college itself has changed dramatically from the way that it was originally intended. The basic idea that electors actually pick the president has long since died in favor of simply using them as carriers of state votes. And our polarized political party system – especially with one party being systematically advantaged by the electoral college relative to its popular support – is very different from how the Founders envisioned things.
        • There is also an argument against the Electoral College which says that it must be bad because it was established to protect slavery, but since slavery has long since been abolished it really doesn't hold water anymore

    The presidency

    One of America's structural problems that threatens our democracy is our excessively strong executive branch. John Carey agrees.

    We should abolish the presidential pardon, or at minimum, prevent the president from pardoning members of the presidential family and administration.

    We should amend the constitution so that foreign-born American citizens can become President.

    Congress

    The filibuster is harmful and should be removedSee Ezra Klein's 9,000-word writeup about the filibuster, his article about Why We Can't Build, Matt Yglesias's writeup, Jonathan Chait's writeup, and Adam Jentleson's book.. The one good argument in favor of the filibuster is that it is often used by Senate minorities representing a majority of Americans, but this argument still isn't adequately convincing because the House can always veto legislation that doesn't represent a majority of Americans. Note that budget reconciliation can be used to circumvent the filibuster, but this results in inferior policies and political processes compared to what we would do if we just eliminated the filibuster, and just makes the filibuster look absurd and pointless.. Congressional committees should be simplified to ease the passage of legislation.

    Congress is overwhelmed and needs reforms to build its capacities. It has lost legislative capacity; staff are being asked to do more and more with less and less, to a point that is inadequate for the scale of their responsibilities. Many reforms should be passed, including increasing their funding and staffingSee this New America report and this post from the EA-aligned blog Postlibertarian. Also see this story about the absurdly low salaries given to staffers..

    Congress should be less transparentSee this post and list of citations from Congressional Research..

    A parliamentary system would probably be better than our presidential systemSee this 2020 book in defense of parliamentarism, summarized here and favorably reviewed by Robin Hanson. Also see this blog post. However, this 2006 book questions the conventional arguments in favor of parliamentary systems, I'm not sure if the recent work has properly answered such critiques.. Of course, adopting a parliamentary system would require some kind of revolution. (A totally legal process of constitutional amendment is technically possible, but not politically realistic.) In the absence of that, the idea that parliamentary systems are better still provides an extra reason to prefer incrementally stronger congressional powers. Also, more state governments should adopt parliamentary systems for the sake of experimentation.

    The Supreme Court

    Other issues

    State and local governments should be reformed in ways that simplify them for better public understanding, such as: replacing elected school boards with control by mayors or county officials, consolidating city and county levels of government, implementing unicameral state legislatures, and establishing clear lines of control over public sector entities.

    American administrative law is too powerful and burdensomeSee this paper by law professor Nicholas Bagley. Sam Hammond shares this view.. American society is unusually litigious and this is a bad thing.

    Independent redistricting commissions do not significantly curtail gerrymandering.

    We should revise the Succession Act to exclude legislative leaders, allow the president to set the order of succession, and fix the ambiguity the determination of presidential inability.

    Campaign finance reform is "contemporary liberalism's most overrated idea". David Shor says, "My personal pet idea is to extend the "campaigns pay the lowest rate" thing to superpacs. Then *everyone* would spend to diminishing returns at a much lower cost then we see now and the impact of having more money would totally disappear."

    Diversity training is ineffective or harmful and should not be practiced in government agencies.

    Weight

    The survey gives government a long-run weight of 9.7 points. This definitely seems like an underestimate given the danger of undemocratic challenges to election integrity. I give it 15 points.

    Military

    Policy position

    Nuclear forces

    A stronger nuclear arm helps the U.S. achieve strategic goalsMatthew Kroenig argues that "a robust nuclear posture, above and beyond a mere second-strike capability, contributes to a state's national security goals. In fact, when a state has a robust nuclear weapons force, such a capability reduces its expected costs in a war, provides it with bargaining leverage, and ultimately enhances nuclear deterrence." Brad Roberts argues "that other nuclear-armed states are not prepared to join the United States in making reductions, and that unilateral steps by the United States to disarm further would be harmful to its interests and those of its allies." Vipin Narang argues that "contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others." Keir Lieber (2017) argues that technological advances are undermining deterrence so "the United States should enhance its counterforce capabilities and avoid reducing its nuclear arsenal;" Lieber and Press (2020) more extensively argue that mutually assured destruction does not ensure peace and that deterrence will weaken in the 21st century. See also Perkovich and Vaddi (2021). Summing up this general trend, Jasen Castillo writes "beating up on the theory of the nuclear revolution has become a popular enterprise these days".. At the same time, arms races hurt everyone and nuclear arms control treaties are important. So the best framework is to have a sound, moderate philosophy of maintaining or improving nuclear capabilities in responsible ways when necessary and reducing them thru treaties when feasible. For details and up-to-date recommendations, see nuclear policy papers and talks from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, they generally have a good view on things. In particular, many of the below recommendations are linked to the 2021 report by Perkovich and Vaddi.

    We should adopt an Existential Threat Policy (ETP) clarifying that we will only use nuclear weapons to stop an existential attack against the United States, our allies or our partners. This is more responsible than our current vague and expansive nuclear threat. It is also more sensible than the restrictive No First Use (NFU) policy which says that we will only use nuclear weapons in response to an enemy nuclear attackNFU is basically feasible for the United States. For arguments as to why it would be beneficial, mainly by reducing risks of nuclear escalation, see Fetter and Wolfsthal (2018) and Gerson (2010). Also note that NFU could expand conventional military flexibility, as capabilities like the planned Conventional Prompt Global Strike are limited by the risk of being perceived as impending nuclear strikes. Tyler Cowen has argued against NFU, but his concerns are generally covered or outweighed by points made by Gerson.

    The primary obstacle against NFU is that it could weaken America's ability to provide credible assurances to protect its allies from nonnuclear threats. See Miller and Payne (2016), Reif and Kimball (2016), and Miller and Payne (2016) for a debate on the significance of this. Recent takes from Perkovich and Vaddi (page 44) and James Acton say that NFU is a bad idea for this reason. Perkovich and Vaddi add that Russia and China would be inclined to distrust an American NFU declaration whereas our allies would be inclined to trust it.

    The Obama administration considered and rejected NFU, and in the time since then, the case for NFU has only weakened due to the growing Chinese conventional military threat and the waning credibility of US commitments to allies. The latter is caused by populism and economic nationalism in American politics (see this article and section 2 (page 19) of this 2020 report), and while Biden's election means that things are improving, doubts about America's future still remain.

    Perkovich and Vaddi also write that even if NFU is desirable in theory, "the political capital that a president would expend to instate NFU as a central policy in the face of the objections from domestic opponents and key allied governments could leave little left to overcome traditional resistance to altering the offensive and defensive force posture", and also note that it could be wasteful to give up NFU without securing any compromises from Russia or China in return.     .

    Perkovich and Vaddi argue (page 56) that we should move from launch-under-attack to decide-under-attack but their arguments do not properly address the potential losses of deterrence and counterstrike capability, so I think this matter is unclear, depending on the vulnerability of our nuclear forces.

    Better NC3Nuclear command, control and communications systems. helps reduce the risk of accidental or reckless nuclear war. We need to make NC3 more resilient against attack. Institutional fixes with the nuclear chain of command might be viable. We should elect presidents with good character and temperament.

    • Nuclear weapons and platforms
      • In general I reject claims about which nuclear weapons are more stable or destabilizing than others because they tend to be a wash. These claims tend to be highly dubious or even logically contradictory with one anotherFor instance, critics of land-based ICBMs claim that they are both unnecessary and destabilizing, which is a contradiction - they can be unnecessary or destabilizing but not both.. Second- and higher-order effects, and questions of the severity (in addition to the probability) of nuclear war complicate things further. In most cases I do not think that it is feasible to pick and choose nuclear weapons in a way that significantly changes the overall nuclear threat to humanity. Instead, it is best to try to procure a nuclear arsenal which meets the most military needs for the least amount of money. This will not meaningfully increase or decrease the global threat of nuclear catastrophe, but it will improve America's strategic position and save us money that we can use for conventional armaments or for more wholesome endeavors. While the majority of nuclear think tankers and the like seem to disagree with me as they criticize particular weapons for being irresponsible, they still disagree substantially with each other about which particular weapons are or aren't responsible, and experts who share my perspective might be disproportionately unlikely to engage in commentary because such fatalism doesn't lend itself well to funding and publications, so I don't think my position is especially contrarian.
      • Given the goal of imposing nuclear deterrence with the minimum possible budget, a moderate balance of different nuclear capabilities is prudent. If we only fielded a single nuclear weapons system (for example, some people advocate an SSBN-only regime) in very large numbers, our adversaries would be able to efficiently focus on countering it, and we would be excessively exposed to the risk that the system has a critical flaw. Moreover, such a force structure could excessively limit the options available to the president to respond to a given crisis. On the other hand, if we fielded a dozen different nuclear delivery systems, per-unit costs would soar due to the short production runs of every given system
      • Continue fielding a mix of land-based and submarine-launched ICBMs
        • Land-based ICBMs are much cheaper than SLBMsThis is true in general as well as for America's current programs. With an estimated $264 billion program lifecycle cost for 400 missiles, the LGM-35 will cost $700 million per missile, while the alternative of Minuteman III lifecycle extension would be cheaper still. By comparison, the Columbia-class SSBN program has an estimated $347 billion cost for 192 missiles, which is $1.8 billion per missile. Furthermore, only 10 submarines will be operational at any given moment implying an average cost of $2.2 billion per available missile, even fewer will be available in a given ocean for immediate direct strikes against a given enemy (America currently relies on four subs active in the Atlantic and six subs active in the Pacific), and the Trident D5 missiles will presumably be individually inferior to the LGM-35 (the Trident is an older design, albeit with perfectly good modernizations, and ICBM design is impeded by the constraints of designing it for submarine launch).

          That said, SSBNs can be reloaded, so if we envision having to continue deterrence after a nuclear war then they are not quite so expensive in the long run.          , thus maximizing our first-strike destructive power for a given expenditure
        • SSBNs are much more resilient than ICBM silos, thus probably maximizing our second-strike destructive power for a given expenditure (if ICBM silos are sufficiently survivable then the enemy may fail to destroy >75% them or may simply choose not to target them, in which case silo-based ICBMs are more cost-effective than SSBNs even for the second strike)
        • Methods of destroying both ICBM silos and SSBNs exist, so procuring them both increases the requirement for our adversaries to pursue multiple counters. In particular, ICBM silos are rarely used by other countries, so if we dispensed with ICBM silos then China and Russia might get away with abandoning the capability to counter them, making room in their budgets for other weapons
        • Compared to Russia and China, America is relatively better suited to field SSBNs compared to land-based ICBMs. This is because mobile land-based ICBMs are superior to silo-based ones, but politically rejected in the United States, because Russia and China's ports are more bottlenecked by other countries, and because the waters off China's coast are relatively shallow
        • We should have ICBMs of some sort - if we are going to have a nuclear arm then ICBMs are a core strategic component that cannot be replaced by cruise missiles or other weapons
        • Continue the LGM-35 and Columbia-class programs; while there were decent arguments on both sides of the debate regarding LGM-35 development vs Minuteman III life extension, the LGM-35 program has progressed sufficiently that we should stick with it
        • Consider eliminating the W76-2 version of the Trident D5The W76-2 occupies scarce, valuable SSBN tubes that are better used for more powerful warheads. The W76-2's job is low-yield retaliation against enemy low-yield attacks, but that is already adequately fulfilled by air-launched weapons; it's hard to imagine a scenario where an enemy only uses low-yield nuclear weapons but fails to prevent USAF retaliation. The difficulty of using free-fall nuclear bombs will probably be rectified by the introduction of the LRSO. Also, a low-yield LGM-35 variant might be a cheaper way of providing the exact same capability, as it's basically impossible to imagine a scenario where an enemy only uses low-yield nuclear weapons but also destroys our ICBM fields; however, an LGM-35 launch might be more visible and thus risk escalation to a greater nuclear exchange.

          We also have the option of retaliating to enemy low-yield attacks with purely conventional weapons. We have such a strong conventional military and so many allies that this is feasible. The use of a few nonstrategic nuclear weapons is unlikely to change the course of a conflict, and it would galvanize international opposition against the perpetrator. By retaliating with massive conventional means, we could capitalize on the political fallout of the enemy nuclear attack while still comfortably winning the war. Critics of this stance may claim that not retaliating against a low-yield attack would weaken our deterrence against a hypothetical high-yield attack, but I disagree, as in such a scenario it would be apparent that we were only engaging in conventional retaliation because we were comfortably capable of doing so and still fully defeating the enemy.

          On the other hand, in practice our submarines don't carry the maximum number of warheads per Trident missile due to arms control agreements, so maybe there is a way to include the W76-2 on some missiles while moving the high-yield warheads from those missiles to other ones, thus maintaining the same total number of high-yield warheads.

          Anyway, if we use the W76-2, putting them on just one Trident per submarine (implying possibly 10+ W76-2s per submarine) seems like a more than adequate quantity. If an enemy uses large numbers of low-yield weapons, we could comfortably retaliate with a single higher-yield weapon rather than a large number of low-yield ones. Of course, the actual warhead mix on our SSBNs is and should probably remain ambiguous.
      • Continue fielding air-launched nuclear weapons
        • Considering that we already have a strong air force which is largely justified just in terms of its conventional abilities, adding nuclear munitions is a relatively cost-effective way to greatly expand the flexibility and potency of our nuclear arsenal - certainly cheaper than increasing the submarine fleet, but possibly still more expensive than silo-based ICBMs. This does increase nuclear ambiguity; Perkovich and Vaddi argue (page 65) that we can have a transparent separation of nuclear-equipped from conventional-equipped bombers, but if we do that then we will have to buy and deploy more bombers to achieve a similar military capability
        • The flexibility of stationing, flying and equipping bombers in different ways provides plenty of options for signaling to allies and adversaries; of course, bombers can do this without nuclear weapons, but nuclear capability could make it more effective
        • The functions of our nuclear-capable bombers can be fulfilled by other systemsFirst, road-mobile short- and (since INF treaty termination) medium-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles can be forward deployed to reassure allies and threaten enemies. This move can be incredibly provocative, but that problem can be mitigated by deploying them in small numbers or by imbuing them with limited capabilities. And we should be able to move such systems around the world with the C-17 or at least the C-5. Second, we can prod or trespass enemy airspace with other aircraft: drones, fighters (including nuclear-capable F-35s), and bombers which are limited to conventional munitions. The point of bomber assurance and deterrence is to send psychological signals rather than present an immediate military threat, so it is not obvious that it always works better with more exquisite expensive systems. Note that we already rely on B-52s for bomber assurance and deterrence, not the more advanced B-1s and B-2s. It is more expensive to build advanced stealth bombers, it is more difficult to forward deploy them (their technical complexity implies logistic complexity), and it is more risky to use them to prod other countries' airspace during peacetime (because other countries could learn about the radar signatures of our stealth bombers). Third, sea-based assurance and deterrence is an option in some cases. If the crisis is not unfolding too rapidly, we can send surface ships to other countries' sea spaces. We already do this with carriers near Taiwan and China., but these bombers are also useful in conventional warfare; a legitimate debate can be hard about the utility of our strategic bombing fleet but it requires a comprehensive analysis of strategic, nonstrategic and political capabilities which is beyond the scope of this section
        • B61 bombs are politically important despite their limited military value
        • The LRSO program should be continuedPerkovich and Vaddi argue for keeping LRSO (page 65) based on its stealth and survivability as long as it remains nuclear-only. Here is the opposing argument. Development has progressed further by now.

    Another component of minimizing nuclear risk is to avoid pre-launch ambiguity. This includes promoting transparency about which systems are nuclear-armed or not, especially for ICBMs, cruise missiles and hypersonic boost-glide missiles. We should pursue both unilateral and multilateral avenues for reforming and stabilizing the nuclear system in this manner.

    Conventional forces

    Better conventional military forces can have a variety of impacts. International relations scholars mostly believe that maintaining military superiority is an effective way to achieve our foreign policy goals. A recent CNAS report argues that America must sustain conventional military deterrence, among other priorities for national security. However, we need to look at global well-being beyond just national security (even though the two can be intertwined).

    EAs lean in favor of cutting the defense budget In this survey, 8 out of 17 agreed, 5 disagreed, and 4 were unsure or moderate., and 73% of international relations scholars think we spend too much, with just 5% saying we spend too little. These surveys allow for significant disagreement about whether we should cut spending levels or at least maintain them, so we must take a closer look at the various effects of a large conventional military.

    First, it can deter America’s adversaries from starting wars. This is a very good thing. Conventional deterrence is especially critical in cases where we cannot credibly threaten the use of nuclear weapons, such as a Russian invasion of the Baltic states. It still has some relevance in cases where nuclear escalation is likely.

    Second, it makes it easier for America to prevail in a given conflict with adversaries. This is also a good thing, for several reasons. 1: America’s commitments mostly entail supporting liberal democracy as opposed to worse arrangements. The most obvious example of this is Taiwan, which may be forced to have an arrangement similar to Hong Kong (which in turn may lead to similar governance as is suffered by the inhabitants of mainland China). Other examples include Vietnam and the Philippines being pressured into subservient and extractive arrangements with China, and Russian puppet states being set up in the Baltic or other areas. These developments would worsen the prospects for productive international institutions and cooperation. 2: most of America’s military commitments involve maintaining the status quo rather than revisionism, and this will continue for the foreseeable future as America is much more likely to retrench than to expand in its geopolitical demands. Strategic defense will probably (though not necessarily) translate to operational defense, a mission that tends to cause less direct harm to noncombatants. 3: American targeting is likely to cause less civilian damage than adversaries’ targeting. Coalition airstrikes in Syria have been much less destructive and callous compared to Russian ones. America’s military is more professional than regimes like Russia and China which have greater conscription and lower GDP per capita. The political constraints and moral values of liberal democracy make America more likely to follow international law and ethical norms. This issue is particularly important in the case of nuclear war, where it is very important to minimize countervalue strikes.

    Third, conventional power can allow America to meet a given military objective without resorting to nuclear weapons. This is obviously a very good thing.

    The fourth issue is related but subtly distinct from the above issues: increased conventional military power reduces the gap between America’s geopolitical commitments and its defense abilities. There seems to be a new consensus among foreign policy and defense experts that America’s existing defense commitments are greater than its military can maintainSee the Defense 2020 podcast, this Foreign Policy article, and this 2011 international relations paper, and retrenchment will probably be a tough and slow process. It seems dangerous for there to be a dissonance between America’s stated objectives and its defense capabilities; insolvent commitments increase uncertainty and foster opportunities for adversaries to profit from taking risky exploitative maneuvers. Unless and until America’s operational concepts and strategic objectives change, increased conventional power will reduce this dangerous dissonance.

    Partially but not entirely counteracting the above benefit, there is some moral hazard, as a stronger conventional military can – due to the above benefits – motivate America and our allies to preserve more aggressive geopolitical commitments. These commitments and demands mostly push in the direction of superior arrangements, as they tend to lead to greater democracy, human rights, international trade, and reasonably fair international institutions. But there is a downside of geopolitical demands: they can create clashes and increase the risk of war, at least in the short run. So a greater military will only cause a more modest reduction in dissonance between American commitments and capabilities, while also causing an increase in American geopolitical ambitions (which has both upsides and downsides).

    But the downsides of this moral hazard are in turn counteracted by America’s ability to reassure allies from engaging in risky behavior. For instance, if South Korea, Japan and Taiwan do not get credible assurances for American protection, they are likely to pursue nuclear weapons. Neither America nor China wants this to occur, and it would increase nuclear risks. Another possibility is that diminishing or ending American presence in Europe could lead to intra-European competition, between the absence of American authority and the vulnerability to Russian divide-and-conquer maneuvering (this is arguably already beginning thanks to Trump’s sabotage of America’s NATO relationships).

    So far, the case for increased conventional military capabilities looks very good. There are two major counterarguments, however. First, it can cause adversaries like China and Russia to spend more money on their own military capabilities in response. If there is a dollar-for-dollar response, then American military spending would very probably be a poor idea – an arms race that creates no net change in strategic outcomes, or possibly even destabilizes relations. However, adversaries also derive utility from spending money on other things besides the military, so the increase will presumably be less than dollar-for-dollar. Unfortunately, they may spend more on nuclear arms to defeat American conventional arms, and that would increase the risks and severity of nuclear war.

    Second, military spending creates a fiscal burden, requiring additional taxation, social cutbacks and/or debt servicing payments. This can be counterbalanced by the way it can reduce the need for America’s allies to spend on defense. To the extent that American defense can relieve defense burdens for poorer countries in eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, south Asia, and Latin America, this is like a desirable pattern of redistribution. To the extent that American defense can relieve burdens for western Europe and east Asia, this is more like a neutral transfer. $1 of American defense spending will probably relieve significantly less than $1 of allied defense spending, but with some of this relief falling upon poor countries, it may be a comparable benefit. And if American spending prevents multiparty internal competitions from arising in foreign regions, such as intra-European competition, then our spending could theoretically relieve much more than $1 for $1.

    But just as potential arms races are geopolitically bad, they are also bad from the fiscal perspective of America’s adversaries. If China and Russia increase their military spending, they will have less money to devote to social programs and tax cuts. This would be a bad thing. (A small portion of China’s domestic spending is currently being used to fund concentration camps in Xinjiang, which is reprehensible; however it’s very doubtful that worsening China’s fiscal situation would do anything to relieve the repression. Much of it is forced labor, which can return a profit, so fiscal and economic problems are just as likely to cause further repression.)

    Finally, the economic impacts of military spending are unclear,See conflicting arguments from Heo (2010), Peace Science Digest, and Rahman and Siddiqui (2019). though military R&D in particular is more beneficial.

    To summarize, increased American conventional military spending will help America win wars and help preserve more liberalism and democracy around the world. It is somewhat ambiguous whether it will reduce the risk of wars, but it will help prevent wars from becoming nuclear exchanges. It will increase fiscal burdens in America, China, Russia and perhaps a few other countries, though this is partially offset by the relief of fiscal burdens among America’s allies. But right now is a particularly important time for America to increase military power due to the worrisome gap between America’s stated commitments and its military capabilities – a gap which is likely to persist for some time. For these reasons, it seems that a strong conventional military is important, and we should generally give more points to candidates who will maintain the military budget (though this judgment is still uncertain).

    • Specific procurement issues
      • Cut Army ground force structure?
        • The Army is traditionally sized to fight two large overseas wars at the same time, which realistically means China and Russia, but the need to fight Russia is rather minor considering the 2022 Ukraine WarIn 2022, Russia's military was revealed to be less competent than expected, Russia suffered serious attrition of military equipment and manpower, and European defense commitments were strengthened. Moreover, the stakes of conflict are now likely to shift from Russian ambitions to take over Ukraine and fracture the EU and NATO (where Russia is most definitely a 'bad guy') to Russian defenses of Crimea, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Artsakh against violent racist revanchism (where Russia tends to actually be on the good side)., Europe, if acting in concert, is fully capable of stopping Russia in a conventional war, and Chinese-Russian relations seem sufficiently complicated that a military alliance between them is somewhat unlikely. This does not mean the Army doesn't need presence in Europe, just that it needn't be a large presence.
        • In a realistic conflict to defend Taiwan or the Baltic states, Army units won't be particularly useful, and the speed of reaction is far more important than the size of the armyThe common template for such a scenario is that Russia or China seizes the countries very quickly so as to present America with a 'fait accompli' of whether to risk nuclear war by going on the counteroffensive. Therefore, a very rapid movement of troops to defensive positions is important. Also, a quick response would be vital for political reasons, to show that America is committed, thus motivating our allies to fight. Meanwhile, the opening stages of the 2022 Ukraine War were critical: the effective stopgap defense of Kiev and first wave of weapons shipments to Ukraine were vital to enabling the survival of the country and their greater success over a longer campaign.. However, it would be wrong to assume that a smaller army is strategically more agile; a larger army can have more forward global presence to quickly react anywhere in the world.
        • The Army was short of manpower in the Iraq War so a large force structure may still be necessary for counterinsurgency
      • LRPFLong-Range Precision Fires. In other words, long range surface-to-surface missiles launched by the Army. and Prompt Global Strike should be sustained or expanded
        • LRPF seems likely to be a cheaper method of long-range fires compared to traditional Air Force bombing. That's not to say it's superior, as aircraft have their own advantages, just that the enormous mismatch between the budgets for USAF strike aircraft and for LRPF is unwarranted
        • LRPF theoretically offers a conventional means to target enemy weapons of mass destruction on the ground, which is probably a good thing for mitigating global catastrophic risks
        • The criticism that LRPF overlaps with the Air Force's role is not soundjust because long range strike is traditionally the domain of the Air Force doesn't mean we need to keep doing it this way forever. while there is some merit to worries of redundancy and bad coordination, that shouldn't force the military to abandon the whole idea of long-range surface-launched fires. The technology can come first, and doctrine and operations can adapt to make proper use of it.
        • The criticism that LRPF is based on a mistaken idea of A2/AD is not very convincingCritics of LRPF point out that its stated purpose, to destroy high-priority targets under A2/AD umbrellas and to degrade A2/AD systems in order to enable Air Force penetration, is based on rather shoddy premises. The concept of A2/AD doesn't comport neatly with the doctrinal concepts used by our potential adversaries, and surface-to-air missile systems just aren't effective enough to categorically prevent a modern air force from mounting offensive operations. Moreover, effective SEAD/DEAD operations probably require a sustained air presence so an opening salvo may not be all that decisive. However, regardless of doctrinal niggles regarding "A2/AD" the threat of sophisticated enemy air defenses is very real. Moreover, LRPF can and probably will be used against many other important targets in conflict. Historically, military equipment seems to usually be used against other targets besides the ones narrowly described in the original doctrinal requirements (for example, WW1 bolt action rifles being used for close range trench fighting, WW2 tank destroyers being used for infantry support, Iowa-class battleships being used for shore bombardment, F-15s being used for ground attack, A-10s used to strafe insurgents, the list goes on forever) so we shouldn't fixate on particular use cases but instead acquire equipment with good broad potential. Frankly, I suspect that the Army's idea of using LRPF to enable the Air Force's mission is partly a way of avoiding political confrontation with the Air Force; the Army presumably looks forward to using LRPF against many other targets besides A2/AD nodes.
        • Don't restart SLRCThe very concept of a gun designed primarily to fire precision-guided munitions seems pointless. The cannon is less mobile than a launcher and the munitions are more expensive due to the difficulty of hardening them to withstand the shock of extreme acceleration., focus on other LRPF systems
        • Similar arguments mostly apply to Prompt Global Strike as to LRPF. Prompt Global Strike is arguably better than LRPF depending on which service we prefer to have these capabilities
      • Expand (relative to 2021 levels) munitions stockpiles and productionMunitions stockpiles and production lines have historically been neglected relative to the scope of modern conflict, and they may be continuously neglected because they are lacking in prestige and intimidation factor. A wargame regarding Taiwan found that we have a decent amount of JASSMs but far too few LRASMs. Note that in the immediate wake of the 2022 Ukraine War, American officials are pushing for serious munitions production and acquisitions, but we should watch out for this energy to dissipate in the long run
      • Strengthen our bomber arm to defend TaiwanAccording to a 2023 wargame, we should: stop retiring bombers, continue B-52 upgrades, certify more bombers to carry the LRASM (I'm not sure how important this is while our LRASM stockpile is so low, but if/when we get more LRASMs then it will be very important), improve bomber countermeasures, and harden bomber bases in the Pacific.
      • Sustain or grow spending on combat drones and anti-drone countermeasuresFor competing points, see commentary by Perun and Justin Bronk of RUSI. But note that American strike drones are both more expensive and more capable than the TB-2.
      • Allow the Air Force and Navy to continue F-35 acquisitionSee this half-hour video for a good overview of the program.
      • Allow the Air Force to retire the A-10
        • The Air Force, which usually knows bestKey word here is 'generally'. In the 1930s the USAAC placed too much emphasis on strategic bombers at the expense of other aircraft and doctrines, so it's not ridiculous to suppose that they could be wrong again. But note that the Air Force's position is not that they don't care about the A-10s job of close air support, it's that other planes can do the job better., wants to retire more of the A-10 fleet than Congress allows. It seems plausible to me that they would prefer to retire it completely but don't say so in order to avoid provoking Congressional backlash
        • The A-10 is obsolete for modern warfareSee videos by LazerPig (part 1, part 2) and Ryan McBeth, discussion on r/CredibleDefense, r/LessCredibleDefence (April 2022 thread) and r/NonCredibleDefense (June 2022 thread, note that the mods actually implemented this request), and discussion on the Combined Defense Discord server.
        • The absence of foreign interest in export sales of the A-10 is strong evidence that it's not a good plane
        • The AT-802U, attack helicopters, drones, fighter-bombers, bombers, and cargo aircraft (Rapid Dragon) can perform the ground attack and close support missions done by the A-10. The alternatives are variously better, cheaper or both depending on the aircraft and the specific mission
        • The A-10 is an iconic airplane and its flight heritage should be preserved by retiring these airframes quicklyThis is particularly relevant given the 2022 news that the Air Force is, quite understandably, metaphorically flying their planes into the ground in the hope that Congress will have no choice but to let them retire the things.

          It is ironic that the A-10 fan club, in sustaining so much idiotic hype over the airplane, is in the long run achieving the destruction of the heritage of the plane that they think is so cool. The prospect of museums getting A-10s in flying condition perpetually dwindles.
      • Allow the Navy to continue supercarrier construction
        • Criticism of supercarriers centers on new Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles, with an ongoing theoretical debate over whether Navy task forces can protect carriers from this threat. However, the fact that China is building a supercarrier of its own despite having full knowledge of the capabilities of these anti-ship ballistic missiles strongly suggests that the platform is not obsolete
      • Allow the military to continue using morally controversial weapons, only mandate their phaseout through multilateral treaties where we can get our potential adversaries to do the same. Note that given the state of relations with Russia and China, the prospects for multilateral relinquishment are slim
        • AI weapons
        • Cluster munitions/DPICMs
        • LandminesLandmines are mostly a defensive weapon (although rapid landmine delivery systems do have offensive utility in guarding the flanks of an offensive) so it's plausible that even multilateral landmine relinquishment is not a good idea - this matter would require careful analysis.

    Reforms to the military procurement process seem like a good idea; in particular we should use cost-plus contracting less frequently.

    If you want to experiment with hypothetical military budgeting, try the Defense Futures Simulator.

    Weight

    The military should get a moderately lower weight than foreign policy, as the issues in diplomacy seem a bit more straightforward and it is generally better to avoid wars than to win them. I give it a weight of 14 points for long-run trajectory.

    Air Pollution

    Policy position

    Basic priorities

    The fossil fuel industry

    Carbon pricing

    • Economist surveys show strong support for a carbon tax
    • Carbon taxes are conceptually sound
      • A carbon tax is a Pigouvian tax, which is more efficient than regulations according to basic economic theory
      • Carbon taxes raise revenue for the government, unlike regulations and cap-and-trade (which are neutral) and subsidies and public projects (which are negative)
      • It's difficult to determine the appropriate level for a carbon tax, but this is even more true of alternative policy approaches. It's hard to decide whether the social cost of carbon is $100/ton or $200/ton, but deciding whether we should tolerate 2 degrees or 2.2 degrees of global warming is even more speculative, and deciding whether 2040 or 2050 is the optimal target date for carbon neutrality is total guesswork. For example, the Paris Agreement decision to allow 2 degrees of warming was essentially arbitrary
      • A constant carbon tax does not take into account the risk of greater damage beyond particular temperature thresholds, but while the curve of economic damage as a function of temperature change is superlinear, it still is not discontinuous
      • There may be a global tipping point mandating control of temperatures below a certain threshold in order to avoid runaway warming, but these theories are dubious and we have no clear idea of where exactly the threshold(s) might be. For a threshold-based policy to work better than a carbon tax, we would need to trust the government to get the threshold right, but they may be scientifically mistaken or may make parochial assumptions
      • Even if the right threshold was identified for climate policy, it would be politically impossible to coordinate to achieve it. Intertemporal coordination is complicated by partisan swings in politics, national coordination is complicated by the separated powers of federal, state and local governments, and international coordination is just intrinsically difficult. For example, the Paris Agreement is failing to meet its stated threshold of a 2-degree rise
    • Carbon taxes have a good empirical track record
    • Practical downsides of carbon taxes
      • Because of economic interactions with other taxes, carbon taxes impose economic costs which are often greater than those of broad-based taxes. If the damage from carbon is $100/ton, and a carbon tax is used as a substitute for realistic personal income taxes, then the optimal rate is only $73. If carbon taxes are used for a lump-sum dividend, then the optimal rate is still lower, but a lump-sum dividend to all citizens does reduce poverty
      • Carbon taxes are likely to discourage investment, which can be harmful assuming that we are focusing on the long-run future. This problem reduces the optimal carbon tax by 10-60%, assuming that we need a higher savings rate to maximize long-run growth. However, we currently seem to have a savings glut with very low interest rates, so this is not a large problem
      • Leakage
      • Electricity prices are inflated by economic inefficiencies, as if carbon were already taxed at approximately $70/tonne on average, so an 'optimal' carbon tax would lead to excessive electricity prices
      • Carbon pricing can create uncertainty for industries, but again this and similar bureaucratic problems can occur with regulatory regimes, so while this is a reason to not let the carbon tax grow too high it is not a reason to substitute other policies against air pollution
      • Carbon taxes may be significantly weakened by special interests demanding exceptions and modifications. This problem occurred in Australia. Agriculture would likely be exempted from a carbon tax in America. Regulatory regimes are similarly vulnerable to this problem, but subsidies and public R&D are not. In the short run at least, a weakened cap-and-trade policy actually seems worse than a regulatory regime. Note however that other environmental policies besides carbon pricing may be similarly weakened by special interest loopholes
      • Determining the right level for a carbon tax
        • Basic social cost of carbon calculation: a recent metanalysis used a 9-10% expectation of GDP loss from global warming to derive a social cost of carbon of $113 per tonne
        • Low interest rates suggest the true SCC is higher, let's say $200-$250 per tonne
        • Because there is not adequate global redistribution of surplus wealth, the growth-maximizing result should be changed to account for distributional impacts; the harms of global warming will disproportionately hit the global poor. That said, the costs of an American carbon tax will disproportionately hurt Americans, and that is problematic for international politics. Overall the real social cost should be considered $200-$300
        • Because of the other harms of fossil fuel use besides global warming, we should increase this to $250-$370
        • Because of the economic damage caused by interactions with other taxes, the optimal carbon tax estimate falls to $160-$250
        • Because of the potential damage caused by discouraging economic investment, our estimate falls to $130-$240
        • Because of the problems with electricity pricing, assuming that a carbon tax will be applied equally to electricity producers, our estimate falls to $110-$200
        • In practice, carbon taxes won't (and shouldn't) replace many regulations, due to lobbying, environmentalist ideology, and legal barriers. In fact, the passage of a carbon tax likely won't lead to any decline in environmental regulations at all. Therefore I estimate the optimal carbon tax is in the range of $80-$160

    Clean energy

    Agriculture and industry

    Transportation

    • In general, switching from large cars to smaller vehicles or mass transit matters most, regardless of the engine type. Gas- or diesel-powered mass transit is more environmentally friendly than green cars
    • In general, the ranking of vehicle propulsion technologies from least to most socially harmful is: direct electricTrolleybuses, trams and trains with pantograph systems, trains on electrified railways and maglev trains, all of which need little in the way of batteries. > battery-electric > hybridAlthough "hybrid" is technically a vague term, here I mean gas/diesel cars with small electric systems, like the Toyota Prius. ~ hydrogen ~ natural gas > diesel ~ gasoline
      • Direct electric propulsion is substantially more efficient than battery propulsion for a variety of reasonsThere is no electricity loss from battery charging. Also, there is no added weight from large rechargeable batteries; lower weight means the vehicles use less electricity, cause less brake pollution and cause less tire pollution. The absence of large rechargeable batteries also reduces the pollution emitted in the production of vehicle.
      • Lifecycle emissions of electric cars are consistently superior to those of gas cars, and usually (but not always) superior to those of hybrid cars
      • Lifecycle emissions of hydrogen cars are inferior to those of electric carsAnalyses of vehicle use in California (2016), Australia (2018), and Italy (2013) have found that battery-electric cars are more environmentally attractive than hydrogen fuel cell cars. The Australia study even found that hydrogen cars are worse than internal combustion engines pending the transition to a green power grid.

        Hydrogen internal combustion engines are clearly (but only mildly) inferior to hydrogen fuel cells because they are less efficient, produce nitrous oxide emissions, and have more difficult maintenance. That said, hydrogen opposed-piston engines look quite promising.        ; however, hydrogen may be environmentally superior in aircraft due its much better specific energy
      • Brake and tire particulate pollution seems approximately similar for different types of vehicles
      • Controversy about 'conflict minerals' used for rechargeable batteries is misplaced; the overseas investment is more likely to help poor communities than to hurt them, and in any case the deaths caused by air pollution are greater
      • Rechargeable batteries have the most safety issues, but these are sufficiently mitigated as to be practically meaningless compared to the deaths caused by air pollution
      • Significantly improved battery technology is probably on the wayTwo technologies already seem to be in the early stages of commercial adoption. Lithium sulfur batteries have 2-3x more specific energy while being safer potentially cheaper. Graphene aluminium ion batteries have similar or possibly worse specific energy compared to lithium-ion batteries but do allow for very rapid charging, while also being safer. Note that improvements in safety translate to lighter-weight battery housings which further improve specific energy. Both new battery types are at the early stages of commercial availability, and it seems likely that one or the other or both will be adopted by many electric vehicles in the 2020s. If either battery type realizes its potential then battery-electric technology will probably be the obvious choice for most consumer vehicles.

        Other electric storage technologies seem further off. Metal-air fuel cells seem to have more problems inhibiting practical use. Conversely, while aluminum-air batteries are technologically mature and offer high specific energy, the market has already decided that they are economically and practically inferior to lithium-ion batteries for most vehicle applications.        , and as our energy grid gets cleaner the energy used by electric vehicles will become cleaner; these potential improvements are much more significant than the relatively narrow possibilities for other powertrains to become more efficient
    • Mass transit
    • Mini vehicles
      • Bicycles, e-bikes, e-scooters and e-skateboards produce far lower emissions than cars (even electric cars) and should be promoted the most, although e-bike subsidies reduce carbon dioxide for $600/ton, still too expensive to be justified on purely environmental grounds. Subsidizing these vehicles makes more sense when considering the combined benefits of air quality and decreased traffic congestion. Of course, promoting regular bicycles is just as important, if not more important, than promoting e-bikes
      • Encourage adoption of Neighborhood Electric Vehicles by increasing their maximum legal speed from 25mph to 30mph; any additional accident fatalities would presumably be outweighed by the benefits of lower pollution
      • Gasoline motorcyles should not be promoted - they emit less carbon dioxide compared to cars, but are much worse in terms of other emissions
    • Cars
      • Pass a Vehicle Miles Travelled tax
        • VMT tax would compensate for tire pollution, brake pollution, road congestion, and accident risk, which are caused by all cars including electric ones (which do not pay gas taxes)
      • In the absence of a carbon tax and a VMT tax, raise gas taxes nationwide
        • A gas tax is like a carbon tax applied specifically to cars, so it has similar pros and cons
        • A gas tax can function as an inferior (but still helpful) substitute for a Vehicle Miles Travelled tax, encouraging some drivers to spend less time on the roads
        • Depending on the state, gas taxes are equivalent to carbon taxes of around $30-$80 per tonne, which is too low to capture all the benefits of reducing gasoline driving
        • Compensating for the accident risk posed by cars requires raising the gas tax by $1 per gallon
        • State-by-state variation in gas taxes seems appropriately correlated with urbanization: urban states like California and New York, whose populations are most vulnerable to air pollution, pass the highest gas taxes, whereas rural states pass the lowest ones. We just need higher rates across the board
        • If we ever do pass a carbon tax and a VMT tax, gas taxes should be left at roughly the current rates, as a higher tax on gasoline compared to other sources of carbon is justified in order to compensate for the additional health problems caused by urban air pollution
        • Raising the gas tax seems politically easier than raising carbon taxes and VMT taxes, at least during times when gas prices are not very high. Note that gas taxes can be raised when gas is cheap and then be easily left in stasis when gas prices go up
      • Reduce electric car subsidies
        • Electric car subsidies reduce CO2 for $795 per ton, far too high to be justified
        • Hybrid car subsidies reduce CO2 for $177 per ton, which is at the high end of acceptable costs
        • Subsidies promote excessive acquisition of cars (which increases pollution and road congestion) and are financially regressive
        • The argument that infant industries should be subsidized for economic reasons fails here because the the electric car industry is already very mature
      • Rationalize electric car subsidies?
      • For a compromise between politically expedient long-term EV schemes and theoretically rational Pigovian tax hikes, consider mandating every gasoline or diesel car to be an electric hybrid; the lifecycle emissions of hybrid cars are mot not much worse than those of EVs, while still significantly better than those of conventional cars, and they are much cheaper and easier to adopt compared to EVs
      • Legalize direct sales of electric cars from manufacturers to consumers
      • Promote new types of brakes that pollute less
      • Avoid ethanol fuel requirements and restrictions against imported ethanol
    • Aviation

    Sequestration

    Geoengineering

    NIMBYs and handouts

    • Environmental policy is often stymied by local obstruction against new development
    • Environmental policy is often stymied by minority demands for favors and handouts
      • Fossil fuel employees have opposed developments that would reduce our fossil fuel reliance and have demanded special compensation for job loss
      • The left-wing activist coalition makes a variety of demands, as represented by the proposal to create a Green New Deal, which contained strong language about developing plans in accordance with “indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth”. More concrete climate proposals often have mandates giving special representation and planning power to indigenous tribes and other minorities, as progressive politics frequently merge climate worries with a broader set of political ambitions. Progressive groups can complicate policymaking by demanding rents at the expense of more universal benefits, as happened to Washington’s carbon tax proposal. They can also lead to tumultuous infightingThis is demonstrated by Equal Voice Canada, Evergreen State College, Google, Democratic Socialists of America, and other examples.
    • These parochial demands are generally bad and ought to be overruled if that is politically feasibleCoalitions are necessary in practical politics, so some degree of handouts may be appropriate. And NIMBY obstructions can be so strong as to be practically insurmountable. Therefore, politicians who fail to overcome these obstacles aren't necessarily acting wrongly, they could simply be doing their best in a bad system.
      • They inhibit new construction projects that would reduce a lot of air pollutionConsider the tiny Nā Pua Makani wind farm proposal, projected to save 70,000 tons of CO2. On a short to medium timeframe (several decades) looking at relatively direct and well-understood health impacts of climate change, this much CO2 would cause an estimated 2.8 statistical deaths. Assuming a social cost of carbon of $200/ton, it would also cause $140 million in global damages, which would disproportionately fall upon poor economies. Saving that much money would allow governments to save many more lives thru other means. Now let’s think bigger: Rampart Dam. It would have generated 5872MW. Assuming a capacity factor of 57%, and assuming that it would operate for 50 years, it would generate 51 million MWh or 185 million GJ. If that energy were instead released using fuel oil, it would create 14 million tons of CO2 emissions. This would soon kill an estimated 560 people thru medium-term health impacts and cause nearly $3 billion in global damages.
      • They may lead to physical obstruction which violates the rule of law, as happened with the Thirty Meter Telescope and the Keystone XL/Dakota Access pipelines, and may persist past the point of common sense, as happened with the Thirty Meter Telescope
      • They provide small, dubious benefits to minorities of Americans
      • Parochial obstructions may be dodged by designing programs generously towards special interests in the first place, which may be necessary, but generally requires concessions on efficiency and effectivenessThe Thirty Meter Telescope was only able to get Hawaiian government approval after making a variety of concessions including a promise to never build more telescopes on Mauna Kea again. Nā Pua Makani will pay over $4.5 million in compensation to local interests; this kind of expense can inhibit development. And these are projects which are still opposed by indigenous locals, so avoiding such controversy without cancelling the projects is likely to require even higher payoffs. Minority-conscious planners are likely to try to avoid building in contentious areas in the first place, which will inevitably entail a tradeoff as inferior sites are selected instead.

    Other issues

  • International issues
    • One of the best ways for America to reduce global air pollution is to promote exports of clean technology to the developing world
    • A common refrain is that America should 'cooperate' with China on climate change, but it's not clear what that cooperation would look like nor why that would be more effective than being adversarial and challenging China to make more progress on climate
  • Miscellaneous

    • Weight

    The expected difference between a Biden and Trump presidency is 0.7 tonnes of CO2 emissions per capita in the US in 2024, which suggests that a year of comprehensively better American policy would reduce 2 billion tonnes worldwideBiden was one of the very good politicians on climate whereas Trump was one of the very bad ones. Note that some of the Metaculus difference involves the expectation that voters electing Biden would also elect Democrats to Congress and maybe other offices. Overall, let's say that four years comprehensively better realistic policy would counterfactually reduce American emissions by 1.5 tonnes per capita for a decade, for a saving of 5 billion tonnes. Because of international efforts including clean technology proliferation, let's estimate a total impact of 8 billion tonnes. That's for four years of policy, so one year would change 2 billion tonnes., which is about 5% of annual global emissions, or nearly 0.1% of total past and future expected human CO2 emissions, or about 0.05% of time-weighted CO2 emissions (since current and future emissions do less damage than those in the past). However, reducing 0.05% of time-weighted pollution would prevent more than 0.05% of the damages - let's say 0.1% - because the damages are superlinear in the case of climate change. Meanwhile, there is some evidence that the direct harm of air pollution is sublinear, but that post comes from an air filter company so I'm reluctant to trust it.

    Short term robust impacts

  • Short-term robust weight of air pollution is 2.3 million QALYs per year
    • Dirty air may cost 0.7 QALYs per person per lifetime, or 3.5 billion QALYs for the world; reducing this problem by 0.04% (as dirty air harm seems more likely to be linear or sublinear) means saving 1.4 million QALYs
    • Estimated 0.4 million QALYs lost to robustly known harms of climate change per year of bad American policy
      • 0.1 million QALYs lost to higher infectious disease burden
        • NTDs currently cause the loss of 57 million DALYs per year, or perhaps 80 million QALYs; let's estimate 2 billion QALYs for the rest of the century. If 5% of them are caused by climate change, that's a burden of 100 million QALYs. Reducing the problem by 0.1% saves 0.1 million QALYs
      • 0.26 million QALYs lost to coastal inundation
        • Solid evidence that climate change will inundate coasts by raising sea levelsIPCC (2018): "It is... considered likely that sea level rise has led to a change in extreme coastal high water levels. It is likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water levels via mean sea level contributions. While changes in storminess may contribute to changes in sea level extremes, the limited geographical coverage of studies to date and the uncertainties associated with storminess changes overall mean that a general assessment of the effects of storminess changes on storm surge is not possible at this time. On the basis of studies of observed trends in extreme coastal high water levels it is very likely that mean sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in the future."

          It's also just common sense, I don't think we really need a study to know that global warming will raise sea levels and make some low-lying coastal areas uninhabitable.
        • Climate change may inundate coasts by increasing storm surges
        • Coastal inundation could be a serious disruption to life in a number of developing countries. Many large, low-income populations are located in coastal cities
        • Coastal inundation could ruin small islandsIPCC (2018): "The small land area and often low elevation of small island states make them particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and impacts such as inundation, shoreline change, and saltwater intrusion into underground aquifers. Short record lengths and the inadequate resolution of current climate models to represent small island states limit the assessment of changes in extremes. There is insufficient evidence to assess observed trends and future projections in rainfall across the small island regions considered here. There is medium confidence in projected temperature increases across the Caribbean. The very likely contribution of mean sea level rise to increased extreme coastal high water levels, coupled with the likely increase in tropical cyclone maximum wind speed, is a specific issue for tropical small island states."
        • More than 150 million people live within 1 meter of sea level, many of whom are likely to be displaced, suggesting that a year of good American policy would save 0.26 million QALYsExpectations for sea level rise generally range under 1 meter. Probably some people living below 1 meter will not be displaced, but some people living above 1 meter will be. If 130 million people are ultimately displaced, 0.1% of the problem is 130,000 people displaced. If each of them would suffer a loss of 2 QALYs, the policy change saves 0.26 million QALYs
      • Negligible losses from mountain instability
        • Solid evidence that climate change will worsen mountain landslides and similar phenomenaIPCC (2018): "There is high confidence that changes in heat waves, glacial retreat, and/or permafrost degradation will affect high mountain phenomena such as slope instabilities, mass movements, and glacial lake outburst floods, and medium confidence that temperature-related changes will influence bedrock stability. There is also high confidence that changes in heavy precipitation will affect landslides in some regions. There is medium confidence that high-mountain debris flows will begin earlier in the year because of earlier snowmelt, and that continued mountain permafrost degradation and glacier retreat will further decrease the stability of rock slopes. There is low confidence regarding future locations and timing of large rock avalanches, as these depend on local geological conditions and other non-climatic factors. There is low confidence in projections of an anthropogenic effect on phenomena such as shallow landslides in temperate and tropical regions, because these are strongly influenced by human activities such as poor land use practices, deforestation, and overgrazing. It is well established that ice mass wastage following the end of the last glaciations led to increased levels of seismicity, but there is low confidence in the nature of recent and projected future seismic responses to anthropogenic climate change." Despite their ambiguous language in the summary, skimming their writeup suggests that they really mean that climate change will make instability worse, not merely "affect" it.
        • The impact of this seems quite small; thousands or even tens of thousands of people can die in landslides every year but most are not related to mountain instability in colder regions or higher altitudes. If we expect 40,000 deaths, reducing the problem by 0.1% means saving 40 lives, for 2,000 QALYs
    • Most consequences of climate change are negative in expectation but are not supported by robust evidence, and in some cases the magnitude of the harm appears small anyway, at least in the short and medium run. However, taking them together, they add to the case for climate change being robustly harmful; say +0.5 million QALYs
      • Worse droughts
        • Climate change will probably worsen droughts but the evidence is limitedIPCC (2018): "There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st century in some seasons and areas, due to reduced precipitation and/or increased evapotranspiration. This applies to regions including southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa. Definitional issues, lack of observational data, and the inability of models to include all the factors that influence droughts preclude stronger confidence than medium in the projections. Elsewhere there is overall low confidence because of inconsistent projections of drought changes (dependent both on model and dryness index). There is low confidence in projected future changes in dust storms although an increase could be expected where aridity increases."
        • 13 studies of droughts in Africa and India found that droughts often hurt long-term health by causing food shortages, although some of the results are statistically insignificant or neutral
      • Higher temperature-related mortality
        • There is a 25% chance that global warming will not exceed 2 degrees Celsius, and a 2021 paper by an Effective Altruist published in Nature showed no expected increase in temperature-related mortality up to 2 degrees warming, with an equal chance of increasing or decreasing mortality
        • There is a 25% chance that global warming will be 2-3 degrees Celsius, and a 2021 paper by an Effective Altruist published in Nature showed that warming from 2 to 3 degrees is moderately expected to increase temperature-related mortality, but there is still a substantial chance (looks like about 1/3) that it will reduce temperature-related mortality
        • There is a 50% chance that global warming will exceed 3 degrees Celsius, and a 2021 paper by an Effective Altruist published in Nature showed that warming beyond 3 degrees is expected to increase temperature-related mortality, but there is still a greater than 10% chance that it continues to decrease temperature-related mortality even past 5 degrees
        • Warming beyond 3 degrees is only likely to happen later in the 21st century, and these scenarios make debatable assumptions about the path of humanity's technology and economy
        • If we do weight temperature-related mortality for the consequences of air pollution, the expectation is about 2.1 million QALYs saved by a year of better policyThe Nature paper created a mean estimate of one death before 2100 per 4,400 tonnes of CO2 emissions. But of the likelihood of rapid economic growth later this century, the real harms are likely to be smaller than what we would conclude from the above estimates based on conventional economic assumptions; let's say one death per 8,000 tonnes. As of 2015, the US annually emits 5,172,338,000 tonnes of CO2, so for each year in which emissions are cut by 15% (a plausible impact from better policies), 97,000 lives will be saved. If each life saved counts for 22 QALYs, this adds up to 2,100,000 QALYs per year
        • Temperature-related morbidity is also a likely problem but may be assumed similar to temperature-related mortality
      • Greater flooding
        • Climate change will probably worsen flooding but the evidence is limited and there is substantial uncertaintyIPCC (2018): "there is limited to medium evidence available to assess climate-driven observed changes in the magnitude and frequency of floods at a regional scale because the available instrumental records of floods at gauge stations are limited in space and time, and because of confounding effects of changes in land use and engineering. Furthermore, there is low agreement in this evidence, and thus overall low confidence at the global scale regarding even the sign of these changes. There is low confidence (due to limited evidence) that anthropogenic climate change has affected the magnitude or frequency of floods, though it has detectably influenced several components of the hydrological cycle such as precipitation and snowmelt (medium confidence to high confidence), which may impact flood trends. Projected precipitation and temperature changes imply possible changes in floods, although overall there is low confidence in projections of changes in fluvial floods. Confidence is low due to limited evidence and because the causes of regional changes are complex, although there are exceptions to this statement. There is medium confidence (based on physical reasoning) that projected increases in heavy rainfall (Section 3.3.2) would contribute to increases in rain-generated local flooding, in some catchments or regions. Earlier spring peak flows in snowmelt- and glacier-fed rivers are very likely, but there is low confidence in their projected magnitude."
        • 4 studies of floods in South Asia found that floods often hurt long-term health by causing food shortages, although some of the results are statistically insignificant or neutral
        • Floods kill few, about 1 annual death per million people worldwide (8,000 people total); the deadliest flood of the 21st century killed 6,000 people. Flood deaths will probably decline further with economic development. So total flood deaths may account for ~100,000 QALYs per year, with global warming responsible for just a fraction of that, and American emissions responsible for just a fraction of that, and marginal American emissions responsible for just a fraction of that
        • Floods cause morbidity, trauma and social disruption, but this is probably not worse than the mortality impact
      • Possibly more conflict
      • Taken together, the above possible harms could be aggregated to construct a more robust expectation of net harm, as the research uncertainties are somewhat conditionally independent
      • There are more possible impacts of climate change which I haven't researched and added yet, and they further suggest net harm, adding to the idea of climate change being robustly harmful

    Existential risk

  • Air pollution and climate change do not pose a significant existential risk
    • The idea that the human race could be entirely extinguished by climate change is implausible on its faceIt would take a unprecedented 16°C of warming for the annual average temperature in Moscow to reach that of Cairo today, to say nothing of the polar regions. and unsubstantiated by any credible scientific literature
    • A more credible worry is that climate change may indefinitely damage human society, knocking us into some kind of proto-industrial state with a much-reduced population and no foreseeable ability to return to advanced technology and institutions. Still, there is a lack of good evidence supporting this ideaKelsey Piper, an Effective Altruist journalist, summarized the issue here.
    • Clean technology also allows the preservation of fossil fuels in case they are needed in the future for some reason. This might reduce existential risk in a different sense, but I’m not confident enough to score it. One reason not to care about this is that the most accessible fossil fuel reserves have all probably been exploited already

    Long run

    Economic impact
    • Future American pollution, and pollution in other countries that we can eliminate, will be responsible for about 1-2% damage to GWP
      • 3°C of warming would reduce Gross World Product by 6%
        • 2017 metanalysis by Nordhaus and Moffat suggested a 1.6% expected loss
        • 2017 metanalysis by Howard and Sterner estimated a 9-10% loss
        • 2018 statistical metanalysis by Newell et al estimated a 1-2% loss by 2100 from unmitigated climate change, though without specifying 3°C in particular
        • 2015 economist survey by Howard & Sylvan (2015) found that the mean of economists’ median estimates of the costs of 3°C of global warming was 10.2% of GWP by 2090; we can estimate 11% for 2100
        • I assign a weight of 2 to each of the standard metanalyses, a weight of 3 to the statistical test and a weight of 3 to the economist surveyA 2019 policy report states that economic assessments of climate change damages for unusual warming are likely to be underestimates due to the difficulty of quantifying uncertain impacts and predicting thresholds. A 3°C scenario would be somewhat unprecedented relative to history and would have some potential for these kinds of dynamic costs and thresholds. This issue might explain why surveyed economists were more pessimistic than the meta-analyses. I don’t have reason to expect economists’ own subjective estimates to have an overall bias.

          Meanwhile, the Newell et al metanalysis appears to be a more robust statistical test of models, and shows little relatively climate impact. Speculative estimates of greater damages should not be given as much weight due to the optimizer’s curse.          . The weighted average is then 6%
      • The expected economic damage from future greenhouse gas emissions, considering different temperature scenarios, is 5% of GWP
        • When factoring in temperature uncertainty, we should use a quadratic damage function, so that twice as much warming causes four times the damage. This assumption is preferred by Nordhaus and is consistent with a 2019 policy report that suggests that damages could be much greater beyond ordinary temperatures
        • My expectation for temperature increase is a lognormal distribution with a median of 2.95°C and a standard deviation of 0.45°C, which is close to the forecast given by Wagner and Wetzmann (2015) on pages 53-54
        • Combining these figures with a slight adjustment for possible nonhuman causes yields an expected cost of 9% of GWP from climate change (driven substantially by tail risks of extreme climate change with the assumption of quadratic damages).
        • 2100 is pretty far away, past many plausible points of AGI and other radical transformations. Also, some air pollution has already been released, though it might be sequestered. For these two reasons, I estimate the damage caused by future emissions at 4% of GWP
        • These models just look at increases in mean temperature. One must also consider that climate change will increase local temperature variance, at least for a while, which will entail further harms. Therefore I increase the expected damage to 5%
      • America's future emissions and policies will be responsible for 0.75% damage to gross world product from climate change
        • America will only be responsible for 5% of future GHG emissions, but we are currently emitting 15%, and the near-term emissions will do more cumulative damage. Therefore we are directly responsible for perhaps 10% of damage from future GHG emissions
        • We can accomplish more by helping clean technologies proliferate around the world, so we are ultimately responsible for perhaps 15% of future world emissions
      • Other harms of pollution besides climate change will increase this number beyond 0.75%, to perhaps 1-2%
    • The economic harms of this pollution will disproportionately hurt poorer, tropical countries
      • Global warming will primarily hurt warmer regions and will cause more damage to places which are too poor to properly adapt
      • Dirty air from American pollution mostly hurts Americans, but if we reduce pollution in other countries that will primarily help the developing world
    Survey rating
    • My survey gave air pollution a long-run weight of 6.7 points

    Housing

    Policy position

    Housing restrictions

    Historic preservation practices contribute to the problemTwo studies of NYC found that property values rose after historical place designations. It's not clear how much of this is due to the locations attracting people, as opposed to the rules against development exacerbating the housing shortage. Either way, increases in property value imply higher rents..

    ‘Inclusionary zoning,’ which incentivizes or forces developers to offer a portion of higher-density, lower-price housing, seems to be slightly worse than properly free zoning.

    Brink Lindsey and Samuel Hammond summarize arguments for housing liberalization and make specific recommendations for reform (p. 70). Law professor Christopher Elmendorf has shared ten housing element reform recommendations aimed mainly at California.

    We can increase housing while also bailing out the USPS by allowing them to open their properties to development.

    We should also remove parking requirementsSee articles by CityLab, Matt Yglesias and The Atlantic..

    Project labor agreements increase housing construction costs by 15%.

    Rent control

    Economists surveyed in 2012 almost universally agreed that rent control does not improve housing availability and affordability. 93% of economists surveyed in 2009 believed that a rent ceiling reduces the quantity and quality of available housing. Economic literature generally shows that rent control introduces inefficiencies in housing markets while lacking plausible redistributive benefits.

    A more recent study affirmed that rent control in San Francisco drives up rents in the long run. Responding to this study, other researchers argued that the impacts are more nuanced, with a tradeoff between housing stability for incumbent renters and efficient opportunities for new residents. However, in the long run it seems fair to say that the latter is relatively important and the former less so. Two other recent studies found that rent control had no significant impacts, negative or positive. Rent control in Berlin has been disastrous. Finally, a 2017 paper found that rent deregulation reduces crime.

    Overall, rent control looks like a generally bad idea. There may be exceptions in the many cases where the housing supply is capped by overly restrictive zoning, thus driving rents up high enough that developers have an incentive to develop as much as they can regardless of rent controls. However, in practice, higher rents could still incentivize developers to take more risks and expend more effort into attempting the arduous bureaucratic and lobbying process for getting permits to build more housing.

    Mild controls on rent growth (like capping increases at 5-10% per year) seem good.

    This issue is less important than zoning restrictions.

    Public housing

    Public housing is a flawed idea. It cannot be the centerpiece of housing policy. It can be effective, as done in Vienna, but can also be bad, as done in New York City. Public housing has been used for social control in Singapore and Vienna. Even so, it can be better than nothing.

    Landlord-tenant law

    • In general, landlords must have a functional but reasonably humane mechanism to evict nonpaying tenants
      • The more that tenants can get away with delinquency, the less likely they are to actually pay, thus reducing profits for the owners of housing, thus reducing the incentive to build more housing, so that less housing is developed than is economically demanded (thus exacerbating the problem of the housing shortage described previously). As with rent control, this problem is only partially averted by the fact that local governments artificially limit housing supply anyway
      • Delinquency risk reduces the incentive for landlords to maintain properties and find new tenants
      • While redistribution from the wealthy to the poor is often justified, it's arbitrary to take it purely from landowners (as opposed to other, similarly wealthy or wealthier people), and downright perverse to specifically reward people who refuse to pay rent. Even rent control is arguably more attractive as a poverty relief mechanism than exorbitant tenant protections, because rent control benefits all incumbent tenants rather than focusing on the ones who do not pay their debts. Therefore we should prefer more sensible forms of poverty relief and be hesitant about adopting exorbitant tenant protections as an inferior option
      • Allowing indefinite squatting is a fundamental abridgement of modern property rights; property rights serve society wellEconomists generally agree, and history generally shows, that modern property rights promote growth. Additionally, property rights are a bulwark against totalitarian governments. English societies have had dictators like Oliver Cromwell, but never totalitarians, and this may be a consequence of the commitment to property rights, which was more readily abridged by other societies which often became totalitarian. and it is ill-advised to mess up such a proven system without strong reason
      • All that being said, the varieties of difficult personal circumstances and the risk of irrational or capricious landlords suggest that reasonable government oversight to mitigate the damage of eviction is beneficial
    • "Right-to-counsel" policyWhen the government pays the expenses of legal counsel for low-income renters who are facing eviction. reduces aggregate economic welfare, increases economic inequality and increases homelessness, in addition to harming the country thru increases in the tax burden or government debt
    • We should make it harder for well-funded tenants to fight eviction noticesAs noted above, right-to-counsel policies are harmful. However, they only provide the same legal tools that are available to higher-income tenants who are willing to pay for a lawyer. Common sense says that if legal representation for low-income tenants is harmful, then legal representation for high-income tenants is harmful too. And as a basic principle for building a good liberal society, we should prevent the legal system from implicitly favoring the interests of wealthier people. This is the intuition that motivates right-to-counsel laws, but it should be taken in the other direction - challenging eviction in court should be equally difficult for all tenants, not just poor ones.
    • Landlord-tenant law should be predictable and transparent, with easy dispute resolution to avoid expensive litigation as much as possible

    Homeless programs

    Programs providing long-term housing for the homeless in Los Angeles provide fiscal benefits to the state offsetting 80% of the costs in the first 18 months, thus they seem like a very good idea.

    Street lighting

    There is good evidence that improved street lighting reduces crime, and it appears cost-effective. Street lighting also improves perceptions of safety, thereby reducing the risk of right-wing backlash against crime fears. Street lighting also contributes to light pollution, at least if fixtures are not designed properly, but this is a relatively minor problem. Regulations to minimize light pollution are probably a bad idea in most cases because the benefits are very slim and they would add to the arduous complexity of the building approval process.

    Weight

    The survey gives housing a long-run weight of 5.4 points, but I really think it's underrated. I give it 7 points instead.

    Immigration

    Policy position

    Economics

    Allowing more immigration increases economic mobility and fairness on the global scale.

    Imposing requirements for people to get visas in order to travel harms international trade.

    The economic benefits of immigration seem persistent over centuries.European immigration to the US in 1850-1920 led to greater wealth and standards of living today, and Galician emigration in the 19th century has produced gains thru today, but these studies may be vulnerable to the Kelly critique of economic persistence literature.

    Years of education are a pretty noisy measure of immigrants' productivity, so in practice the economic difference between "high-skill" and "low-skill" immigrants (at least insofar as skill can be measured by ordinary government procedures) is rather modest.

    Foreigners may be mistaken about whether they should immigrate to the US, but based on experiments regarding internal migration in Kenya, they're actually more likely to be too reluctant to move.

    Deporting gang leaders to El Salvador harms local economic development via increased gang activity.

    Overall, the economic impacts of high-skill seem mostly positive, with a strong increase in economic growth and mobility, despite the probable increase in global inequality. The impacts of low-skill immigration are also positive, with increases in economic growth and mobility and a probable decrease in global inequality.

    A market for work permits would be a good political compromise to make room for more immigrants and create a more efficient labor market while still allowing native workers to hold onto their undeserved economic privilege.

    Fiscal impacts

    Fiscal issues are mildly significant for the US – interest rates are low and we have good leeway to borrow or print money, but there are practical political constraints on how much debt we can take before members of Congress become stubborn.

    Reducing H-1B visas for skilled immigrants would not grow federal revenues. Generally speaking, the current mix of immigrants to the US creates direct fiscal benefits in the long run, at an average of $259,000 per person. Expansions in immigration could disproportionately add low-skill immigrants, but the fiscal impacts of immigrants with only a high school degree are still positive ($49,000). Immigrants without even a high school degree have negative fiscal impacts (-$117,000)Bryan Caplan's Open Borders, chapter 3.. Refugees have an average fiscal impact of $6,800 per year.

    There are also indirect fiscal impacts. Each low-skilled immigrant to the US provides an average of $1,000-2,100 per year in indirect fiscal benefits.

    There are some cases of negative fiscal impacts from immigration to Europe, but America's welfare system is more robust to immigration.

    So high-skilled immigration is clearly fiscally beneficial for the United States, whereas the fiscal impacts of low-skilled immigration are unclear.

    Note that immigrants to the US use less social assistance than do natives with similar demographic characteristics.

    The fiscal impacts on immigrants' former countries are another matter. Emigration from Sweden has negative fiscal impacts on the Swedish government.

    Regardless, the long-run economic benefits are more important, and taxes and spending can adjust to fiscal changes in the long run.

    Crime and terrorism

    Despite this, natives may become more concerned about crime and act more cautiously accordingly. This effect is the same regardless of whether the immigrants are genetically similar or distant from the nativesSee this study of immigration in Chile. There is discussion of the paper here. While it's not necessarily applicable to the US, it does at least seem that American natives tend to be irrationally worried about immigrants committing crimes..

    Overall, it is very probable that increased immigration to the US would not substantially increase the global crime rate. It is plausible that it decreases global crime.

    As for terrorism, a 2016 paper found that some immigrant flows bring terrorism, but terrorism in general decreases with immigration. A 2018 paper found that some immigration restrictions increase terrorism and other decrease it. The percentage of Muslims in the population is associated with the risk of terrorism across Western countriesSee the 2016 paper by Noah Carl. Carl's work is very controversial, but I haven't seen any persuasive methodological criticism of his work, let alone this paper in particular. The journal OpenPsych has been criticized, but see this paper for a rebuttal to those criticisms. Generally speaking, while there are decent grounds to suspect that people like Carl and others at OpenPsych have racist or at least nationalist motivations, it's not clear that they have major methodological problems., and it seems that immigrants to the US are more frequently Muslim than the native population, but this is entirely consistent with the finding that immigration can bring terrorism to the US while decreasing it globally. Terrorism is a relatively minor problem anyway: since 1970, there have been just 77 deaths per year from terrorism in America, compared to a current rate of about 17,000 homicides per year. The political fear effects are greater for deaths by terrorism, but this isn't enough to make up for the disparity.

    It’s worth noting that correlations between religion/race and violence are targets of pro-censorship attitudes.A 2019 survey found that liberals have a moderate bias towards censoring Muslim violence, while also finding that conservatives have a small bias towards censoring Christian violence. Most academics are liberal, so it’s plausible that academia might understate the issue of Muslim violence. There is also a general pattern of political pressure in academia pointing in the direction of rejecting such associations between immigrants and violent tendencies. However, even if immigration increases Islamist terrorism, this issue would be too small to change the bigger picture, due to just how rare it is.

    A large literature suggests that the presence of refugees is associated with greater risk of conflict, but a new study looking at 1990-2018 found that refugees are more likely to decrease conflict risk as a conseqence of increased development.

    Political attitudes

    A major dimension of immigration is that it can change the American political system, as immigrants can have different political values than natives. There is a general literature on how immigrants vote and otherwise engage with the American political system. Generally speaking, immigration does not destroy the institutions responsible for prosperity. America's political polarization is primarily driven by whites so a more racially diverse population would be politically healthier. And immigrants are less economically stratified by education status when compared to US natives, which seems like it will create a better political economy.

    But this does not give a complete picture, because we should not simply look at whether America gets a better or worse political system. The full picture is more complicated. Immigration can also change the political system in the émigré country, and it changes the number of people who are subjected to better or worse political systems.

    One way to think about states is that the goodness of their governments is determined by the average level of virtue among their citizensThis is at odds with the standard assumption that political policies reflect the preferences of the median voter. However, I think the average is more accurate. There are many different dimensions of political policy, and if the political system approximates the median views within each dimension, the result could look more like the overall average than like the overall median. Moreover, people differ not only in simple policy preferences, but also in their levels of vigor, fairness, rationality, and other traits where extremity can lead to further impacts, especially in a political system where much change is driven by activism and lobbying rather than voting. Intuitively, it seems clear that making good voters even better, or making bad voters even worse, can have substantive impacts in the real world even though the median is unchanged. Some people agree with me on this. Anyway, if I tried to do this analysis on the basis of the median voter, it would be harder to derive clear results.. In this case, migration of any sort never has any net direct impacton the global average quality of governance.It is very easy to mathematically derive this from the aforementioned assumption. The equations can be found in my older Candidate Scoring System document on page 161. Note that it's possible for quality of governance in both countries to decline due to migration: if Americans are systematically much better citizens than the foreigners, but the best residents of the foreign country come to America, then both countries will end up with worse governments. But more people will get to live in the country which has a better government, so it balances out.

    But this simple model only really makes sense if the immigrants come from democracies. 31% of immigrants to America come from authoritarian regimes, and 52% come from countries which are nominally democratic but substantially less democratic than the US. Only 4% come from countries which are more democratic than the US.I compared 2018 DHS statistics with the Economist Intelligent Unit's 2019 Democracy Index. Only some countries are rated, so I was only able to look at immigrants from those countries, representing 98% of all immigrants. So immigrants frequently come from places where their civic virtue (or lack thereof) had little impact on the political system.

    Let’s imagine that immigrants come from a fully authoritarian state where the political system is unchanged by citizens’ preferences and therefore unchanged by any emigration. This extreme authoritarianism is not realistic, as subjects of authoritarian regimes can and do influence their government in several ways. No country gets a 0 on the Democracy Index. However, when this extreme case is evaluated beside the previous democratic case, it can be presumed that the real story is somewhere between the conclusions of the two models.

    In this case, immigration to the US improves average governance if the migrants tend to have better civic values than those of their former government.Again this is simple to show mathematically, see the older Candidate Scoring System document on page 162. This is true for Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria, where large numbers of ordinary people have fled oppressive regimes. Meanwhile, immigration to the US degrades average governance if the migrants tend to have worse civic values than those of their former government. The idea of an enlightened authoritarian government restraining a worse populace seems like a very rare state of affairs, but it may be true in China, where ordinary citizens seem more hawkish and traditionalist than the CCP.

    But emigrants are not representative samples of the population. They are more likely to be meritorious (with the education and skills to qualify for and benefit from immigration), more likely to be victims of political disenfranchisement or even persecution, and more likely to be open to America's values and society. We should not assume that victims of persecution are particularly virtuous themselves, but almost anyone is better than a persecutive government just by dint of regression to the mean. Overall this suggests that immigration from authoritarian regimes is still more likely to be a net positive for governance.

    Another complication for this model for immigration from both democracies and nondemocracies is that civic virtue is not constant regardless of where people live. Some people’s views may be more compatible in some polities than in others. If people come from places with fierce local grievances, their functional level of civic virtue will probably increase when they come to the US. For instance, an aggressive Sunni man may be contributing to severe religious tensions and violence against the Shi’a when he lives in Iraq, but if he comes to the US he will be in a context where such sentiments ring hollow. Transplanting nationalists also seems to increase their civic virtue in practice: instead of having them care about their native country, they will now care about a foreign country while participating as an American citizen, which promotes more international cooperation and engagement (albeit in a more narrow and biased sense than cosmopolitanism).

    On the down side, some immigrants’ civic attitudes may be less compatible with American democracy than with foreign systems. For instance, new factions, religions and ethnicities may clash with natives. But this has not occurred for many new factions in American society, including Mormons and many immigrant groups which have assimilated. America mostly does a fairly good job of integrating ethnic groups. We have done a poor job of handling the status of the African-American community since the 1960s, but this is mainly due to unique characteristics of the African-American situation, not a reflection of any particularly American tendency towards racism or sectarianism. Total assimilation is a mythA since-deleted thread from Garett Jones had reputable citations arguing this., but many immigrants come from countries where their own identity has been subjected to fierce local hostility, so allowing more immigration may reduce overall identitarian conflict.

    Another complication for this model for immigration from both democracies and nondemocracies is that civic virtue can change as a result of immigration. First, the immigrants themselves may adopt more American values. Getting the opportunity to immigrate can make them feel more grateful and supportive of the United States and of the ideals of liberal democracy in general. Immigrants do tend to be patriotic and trusting of American government and institutions. Muslim-Americans tend to assimilate to American liberal values. Chinese political attitudes are shaped by their information environment and are likely to become less vicious if they live in a democracy.

    Meanwhile, natives may change their views in response to the immigrants. One study found that high-skilled immigrants tend to decrease Republican voteshare among existing citizens whereas low-skilled immigrants tend to increase it, regardless of their country of origin, causing net losses for the Republican Party due to the higher rate of high-skill immigration. There is some evidence that immigration increases vertical income inequality and thereby encourages people to support economic redistribution and the Democrats who advocate it,See this Center for Immigration Studies report. CIS’s work has often been disputed, and it is a right-wing group which pushes for lower immigration levels and therefore could be biased to exaggerate these effects, but I haven’t seen any criticism of this particular paper. but European immigrants in 1910-1930 caused a conservative backlash leading to less expenditure on public goods. It is good to decrease Republican/conservative voteshare so the upshot here is that high-skill immigration is even better but low-skill immigration is worse. Data from the International Social Survey Programme has unclear implications for the impacts of immigration on people's support for some policies.

    The differing political impacts and settlement patterns of low- and high-skilled immigration contribute to urban-rural political polarization in America, and immigrant communities may encourage Republicans to move away to other areas. This sorting is a major cause of America’s general political polarization.

    Emigration tends to embolden the populist radical right.

    The presence of immigration opportunities also provides an incentive for governments to change. Countries will have to be better places to live in order to attract talented immigrants and retain to their talented citizens from leaving. For the United States, which is mainly a beneficiary of brain drain and systematically neglects the benefits of immigration, this effect won’t matter. But for countries which are more rationally and intensely competing for immigrants (e.g., other advanced countries), and for countries which would like to avoid ‘brain drain’ to America (such as China), the relaxation of American immigration law will compel them to try to provide more economic opportunities and political freedoms. In theory, countries could compete for citizens in the same way that companies compete for workers, which would lead to much better policies.

    Unfortunately low-skill individuals may not be so demanded. In fact, they may even be regarded as problematic citizens so immigration opportunities could actually encourage governments to just nudge them away with punitive policies. So for low-skill immigration it’s really not clear what the incentives are.

    Allowing people to immigrate from illiberal countries can be a positive step for international moral norms. If America becomes a place where people such as Uyghurs and Hong Kongers can go to escape oppression, then we get the moral high ground, showing the superiority of liberal democracy.

    A special case for immigration is people who helped the American military and face threats of retaliation for helping us, as happened in Afghanistan. Not only are there particularly strong moral and political arguments to let these people come to America, but in some cases they may know our military secrets and it is actively dangerous to us if they are left behind.

    Effect Applies for whom? Is it good or bad?
    Transplanting civic values Immigrants from democracies Neutral
    Transplanting civic values Immigrants coming from nondemocracies where the government is less virtuous than the migrants, e.g. Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela Good
    Transplanting civic values Immigrants coming from nondemocracies where the government is more virtuous than the migrants, e.g. China perhaps? Bad
    Changing the civic values of immigrants All immigrants Good
    Increasing Democratic voteshare among natives High-skill immigrants Good
    Increasing Republican voteshare among natives Low-skill immigrants Bad
    Increasing political polarization, especially the density divide Possibly all immigrants, but mainly low-skill immigrants in rural areas and high-skill immigrants in urban areas Bad
    Strengthening the populist radical right in the former country Possibly all immigrants Bad
    Incentive for other governments to compete for talent High-skill immigrants Good
    International moral norms Immigrants who are fleeing persecution Good

    To summarize, there is no overall argument that immigration is good or bad with respect to political attitudes. High-skill immigration to America tends to have positive political impacts for America although it can also lead to worse politics in immigrants' former countries. When low-skill immigrants escape oppressive regimes, the political impacts are still positive. Meanwhile, low-skill immigrants who come for more ordinary reasons have negative impacts on governance.

    The Roman Empire provides a cautionary tale, as the settlement of barbarian peoples such as the Goths created political problems in the Western Roman Empire, contributing (among many other factors) to its demise and subsequent broad social declineSee this lecture by historian Paul Freedman. While revisionist history eschews the term ‘Dark Ages’ and its full connotations for the aftermath of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it is still clear that standards of living substantially declined.. This is despite the facts that the barbarians actually arrived because they wanted to be a part of the Roman Empire (not to destroy or replace it), that they attempted to preserve a number of its institutions and traditions, and that the Roman Empire was pretty multicultural and tolerant by the standards of the time. It seems that the new populations simply didn’t do a good job of maintaining effective Roman institutions and norms. Of course, it’s just one example, and we shouldn’t select on the dependent variable. Rome was more successful at politically integrating other peoples into its empire, and if it had a policy of refusing such integration then it would not have gotten so strong in the first place. And America was more successful at politically integrating large numbers of relatively low-skill European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century.

    Considering how restrictive America’s immigration policies are, it’s implausible that we might admit so many immigrants as to cause the degree of population change that the barbarians did. Our democratic system which makes ample room for populist backlash, bolstered by persistent trends of irrational and xenophobic sentiment against immigrants, will prevent us from falling down a slippery slope of admitting so many immigrants in the foreseeable future. While leftward social change has turned into a slippery slope in some contexts, nativism and nationalism seem much more resilient to change. But this does not mean that low-skill immigration doesn’t have proportionally high political costs, it simply means that the more catastrophic predictions are very unlikely.

    Sociology

    Immigration tends to make home countries more like host countries, not vice versa. For instance, if we take immigrants from Mexico, they will do little to make American culture more like Mexico's, but a lot to make Mexican culture more like America's, as they adopt American attitudes towards things like social trust and gender equality. It's plausible but not obvious that this is a good thing.

    Almost all children of immigrants learn English. Early immigrants establish social institutions such as extended families and minority communities to accommodate their kin, so large but steady amounts of immigration pose little risk of social chaos and disintegrationSee Bryan Caplan's Open Borders pages 45-46..Increasing ethnic diversity reduces social trust, but it is a very small effectSee Dinesen et al (2019) and this National Review article. Also, too much social trust can worsen the economySee Bryan Caplan's Open Borders page 103.. Admitting refugees could conversely increase social trust in the foreign country, because refugees are often persecuted minorities.

    Arab Muslim immigration to the US reduces Americans' racial prejudice and increases Americans' altruism towards Arab Muslims.

    Immigration improves the mental health of elderly natives. Ethnic minorities experience better mental health when living among greater numbers of their kin, so we could improve mental health by admitting more immigrants who match our existing ethnic minorities.

    Immigrants seem to litter at the same rate as natives. Immigration from Europe in 1910-1930 promoted higher rates of native marriage and fertility, but this was just a result of the positive economic impacts of immigration.

    Border security

    • We should probably undermine the enforcement of immigration law, although implementing full open orders is debatable
      • EAs tend to believe that America should be less strict about the border In this survey, 11 out of 17 agreed, 1 disagreed, and 5 out of 17 were unsure or moderate. Notably however, this survey was done at the end of the Trump administration, so this may simply reflect the unusual harshness of that regime.
      • The additional immigration accepted under weakened or open borders would be mostly beneficial
        • Legal immigration is nearly always beneficial, even low-skill immigrants who are not refugees (see previous sections)
        • Current undocumented immigration seems net beneficial
          • Undocumented immigration is good for migrants
          • Undocumented immigration is good for the economy - it's economically similar to low-skill immigration in general, discussed previously
        • Undocumented immigration does not increase crime
          • There is no apparent relationship between undocumented migrants and drunk driving
          • Theoretically, undocumented migrants might be more likely to commit crimes in America because they are willing to break immigration law in the first place and the process of illegal immigration could mix them up with criminal networks, or they might actually be less likely to commit crimes than legal low-skilled immigrants, because the risk of deportation may compel them to avoid criminal activities
        • Undocumented immigration can provoke Americans to oppose DACA/DREAM and similar policies for existing undocumented migrants, and to oppose higher levels of legal immigration although this seems like a relatively weak effectEAs believe it is only 25% likely that "curtailing the flow of illegal immigration will, in the long run, cause a similar or greater increase in the flow of legal immigrants, as Americans become much more willing to accept immigrants when the system is better controlled".
        • Undocumented immigration can lead Americans to support right-wing politicians
      • If borders were opened, many potential immigrants would be barred by transportation difficulties, or would wait until they can line up jobs, housing and social connections, so we wouldn’t see such a sharp increase in immigration as nativists fear
    • While a few kinds of immigration might be harmful, border security in practice is inevitably misused in destructive ways, we cannot expect a rational or morally fair border control regime
      • Border controls are always misused; governments including the US government systematically err on the side of accepting far too few immigrants, and it will almost certainly stay this way in the futureLiberalization of the country and democratization of the political system (which gives liberals more political power) could make the government more supportive of immigration. However, support for greater immigration is not a strongly held left-wing value. America's most likely cultural evolution is to accept progressive internal norms for Americans while still being dismissive of any responsibility to accept outsiders. The leading institutions of left-wing political culture don't seem to care about expanding immigration, even though they have objected to the most visibly cruel characteristics of Republican border security policies.

        Meanwhile, it is laughable to suggest that the American right will become adequately supportive of legal immigrants and refugees just because the border is secured. Even in the days when the GOP primarily represented corporate interests it was dubious, but now the GOP is more beholden to middle-class and working-class populism which is closely associated with xenophobia.

        As far as I know, no wealthy country today has a remotely adequate immigration policy. Since potential immigrants don't get votes, the system is irreparably broken everywhere.

        Overall, border security is similar to a Bureau of Censorship or a forced labor program: something that may in theory be beneficial from a utilitarian point of view if used rarely and empathetically, but in practice gets predictably abused causing egregious harm. In such cases, it's often best if the government is practically or legally incapable of exercising such dangerous authority.        . Circumventing the enforcement of immigration law is the only realistic way to guarantee a place of refuge to severely persecuted minorities around the world and that alone makes it very hard to criticize
      • The border enforcement regime is often abused in ways that degrade our civil rights. ICE and CBP personnel have been implicated in a variety of scandals
    • The border enforcement regime can address some legitimate social problems but also inadvertently creates others
      • Border security can control the flow of illicit recreational drugs from Mexico, thereby reducing our problem with dangerous drugs and reducing their problem with drug cartels. It can also mitigate forced human traffickingMuch of the effort against human trafficking is misguided paranoia about consensual work and migration, but presumably there are still some cases of actual coercion and slavery.
      • The threat of immigration law enforcement facilitates exploitation of resident undocumented immigrants, thus increasing workplace injury and possibly domestic violence.
      • The threat of border patrol makes border crossing more dangerous as immigrants have to go to greater lengths to avoid the authorities
      • Terrorists are not crossing the US-Mexico border
    • Border enforcement costs billions of dollarsICE and CBP cost $27 billion per year, and Trump's planned border wall would have cost $22 billion..
    • Open borders increases the risk of things like fascism and apartheid, but this risk is not as bad as is often suggested
      • A xenophobic public may react to open borders by electing a far-right leader to do things like strictly enforcing the border, instituting apartheid or committing ethnic cleansing. Of course, if harsh policy towards immigrants were the only consequence of far-right leadership, this wouldn't be a good argument to keep the harsh immigration policy that we already have (which is arguably worse than apartheid). But far-right leadership tends to be bad in other ways as well
      • President Trump was a good example of how xenophobic backlash can elect dangerous leaders. He suggested shooting undocumented migrants in the legs, but other right wing officials consistently dismissed the idea. Immigration policy under Trump was very bad but not bad enough to outweigh the progress made by liberal administrations. Of course, Trump was also a very poor leader in other ways
      • Dominic Cummings' debatable argument for Brexit: loss of national control over immigration can provoke illiberal sentiments which threaten the bigger project of international cooperation
      • Instead of regressing to racist immigration policy, xenophobes may rely on tools like exclusionary zoning, gated communities, and a harsh criminal justice system to insulate themselves from immigrants. While these tools are certainly objectionable, they're at least better than excluding immigrants from the country entirely
      • As a country with a background in the absolute nuclear family, which is also one of the freest, least racist and least authoritarian countries in the world, and is constrained by a fairly strict regime of constitutional law, America is highly unlikely to enter the dark extremes of far-right governance
    • America is a relatively good place for experimentation with porous borders. America has one of the best cultures for accepting immigrants, and already has one of the most porous and heavily trafficked borders in the world. We can experiment with pushing this further and then the rest of the world will see how it succeeds or fails
    • Much of the risk of open borders would be absorbed by the first country to open its borders; after many low-skill immigrants come to the US it will be easier for other countries to open their borders without having to worry as much about getting their own politically destablizing wave of immigration
  • Specific border control issues

    • Summary

    For shifting the human trajectory, high-skill immigration has decent economic impacts, good political impacts, and neutral social impacts. EAs broadly agree that we should increase high-skill immigration In this survey, 17 out of 17 agreed.. International relations scholars overwhelmingly oppose limiting the number of Chinese students studying in the US. Overall it seems good. We should revive the International Entrepreneur Rule and grant multiple-entry visas to international students.

    Low-skill immigration has good economic impacts, negative political impacts, and neutral social impacts. EAs mostly agree that we should increase high-skill immigration.In this survey, 15 out of 17 agreed, 1 disagreed, and 1 was unsure or moderate. Overall, it seems mildly good.

    Finally, when people are fleeing the persecution and disasters of illiberal regimes – such as Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Cubans, Venezuelans, and interpreters who have aided the American military – there are strong moral, humanitarian and political reasons to admit them in large numbers. EAs mostly support increasing refugee admissions. In this survey, 14 out of 17 agreed, 2 disagreed, and 1 was unsure or moderate. 97% of international relations scholars support taking in refugees from Ukraine. The Niskanen Center recommends five specific reforms for restoring our refugee resettlement program.

    We should stop wasting green card slots by letting them go unused.

    We should allocate H-1B visas on the basis of merit rather than lotteries. More generally, insofar as immigration is restricted, point systems are theoretically more efficient for achieving any given goal in immigration policy rather than lotteries. In practice, the main goal of US policymakers with a point system will probably be to increase high-skill immigration at the expense of low-skill immigration. This has an immediate humanitarian cost, but the economic benefits and political safety of high-skilled immigration are more important in the long run. Also, points systems can helpfully reduce uncertainty for would-be immigrants, who may have to decide how to use their time and money while waiting on immigration decisions.

    Resident undocumented immigrants should be protected from deportation and granted a path to legal status. More generally, the border with Mexico should not be so strictly controlled.

    Weight

    Short run

    Immigrants from middle-income countries generally can’t be counted here because this section focuses on people in extreme poverty and other humanitarian crises. So we start by looking at immigrants coming from extreme poverty and other crisis situations. In 2015-2017, an annual average of 109,000 lawful permanent residents came to the US from Africa and 60,000 came from India so I estimate 150,000 individuals for this figure. We also receive about 21,000 refugees and perhaps some very poor or crisis-stricken immigrantsfrom Latin America, which suggests a range of perhaps 150,000 people per year (e.g. from 100,000 to 250,000) whose migration depends on realistic government policies.

    The right to asylum has collapsed worldwide, and America might be able to shore up good international norms for greater impact.

    Considering these figures, I estimate that 1.8 million QALYs are at stake for immigrants and their families per year.

    Additional benefits accrue to (a) wealthy immigrants, such as middle-class people coming from other advanced economies, and (b) middle- and upper-class Americans who benefit from a more productive economy. These seem significant yet much less important than the benefits to desperate migrants. Thus, I weight the issue for 2 million QALYs overall.

    Long run

    The survey gives immigration a long-run weight of 7.0 points, but I update the weight to 9 points since I have recently included more issues in border security.

    Macroeconomic policy

    Policy position

    Among economists surveyed in 2014, only 29% of agreed, while 44% agreed with provisos, that a large federal deficit hurts the economy. 51% agreed, and 32% agreed with provisos, that the structural federal deficit should be eliminated with spending cuts and tax increases; however this is dubious given our central bank flexibility and sustained super-low interest rates. There is still active debate on whether deficit reduction is an important goal.See this article by Matthew Yglesias and this response by Brian Riedl.

    66% of economists agreed, and 23% agreed with provisos, that budget balancing should be done over the course of the business cycle rather than yearly. A balanced budget amendment would be economically dangerous.

    Weight

    The survey gives macroeconomic policy a long-run weight of 6.1 points.

    Trade

    Policy position

    EAs generally support freer trade.In this survey, 14 out of 17 agreed, and 3 were unsure or moderate.

    International relations scholars oppose 78%/support 22% increased tariffs on imports from China, oppose 73%/support 27% restricting the exchange of scientific research with China, support 75%/oppose 25% prohibiting Chinese tech firms from building communications networks in the US, and support 81%/oppose 19% prohibiting US companies from selling sensitive high-tech products to China. They also overwhelmingly agree (95%) that free trade agreements between the US and other countries have been good for the US, and tended to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

    Short-run robust impacts

    In the short run, trade with poor countries robustly helps lift people out of extreme poverty, regardless of whether the resulting jobs are 'exploitative'Some people believe that trade should be stopped because it creates exploitative jobs for low-skilled foreign people who have no other choices. This complaint is spurious, because the fact that other people have no other choices simply means that it is all the more critical for them to be provided with any possible improvement, and denying jobs will obviously force them into even worse conditions. General improvements in living and working standards for the developing world are important, but reducing trade would not achieve that..

    General economic impact

    America’s trade deficit does not put us at a serious economic loss, and mostly has to do with current accounts balances rather than trade policy.

    Industrial policy is generally a bad idea, but it worked well in South Korea

    Overall, freer trade policies by America would have a roundly positive long-run economic impact.

    Economic resilience

    • Economists tend to agree that outsourcing has increased the vulnerability of "many American industries" to supply chain disruptions, but some seem to have interpreted the question as referring to international disruptions and agreed while pointing out that vulnerability to domestic disruption could increase. Additionally, many industries could become more vulnerable at the same time as many other industries becoming less vulnerable
    • Offshoring has mixed impacts on global resilience against catastrophes
      • Concentration of an industry in a particular area generally increases vulnerability to regional catastrophes, and offshoring may or may not lead to such concentration
      • Economic interdependence does not make the world more vulnerable to recessions
      • Economic interdependence increases vulnerability to a catastrophic loss of global trade, but that is a very unlikely scenario - ships and ports are pretty straightforward technology, and nothing will prevent oceans from being usable
      • Offshoring critical industries to countries which face nuclear threats, like China and India, does not change global vulnerability to nuclear warfare (since the industries are threatened either way)
      • Offshoring critical industries to countries which do not face nuclear threats, like Latin America and Africa, makes the world less vulnerable to nuclear warfare
      • Offshoring critical industries to countries which are just as bad at the United States at controlling pandemics, like the UK and India, does not change global vulnerability to pandemics
      • Offshoring critical industries to countries which are better than the United States at controlling pandemics, like Taiwan and China, makes the world less vulnerable to pandemicsSamo Burja: "The COVID-19 pandemic showed East Asia to be the best place to put key elements of the supply chain. East Asian societies remain industrial societies and can adopt factory-derived values to force compliance with public health measures. Public health policy can also be set in ways that respond to evidence, since their professionalization is young and hasn’t yet consumed its own epistemic foundation. Importantly, authorities see it as vital to enable the gathering of many people together in crowded spaces. Without this impetus, industrial manufacturing is impossible. The working factories are a political asset, since the production of steel and other fundamentals strengthens their states. Because of this, you cannot simply send everyone home forever.

        Europe and the United States are the worst places to put key elements of the supply chain. They cannot produce compliance with public health measures. On paper, they have the best scientists and administrators, but massive white-collar overproduction means the victory of sharp elbows over sharp minds. Factory values, if reimplemented, directly challenge their existing power centers and partially undo the political pacification project that is the “knowledge” economy. In such a society, sending everyone home doesn’t impede production; in fact, it solves several social and political problems."
      • Offshoring critical industries to other countries reduces vulnerability to supervolcanoes (since the United States has an unusually high number of supervolcanoes) but supervolcano eruptions are exceedingly rare
    • Offshoring has mixed impacts on American resilience against catastrophes
      • Offshore industries help ensure that imports will be available to help America when a regional catastrophe damages our country and our industry in particular
      • Onshore industries help ensure that production will be available to help America when other countries refuse to export to the US
      • Offshoring some of our medical supply to China had an unclear impact on our resilience against COVID-19When the pandemic broke out in China, Chinese exports of PPE to the United States declined by only 19%. Drug and medical device shortages appeared to be minor before the American outbreak of COVID-19 increased our demand. Nurses reported widespread PPE shortages in hospitals in early March, but it may have been due to hospital ineptitude rather than economic shortage.

        Meanwhile, medical production in the United States during the pandemic was damaged by widespread death, social distancing behavior, excessive FDA and CDC regulations, continued failure of the government to support increased production, and norms and laws against price gougingEconomists mostly oppose anti-price-gouging measures.
    • Offshoring has mixed impacts on foreign resilience against catastrophes
      • Offshore industries help ensure that production will be available to help foreign countries even when America refuses to export to themDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the US government restricted some experts of medical supplies even though some other countries seemed to need them more than we did.
      • Onshore industries help ensure that exports from America will be available to help foreign countries when a regional catastrophe damages them and their industry in particular
    • Protectionist tariffs passed to promote onshoring can continue during an actual crisis and impede critical imports, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic

    Political impacts

    • Expanded trade can be politically harmful to America
      • Expansions of free trade can promote right-wing populist politics and political polarization in America, as evidenced by the China shockSee this article by Samuel Hammond, this paper about the 2016 election, this paper about the consequences of trade liberalization in the 1990s, and this paper investigating why globalism fuels populism., but this may be rare (I don't know of examples of this happening from other trade deals besides the one with China)
      • Right-wing populist politics and polarization might be consequences of any economic shock which kills jobs in certain sectors, so cutting off existing trade might be similarly bad
    • Trade can be good or bad for foreign politics
      • Trade creates linkages between the US and other countries, which may spread liberal values and practices abroad, but may also import illiberal values and practices to us
      • In many cases, US-China trade spurred Chinese nationalism as a reaction to the perils of competition with Western firms
      • US-China trade may have encouraged a bad Chinese political economy, but this hypothesis is very dubiousSee the article by Reihan Salam where he says that had America continued to deny normalized trade relations to China from 2000 onward, then China might have abandoned their mercantilist trade policy and returned to the indigenous entrepreneurship approach which they had already abandoned in the 1990s, which would arguably promoted a more open political economy. But the hypothesis that the CCP would change their economic strategy in this manner is totally unsubstantiated. It’s not clear why an entrepreneurship-based approach would be more attractive to the CCP given that barriers against Chinese exports can hurt Chinese entrepreneurs just as much as they can hurt CCP-promoted behemoths., and even if it's true, the implications are unclearEven if Salam’s hindsight argument about China is correct, it says basically nothing about how we should act today. It is not apparent that restricting trade now with China or with any other country will encourage them to liberalize. Generally speaking, such restrictions will actually prevent foreign leaders from doing what they know will best develop their country, and will actually prevent countries from liberalizing because that is the typical impact of impoverishing them.
      • Trade deals improve labor and environmental standards in foreign countries which sign trade agreements with these kinds of conditions
      • Trade gives leverage for America to sanction countries for human rights abuses
    • Trade is mostly good for international relations

    Infectious disease

    • Trade is likely to worsen pandemics
      • Study of COVID-19 found that it spread thru trade linkages
      • Theoretical model found that globalization can either exacerbate or reduce the threat of pandemics depending on the nature of linkages. Globalization between similar countries increases pandemic risk, but when countries differ substantially in their epidemiological parameters, globalization reduces pandemic risk. This is because globalization prevents the most vulnerable countries from becoming autarkic hotbeds of unhealthy interactions

    A final criticism of free trade policies and politicians is that the underlying/ensuing globalist ideology can promote an unreasonable reluctance to emplace important travel restrictions against pandemicsSee this National Review article, and this article by Curtis Yarvin.. It does seem true that, in the United States at least, experts and liberals were variously apathetic or hostile towards travel restrictions against COVID-19, and their beliefs were strangely inconsistent with both scientific/historical evidence and common sense on the efficacy on travel restrictions. Antiglobalists were much more supportive.

    However, international comparison shows a different story. Countries’ overall levels of globalization did not meaningfully predict the level of international travel restrictions which they had emplaced on February 15 – in fact, the globalized countries tended to implement slightly more restrictions. When regressing against globalization, GDP per capita (PPP adjusted), and the distance from nations’ capitals to Wuhan, there was still no meaningful relationship.


    		Coefficients
    		 Standard error
    		 t Stat
    		 P-Value
    Intercept
    		 1.2627
    		 0.4954
    		 2.5486
    		 0.0118
    GDP per capita
    		 8.2985E-06
    		 4.2001E-06
    		 1.9758
    		 0.0499
    Straight-line distance to Wuhan
    		 -0.0001
    		 4.2045E-05
    		 -3.2821
    		 0.0013
    Globalization 0.0005 0.0075 0.0723 0.9424

    Also, if we’re going to analyze globalist ideology in practice rather than just evaluating basic globalist policies, we also need to think about the further benefits brought by the ideology over and above the basic policies. In particular, globalist ideology encourages countries to share and coordinate more to mitigate global problems such as pandemics. This is at least as important as possessing the willingness to close borders when necessary.

    Recommendations on trade

    Unfortunately, trade appears to promote local right-wing backlashs in America. But it generally leads to more peace, economic growth and economic mobility. We should maximize trade with nearly all countries.

    The geopolitical challenge offered by China complicates things. In a few strategic sectors we should definitely cut trade, and in a few other sectors we should definitely continue to trade in ways that give us economic leverage over them.

    More generally, cutting trade with China would create a better international balance of power, but would also increase tensions between the US and China. So it’s not clear if it’s a good or a bad idea.

    Note that trade restrictions in practice are often abused. The Section 232 law was meant to protect critical industries for national security, and for a while it was rarely used, but it was eventually abused by the Trump administration who used it to pass a variety of trade restrictions which did not help national security. Protectionist tariffs passed to promote onshoring can continue during an actual crisis and impede critical imports, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, restraint is warranted.

    We should repeal the Buy America law.

    We should close the Export-Import Bank, due to its economic distortions, its capture by special interests, and its budget problems.

    Economic institutions with global influence should not be Euro-American clubs. China, sub-Saharan African countries, and other developing nations should have greater representation in groups like the G-7, G-8, G-20, World Bank and IMF, although supporting the admission of China should be a matter of negotiation (see our great power relations section).

    The Jones ActThe Jones Act requires that goods shipped between U.S. ports be transported on ships that are built, owned, and operated by American citizens or permanent residents. is bad for the environment, in addition to being economically harmful, and should be repealed.

    We should secure semiconductor supply chains as a key strategic resource. Economists (in Europe) tend to agree that securing chip supply chains should be a strategic objective.

    Weight

    Short run

    Economists generally believe that trade and business are more important than foreign aid for moving countries out of poverty, but the remaining barriers to trade are rather modest.

    Only a small proportion of US trade reaches the poorest regions of the world; the most politically salient deals (TPP and NAFTA) focus on the Pacific Rim and Latin America/Canada respectively.

    I give trade a short-run weight of 0.5 million QALYs.

    Long run

    The survey gives this issue a long-run weight of 5.4 points.

    Small wars

    Policy position

    Direct consequences of war efforts

    Indirect consequences of war efforts

    • Reinforce our general ability to credibly deter and coerce other statesMilitary campaigns are often central to credibility in international relations. If we want to enforce norms such as the prohibition on interstate aggression, nuclear nonproliferation, and the responsibility to protect one's people, it's extremely helpful to have processes of punishing regimes which violate them. That said, sustained deterrence is difficult. It isn't achieved by a mere decision to go to war, it requires a sustained credible commitment to be willing to commit more violence in the future., which is typically a good thing, but probably narrow and contextualWhile breathless punditry often asserts that America loses credibility every time we don't use our military to support this or that cause (for instance, our withdrawal from Afghanistan, or our refusal to fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine), the reality is not like this. America's credibility in defending its core interests is not determined by its unwillingness to defend things which are not its core interests; America's willingness to defend a non-NATO country doesn't seriously affect perceptions of our willingness to defend a NATO country. International relations scholars mostly reject the idea (73% disagree versus 16% agree) that America needed to demonstrate willingness to use offensive military power in Ukraine to show our allies and rivals that we are resolved on other issues and in other regions.
    • Reinforce norms against whatever it is that we're going to war against (terrorism, WMD proliferation, human rights violations, totalitarianism, etc)
    • Can intensify illiberal policies and norms well beyond the war zoneMost recently, the War on Terror seems to have turned American politics in an authoritarian direction and emboldened China's atrocities against Uyghurs. That said, I am skeptical about how much of these impacts come from the actual decision to make a military intervention. Had we responded to international terrorism merely with narrow and domestic measures, we (and China) might have still gone down the path of excessive illiberalism, possibly to an even greater degree. The illiberalizing impact of our generalized "War on Terror" paradigm is different from the illiberalizing impact of our specific military campaigns.
    • May increase general international acceptance of military action as an appropriate tool, which is a bad thing
    • Reinforce international law if we punish states for illegal actions, may undermine international law if we go to war illegally (but international law is not always good anyway)
    • Changes foreign perceptions of the US, for better or worse. "Blowback" theory claims that military interventions provoke more grievances and terrorism, but this is typically falseSee this post by Anonymous Mugwump about Hamas and Al-Qaeda.

    Recent lessons

    The complex considerations of war make it impossible to define an appropriate philosophy ex nihilo. To get a general sense of the extent to which we should be hawkish or dovish, we must look at recent American war efforts and decide whether they have been worthwhile.

    • Defense and liberation of countries from unjustified interstate aggression generally works wellThe list of such cases includes Kuwait (1991), France and the Low Countries (1944). We also helped defend and liberate parts of Iraq and Syria from aggression by the ISIL proto-state. These have all been very worthwhile efforts. The war efforts in Vietnam and Korea were more dubious.
    • Regime change - military interventions to establish a new (generally more democratic, US-friendly) government - has been beneficial 7 times and neutral or harmful 3 times
      • Regime change had neutral results in Libya in 2011The 2011 bombing campaign (which was arguably not meant as regime change, but had that impact anyway) did not directly worsen or ameliorate the war in Libya, it simply shifted the balance from Gaddafi towards the rebels. Civil war has continued in Libya since the fall of Gaddafi, but the same (or worse, a democidal crackdown) would have probably occurred if Gaddafi were still around. A peaceful agreement between Gaddafi and the rebels could theoretically have produced a better outcome, but it's very dubious that that could have been achieved. Libyans heavily supported the bombing campaign against Gaddafi.

        The fall of Gaddafi seems to have contributed to civil war in Mali, but did not cause it.

        Because Libyans mostly supported the intervention, it reinforced international norms of self-determination and democracy. Because the intervention was justified by Gaddafi's threats against his people, it reinforced the international norm of Responsibility to Protect.

        The intervention in Libya added credibility to the NATO and UN capacity to make demands such as no-fly zones. However, it reduced trust in NATO as they were perceived to have overstepped their legal bounds.

        The intervention was fairly cheap and caused negligible harm to NATO servicemembers, being conducted entirely by air.
      • Regime change had either neutral or poor results in Iraq in 2003The invasion of Iraq led to continued violence and instability in the country for over a decade and counting, which even includes mass killings by ISIL. The new government of Iraq has been weak and corrupt, but is still much better than the previous regime, a brutal dictatorship under Saddam Hussein who killed around 100,000 Kurds in the 1980s. It's plausible that had America not invaded Iraq in 2003, then Iraq would have followed the disastrous path of Syria in the Arab Spring, which is even worse. The population of Iraq has grown rapidly since 2003. Nationwide opinion surveys of Iraqis showed support for the invasion to be 62% (Gallup 2004), 77% (World Public Opinion January 2006) or 61% (World Public Opinion September 2006). Iraqis in Baghdad endorsed the invasion by 54% to 32% in a 2003 survey.

        Had Hussein been left in power, he would have posed a real risk of WMD proliferation and war with Israel.

        The invasion and its aftermath may have contributed to toxic war-on-terror politics in the United States and China.

        The war has distracted the United States from other military priorities. The direct expense of the war in Iraq (both the initial regime change and the reconstruction/counterinsurgency that followed) was around $1 trillion, which is roughly $30,000 per Iraqi. Had we not invaded Iraq, we might have put more resources towards Afghanistan and achieved success there, but this narrative is disputed. Had we not invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan, there would be an estimated three percentage points lower chance of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

        The war undermined international law against aggression, since it was an illegal invasion, but it did reinforce norms against ambiguous WMD threats and general obnoxious provocation as displayed by Hussein. Because a (modest) majority of Iraqis endorsed the regime change, it slightly reinforced norms of self-determination and democracy, but this was clearly outweighed by the reputational damage to democracy done by widespread negative perceptions of US role in the Iraq War.

        A 2014 expert survey gave the invasion of Iraq a net benefit score of -1.45 and an overall just war score of -1.25 on a +3 to -3 scale. I think they're a little too harsh.
      • Regime change failed in Afghanistan in 2001The invasion of Afghanistan led to continuous war lasting until today, claiming the lives of nearly 200,000 people. Some civil war would have still occurred had we not invaded, but it presumably would have been less severe, especially considering the Afghan way of war.

        The invasion opened up the country to greater human and economic development. In 2002, new aid efforts were speculated to save over a hundred thousand women and children each year. In retrospect, under-5 and maternal mortality have declined, but it’s very hard to estimate how much higher (or even lower) they might be counterfactually. Schooling for girls hugely increased. Afghanistan’s per-capita GDP growth since the invasion has been about average for the region, but it did see better growth compared to its stagnation in the 1990s. Certainly, more aid flows were possible under Islamic Republic than under the Taliban. However, there is some indication that the Taliban took COVID-19 more seriously than the Islamic Republic did. Overall population increased greatly during the 2000s and 2010s, more rapidly before, suggesting that the republic had a large impact reducing mortality and/or increasing fertility.

        8 in 10 Afghans surveyed in 2015, and 7 in 10 surveyed in 2009, said that the US invasion was a good thing. However there may be some pro-ISAF response bias and opinions have presumably soured after the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

        The invasion increased opium production which contributed to the deaths of 100,000 people per year, but the Taliban's previous moratorium on opium production did have some significant downsides: in the short run at least, lower opium production may lead to lower purity opium which is even more dangerous, and the crackdown on opium farming produced economic hardship. In the long run, production elsewhere could compensate for restrictions in Afghanistan.

        The invasion weakened the al-Qaeda international terrorist group, although this is minor compared to the costs of the entire two-decade war. The idea that America could have simply negotiated with the Taliban to give up the perpetrators of 9/11 is false.

        The entire war has cost around $2 trillion (excluding interest payments, including veterans' care), or $75,000 per Afghan, or $700 million per victim of 9/11. The war has distracted the United States from other military priorities; had we not invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan, there would be an estimated three percentage points lower chance of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

        The war undermined international law against aggression, since it was probably an illegal invasion, but it did reinforce norms against terrorism. Because the majority of Afghans supported the regime change, it reinforced norms of self-determination and democracy.

        Overall, had we simply invaded Afghanistan to attack Al-Qaeda, then withdrawn as soon as our immediate operations were completed, then it may have been a good thing. However, given that it involved a long nation-building effort which ultimately failed, it just wasn't worth it. Note that it would be a mistake to say that Afghanistan has regressed entirely to its former condition under the Taliban: the legacy of nation building remains with better socioeconomic outcomes. Also, Al-Qaeda was significantly weakened by our long presence and the war appears to have caused the Taliban to stop sponsoring international terrorism. However, the benefits still seem smaller than the costs.
      • Regime change succeeded in Kosovo in 1999NATO assisted Kosovars in ousting Yugoslav forces and establishing a new state. A 2014 international studies expert survey gave NATO's intervention a net benefit score of 1.12 and an overall just war score of 1.04 (on a -3 to +3 scale).
      • Regime change succeeded in Haiti in 1994The intervention led to a reasonably stable government that was somewhat democratic government compared to the previous dictatorship. The intervention was authorized by the UN. A 2014 expert survey gave it a net benefit score of 0.58 and an overall just war score of 1.07 on a -3 to +3 scale.
      • Regime change succeeded in Panama in 1989A CBS poll found that 92% of Panamanians supported the invasion, and Human Rights Watch described the public as generally sympathetic. Panama was a reasonably peaceful and functional democracy afterwards. The invasion was illegal and therefore undermined the international law against warfare, but because the majority of Panamanians supported the regime change, it reinforced norms of self-determination and democracy. A 2014 international studies expert survey gave the intervention a net benefit score of -0.16 and an overall just war score of -0.42 (on a -3 to +3 scale), but I think they're too harsh here and it would take only a slight change for their scores to become net positive. Their scores may be partly based on an over-attachment to existing laws of sovereignty and noninterference, a common problem in international relations discourse.
      • Regime change succeeded in Grenada in 198291% of Grenadians approved of the invasion at the time. Since the invasion, Grenada has been a functional, peaceful democracy. The invasion was illegal and therefore undermined the international law against warfare, but because the majority of Grenadians supported the regime change, it reinforced norms of self-determination and democracy. A 2014 international studies expert survey gave the intervention a net benefit score of -0.32 and an overall just war score of -0.55 (on a -3 to +3 scale), but I think they're too harsh here and it would take only a slight change for their scores to become net positive. Their scores may be partly based on an over-attachment to existing principles of sovereignty and noninterference, a common problem in international relations discourse.
      • Regime change in Japan in 1945 was probably worthwhileWhile opinion polls are not available, the campaign to force Japan to unconditionally surrender (as opposed to a hypothetical peace agreement involving partial Japanese disarmament and relinquishment of all colonies, which I think Japan might have accepted as early as late 1944, although the Allies would not) was presumably a ruthless violation of the will of the Japanese people at the time. It involved killing perhaps half a million people in Japan (mainly thru aerial bombardment), plus the deaths of possibly a million or more people as a result of the continuation of Japan's colonial rule and wars in China and Southeast Asia, plus tens of thousands of American deaths fighting in the Pacific. These deaths were accompanied by widespread atrocities, oppression, injuries and malnutrition. There was also a great expense of money and material by all parties.

        There was also air pollution, but this was a minor issue. Each B-29 used 193,000 liters of gas a month for an estimated 2.6 billion liters of gas, producing 6 million tonnes of CO2, suggesting maybe $12 billion (in today's dollars) of environmental damage from the B-29s for nine months of operations. Ten battleships each using 11,000 liters per day would have together contributed $130 million of damages over that time. If we could factor in all other vehicles on all sides the total figure would probably be well into the tens of billions. But that's really very little compared to the other impacts of the war effort. Also, if we had stopped fighting sooner, most of that gas probably would have been burned by civilians anyway with the end of gas rationing.

        Meanwhile, the 72 million Japanese who survived the war did benefit from having their government replaced. Since the Allied occupation, Japan has been democratic, liberal and politically stable. Had the militarists been left in charge, in the worst case, Japan could have shrunk into dysfunctional, isolated totalitarianism like North Korea. In the best case, the fascist government could promptly fall and similar democracy could arise organically, with a mild amount of political turmoil. For the most likely alternative scenario, perhaps we should look at the only fascist state which was not subjected to regime change: Francoist Spain, which endured harsh rule for a while, then reformed to be more reasonable in the 1950s, and finally transitioned to a democracy in 1975 after Franco's death. Avoiding this for Japan was a good thing, but not good enough by itself to justify the deaths of a million or more people, and all the accompanying misery to the living, in the last year of World War II in Asia.

        Defeating Japan harshly set a stronger precedent against other countries doing the same thing. If Japan had 'gotten off easy' then other countries might try similar militarism, feeling they have less to lose. But this may be doubted given concurrent changes in the global system, mainly the end of colonialism.

        Another benefit of regime change was longer term peace. Had Japan's fascist government endured, they could have been a source of further conflict. Without being totally defeated, they could create a stab-in-the-back-myth, and their militaristic government could endure, leading to further conflict later in the 20th century, all similar to Germany after World War I. It seems unlikely that Japan would have another go a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" given concurrent changes in the global system, including the end of colonialism, but they might have obtained nuclear weapons and/or provoked other (probably non-genocidal) forms of conflict, leading to a more militaristic and aggressive China. Whether the resulting death and destruction would exceed that of the last year of World War II in Asia seems debatable.

        Also, if Japan had not cooperated with the United States after the war, then South Korea might have fallen promptly to the North Korean invasion in 1950. This presumably would have been a stark violation of the will of a large majority of South Koreans at the time, but it also would have meant much less violence from a shorter war on the peninsula. In the longer run, South Korea would be consigned to worse governance than it has had IOTL, but I doubt that the DPRK would have ended up quite so dysfunctional and militarist if not for the ongoing standoff on the peninsula, so neither South Korea nor North Korea would be governed as badly as North Korea IOTL. Still, a united communist Korea in alliance with China (possibly more closely than North Korea IOTL is 'allied' with China) could pose major problems for the free world later in the 20th and 21st centuries. So overall, we should be glad that South Korea withstood the invasion.

        It is worth wondering how the Chinese Civil War would have gone had Japan withdrawn earlier, but I presume that China would have ended up under Mao's rule either way.

        Finally, defeating Japan enabled some of their war criminals to be tried. Postwar trials achieved the execution of about 1,000 Japanese war criminals, plus 500 life sentences, and 3,000 shorter prison terms (although many high-profile Japanese war criminals still got away). While it was certainly good to convict these criminals, I'm skeptical that it had a major impact on the course of history, in comparison to the egregious harms of the war effort required to capture them.

        Considering the benefits in combination with each other, I think that forcing Japan into an unconditional surrender was probably the right to do, but it seems arguable. At the very least, the judgment must be made with humility and modesty. Sacrificing so many civilians and conscripts for the longer-term international good is one of the starkest and ugliest test cases for utilitarian ethics even if the popular Western view of World War II considers it unequivocally righteous.

        In any event, it's not clear in the first place that such a peace deal could have been signed in late 1944. Then, while America could still have chosen to essentially ignore Japan after wiping out the IJN, it would have been an unacceptable abandonment of the people of China and Southeast Asia. If a negotiated surrender was not plausible, then forcing Japan to unconditionally surrender was probably the fastest way to liberate those colonies.
      • Regime change in Germany in 1945 was probably worthwhileAs with the Japan case described above, the hypothetical alternative is a negotiated surrender where Germany returns to ~1938 borders. Unlike with the Japan case, we can be fairly confident that this would have been accepted by Germany in late 1944 or early 1945. Such a negotiated peace presumably would have been preferred by a very large majority of the German people (my knowledge of their sentiment comes from the books The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, limited though it is, and The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945).

        However, it seems implausible that Stalin would agree to an early peace. If we consider a scenario where a separate Western peace is made with Germany, that just wouldn't be desirable: it would just mean a longer, bloodier war on the Eastern Front, with more deaths under the Holocaust, more European territory falling to communism, and no Russian invasion of Manchuria to help end the Pacific War. Germany would still see regime change, and the process would be worse.

        If we imagine for the sake of argument that all the Allies would agree on the peace deal, the war would have ended sooner, probably saving hundreds of thousands of lives. The postwar governance of Europe would suffer from the continuation of Nazi Germany, which would be worse than the IOTL division of democratic West and communist East Germany. Note however that the Nazi regime was not so vicious towards Germans as it was towards foreigners, nor was it so vicious in peacetime as it was in wartime. Postwar Nazi Germany would still be a horrible government, presumably worse than any other in Europe, but without the massive atrocities that we ordinarily associate with the party. It would help contain communism in Europe, but by the same token, postwar communism was not marked by the massive atrocities that are associated with the 1920s, 1930s and wartime, so this would not be enough of an upside to outweigh the downside of allowing a Nazi government to endure. Frankly, it's hard to imagine Stalin acting any better towards eastern Europe just because Nazi Germany still existed. So this peace deal would not be a good political achievement. The benefit would simply be to end the war sooner.

        Finally, we may imagine the Western Allies actually teaming up with Germany to stop the USSR from advancing further into Eastern Europe. Setting aside the political absurdity of this hypothetical at all levels from top leaders to ordinary citizens, and assuming that it would still achieve an end to the Germany colonization of Eastern Europe, it would achieve self-determination for the people of Eastern Europe keeping them free from the destructive imposition of communism, while unfortunately leaving Germany with a Nazi government. Maybe Stalin would simply back down, or maybe things would grow far worse. A vicious war with the USSR could ensue, and American atomic bombs might not do much to simplify the matter. The future of the Cold War would probably involve a weaker but more vicious USSR.

        The German people did benefit greatly from the aftermath of regime change. Additionally, some Germany war criminals were convicted for war crimes.

        Overall, I think that pushing Germany to unconditional surrender was probably the right thing to do, although I'm hesitant because I'm unsure of what the alternatives were.
      • Regime change succeeded in Italy in 1945Although it must be noted that the downfall of Italian fascism was partly due to local uprising, which was itself partly driven by the pressure of the Allied war effort.
      • The successful regime changes have covered a combined 8.2% of the world population (measured at times of their regime change) and the mixed or failed ones have covered a combined 0.8%, strongly suggesting net positive impacts, but if you exclude the Axis powers then the first figure falls from 8.2% to 0.2%
      • What determines whether regime change is successful?
        • Competence; American leaders have recently made bad strategic decisions such as mishandling Iraqi politics, refusing to negotiate early on with the defeated Taliban in Afghanistan (thus changing the dynamics of Afghan warfare), undercutting the Afghan government later in the conflict with "the fake 'peace process' that vastly strengthened the Taliban" (including releasing many Taliban prisoners), trying to suppress the Afghan opium trade, and making too little of an effort at immediate reconstruction in Afghanistan and Libya. Of course, we can't start new regime changes on the assumption that this next time we won't make similarly big mistakes
        • The characteristics of the particular country being invadedEmmanuel Todd's argument about family structures may explain things. Unlike all the states where America succeeded in regime change, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are anthropologically endogamous-communitarian, a characteristic which creates major barriers to the formation of strong stable states, thus maximizing the problem of insurgencies rising in the power vacuum left by regime change. Alternatively, the legacy of medieval Islamic institutions such as mamlukism and the waqf may be causing political trouble.; regime change makes more sense for regimes which are especially pathological relative to their native political culture rather than regimes which are just absolutely bad
        • Focus; having to work on Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time undermined our reconstruction efforts, and may have contributed to our neglect of Libya. Honestly, had we only invaded Iraq or only invaded Afghanistan, either decision might have been better than invading neither country. However, the idea that we lost in Afghanistan because we were distracted by Iraq is disputed. Also, America did succeed in simultaneous regime change with the multiple Axis powers after World War II
    • Counterinsurgency efforts tend to be worthwhile
    • Peacekeeping is worthwhile
      • A substantial body of research up to 2014 shows that peacekeeping is a very worthwhile activity
      • Russian semi-consensualThey told Armenia that if they did not agree to their peace deal, Russia would close their military base in Armenia, and they told Azerbaijan that if they did not agree to the deal, Russia would bomb their military. Generally speaking, the Armenians are happy to have the peacekeepers present, whereas Azerbaijan would probably like them to leave. peacekeeping effort in Nagorno-Karabakh since 2020 has been very beneficial
    • Soft military engagement is often beneficial

    In Syria we also launched strikes at the Syrian Armed Forces several times in retaliation for their use of chemical weapons; these strikes were not particularly effective or destructive, but given the importance of deterring regimes from such crimes, they were eminently justified.

    General recommendations

    We shouldn't topple stable regimes and try to emplace new ones except in exceptional circumstances. At the same time, we should readily support decent governments (whether they are sovereign states, or secessionists with legitimate claims to self-determination) when they are defending themselves against aggressors (whether they are other countries, or insurgents without legitimate claims to self-determination). There are also other sorts of military situations, and in these cases no general rule is possible; we just need to think carefully about the consequences.

    The AUMF is a major issue for potential reform as many commentators and politicians believe that we should restore congressional oversight and control of warmaking. The current AUMF is certainly constructively flawed as it boxes our actions into the narrow and pernicious framework of counterterrorism when the real world has more complex moral and practical considerations. Critics also argue that it's led to an excess of warmaking in recent years as it has been extended beyond its original purpose, but as the previous discussion has shown, it actually seems quite plausible that America has been erring on the side of too little military effort against Islamist groups in the time after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, while congressional oversight sounds good in theory, and there are general benefits to increasing the powers of a legislature over an executive (see my government section with discussions of congressional powers, presidential powers, and presidential versus parliamentary systems of government), America's congress doesn't look very competent or benevolent in foreign policy. Note that presidential deferrence to Congress seems to have helped Assad escape consequences for a severe chemical weapons attack. And in fact, Congress already has some foreign policy oversight powers that it doesn't even use. Even so, in the long run, it is important to build a new relationship where the defense and foreign policy spheres are forced to gain trust that their military operations are effective and beneficial. New Democratic representatives with national security backgrounds could provide competent and fair new leadership. In any case, AUMF repeal is not a simple matter as something will have to replace it, and as of late 2020 there has not been sufficient conversation on what that replacement will look likeDefense 2020 podcast, episodes 1-3.. Overall, I do think we should get some kind of reform or replacement of the AUMF (after all, I've only ever seen expert commentators agree with this idea), but it's not clear exactly what that should look like, and we shouldn't expect it to yield concrete benefits in short-term foreign policy.

    The Overseas Contingency Operations Fund should be reformed with greater restrictions and legislative oversight, but just as with the AUMF, this must be done carefully and with skepticism about Congress.

    Congress also needs to exercise foreign policy oversight thru informal powers that it already possesses, such as hearings, briefings, congressional delegations, expert consultations, investigations, letters to agencies and requests for information, and meetings with foreign officials. Additional reporting requirements for the executive branch are also recommended but may be too burdensome.

    EAs lean towards saying that we should launch fewer drone strikes and air strikes In this survey, 8 out of 17 agreed, 2 disagreed, and 7 were unsure or moderate.. The campaign should be brought under stricter oversight. Proposed strikes should meet a stronger threshold for greater benefits and lower risks of civilian casualties.

    Some cost-saving drawdown from the Middle East can be achieved without significant loss in capabilities by closing unnecessary bases, moving to shorter unpredictable carrier rotations, shifting ISR and headquarters assets out of theater, and taking actions to boost other countries' military capabilities (but the last option may be ethically complicated by the authoritarian nature of the regimes that we support).

    Force mechanization improves operational speed and safety but worsens the prospects for effective peacemaking in counterinsurgency.

    We must do a better job of granting immigrant status to and evacuating foreigners who aid our military, not just as a matter of immigration but per the undeniable fact that it's unwise and immoral for us to abandon our closest allies to be punished by our enemies.

    We should empower Arab youth.

    For more Middle East policy ideas, see MEI's 2020 briefing book.

    Iraq

    Syria

    • Continue our military presence in Syria
      • EAs lean against the idea of withdrawing from Syria In this survey, 9 out of 17 opposed withdrawal, 2 supported it, and 6 were unsure or moderate.
      • Inaction by the US and NATO in Syria has bad consequences
      • The costs of our intervention are very low: our current military presence is only 900 troops, and the entire US-led coalition maintains just 7% of foreign military bases in Syria
      • We have achieved great success relative to the low costs of intervening in Syria
      • The military deployments in Rojava indirectly reinforce their right to self-determination against Assadist revanchism, even though the mission is nominally only against ISIS
      • The military deployments to Al-Tanf are worthwhile
        • May be preventing the Syrian regime from taking over the Rukban refugee camp, an event which would likely lead to a large degree of imprisonment, torture and execution. Some residents of Rukban have already opted to return to regime territory given the atrocious conditions of the camp, but it's still better to protect the choice for those who decide otherwiseRussian and Syrian officials have claimed that American forces are actually forcibly keeping the refugees there. This is nonsense, and unpersuasive propaganda considering the interests and poor credibility of the Russian and Syrian governments. While 95% of surveyed inhabitants expressed a wish to return to Syria, this was "in principle" and not taking into account the safety risks. Tens of thousands of inhabitants have already left the camp apparently without incident, and reporting from the camp gives no indication of such coercion. Moreover, the American military really doesn't have a big incentive to keep refugees there. The stated justification for Al-Tanf is counter-ISIS operations, not refugee protection, so keeping refugees there provides little or no benefit to American legitimacy. If anything, the presence of so many starving refugees by an American base worsens America's public image.
        • The presence in Al-Tanf doesn't really help us combat ISIS and Iranian influence in the region
        • Costs a very small amount of money and military wear and tear; there seem to be no American casualties
    • Improve our approach to Syria
    • Pressure on the Assad regime is justified
      • Assad is an autocrat; Syrian presidential elections are not free and fair, and Syria scores extremely poorly on the Democracy Index
      • The Syrian Arab Army under Assad has committed many severe war crimes with impunity in the Syrian Civil War
        • The Syrian Arab Army committed egregious human rights violations on a massive scale during the Syrian Civil War, seemingly behaving worse than most of the opposition
        • The Syrian Army committed the vast majority of chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian Civil War, totaling at least ~50-300 attacks depending on methodology. That said, responsibility for the Eastern Ghouta attack on civilians (the single deadliest one in the conflict, constituting a large fraction or perhaps even a majority of the chemical weapon deaths) probably belongs to Liwa-al Islam rebelsOn priors, since the Syrian Army has been clearly implicated in scores or possibly several hundred chemical attacks whereas rebels (except for ISIS) have not been clearly implicated in any (as far as I'm aware), the attack is much more likely to have been committed by the regime, although this is limited by the fact that other chemical weapons attacks were not of the same scale and character as the Eastern Ghouta attack.

          Neither side would have a strong military motive for the attack, but either side could have an ideological motive (for the regime, to punish rebels; for rebels, to trigger international intervention against Assad especially after Obama's 'red line' declaration). It might even be possible that rebels were trying to hit regime territory but made a huge error. Also, the Syrian Army had large sarin supplies which could have been used for the attack, but the rebels had some sarin of their own, had threatened to use it and soon afterwards did use some sarin in IEDs against Syrian soldiers in the same area. Of course, if the regime was responsible for the chemical attack, then rebel retaliation with sarin against regime soldiers is entirely to be expected. Overall, both sides had motives and capabilities for a sarin attack, but as Rootclaim argues, the quantity and characteristics of the sarin used greatly increase the chance that it was done by the regime.

          Analysis of the rockets' trajectories and ranges points clearly to an area straddling the boundary of rebel and regime territory, according to articles by Bellingcat and Kobs et al. Bellingcat is generally highly credible. Kobs et al - whose arguments I will discuss further below - should be taken with skepticism: the authorial team is rife with Assad apologia and anti-Western rhetoric, and one of them appears to have been a deranged conspiracy theorist at least in 2015-2016 (see this response to criticism over his antisemitic tweets and go further down the rabbit hole if you wish). Regardless, agreement between Bellingcat and Kobs et al shows that the matter of the rocket launch area and line of control is uncontroversial.

          Kobs et al claim that only a single parking lot would be a suitable launch location in regime territory but that it's far enough to the northeast that there would have to have been a significant and unlikely compass error by investigators at one of the impact sites. This raises the probability that it was a rebel attack but seems like pretty weak evidence especially considering doubts over the report's reliability.

          Three videos anonymously leaked nearly a month after the attacks show apparent members of the local rebel faction, announcing the date as August 21 (same as the attacks), and launching rockets. Kobs et al geolocate the videos to a field on the rebel side of the launch area, making it entirely consistent with rebels launching at their own territory.

          Another possibility is that the videos were faked. It is plausible that the regime would produce fake videos to avoid blame for the attack, and some elements of the videos positively suggest that they were faked (as Kobs et al say, the videos have "an alleged exaggerated display of Liwa al-Islam’s insignia, an unusual use of a commanding 'takbir,' poor image quality, anonymous origin, and a denial by Liwa al-Islam’s leadership"). However, if they had faked it from anywhere else in Syria, it presumably would not match the geolocation of the launch site: similar fields might exist elsewhere in Syria, but it would take an absurd coincidence or skill in video production for it to be so similar to the one at the launch site, which could not have been identified at the time.

          So the only credible scenario for a fake video is that video producers, knowing the approximate location of the rocket launch site and expecting that sooner or later the rockets' trajectories and range are likely to be uncovered, made the video in a slightly different location nearby which had been controlled by rebels at the time. But if they had done this, one would expect that they would have done a better job of showing the surroundings so as to make it more readily geolocatable. Instead the videos were dark and shaky so that it took seven years for someone to geolocate it.

          At about the same time as the attack in eastern Ghouta, there may have been another attack nearby in Moadamiyah, which would suggest regime responsibility, but this is quite dubious. There have also been intercepts of Syrian communications but they don't really suggest anything.

          Most in the OSINT community seem confident that the attack was carried out by the regime, but it seems they just haven't taken Kobs et al seriously (and there doesn't seem to have been any meaningful attempt at a rebuttal). Rootclaim gives a mere 4% chance that the regime committed the attack, but some of their reasoning steps and estimates are dubious, namely their neglect of the general base rate of chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime, their too-high 360x update between the purported video and the launch location, and their too-high 2x update based on the absence of evidence (although their 9x update towards the Syrian Army based on sarin capabilitiles also seems a bit too high). Rootclaim seems somewhat credible but still has flaws including an apparent contrarian bias. Note also that Kobs et al was published by Rootclaim, so Rootclaim may be expected to put too much confidence in those findings. So overall I think that Rootclaim is too certain but Liwa al-Islam probably did commit the act.
      • Assad has mismanaged the Syrian economy and funneled wealth into his own family
      • Assad has invited malign Russia and Iranian influence into Syria
      • Assad has supported Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism

    Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa

    We should support African states against Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and other extremist groups, in concert with broad efforts to reduce fragility in the region. In addition to being directly beneficial, this may bolster American influence in the region at the expense of Chinese designs.

    Yemen

    America should make a concerted effort to resolve the war in Yemen with a peace settlement. It should be the unequivocal number-one priority in US-Saudi Arabian relations.

    Libya

    America should signal support for peace talks in Libya, offer assistance to support a peace deal, and offer to support credible mediation if necessary.

    Weight

    The survey gives this issue a long-run weight of 5.4 points.

    This may seem pretty low given the costs of the Iraq WarThe Iraq War directly killed approximately half a million people and displaced about five million. Indirect effects of follow-on violence in the region have increased these numbers. Iraq has 38 million people, or 0.5% of the world’s population, and a GDP of $200B, or 0.2% of the world’s total. However, invading Iraq was an unusually big action; in practice a typical political term will not include such high stakes. for instance. But by now, the War on Terror has vastly shrunk from prior levels. The United States has fewer than 10,000 troops deployed in combat zones.

    Ground/Water Pollution

    Policy position

    Weight

    The survey gives the issue a long-run weight of 4.5 points. I give it 5 points.

    Criminal Justice

    Policy position

  • EAs broadly agree that we should reform the criminal justice system to be less punitiveIn this survey, 16 out of 17 agreed, and 1 out of 17 disagreed.

    • Policing

  • Policing is a complicated problem, and simplistic support or demonization of police officers will not work
  • We should reform policing to be less destructive
  • Change policing to be more effective at reducing crime, especially violent crime
    • Violent crime is a significant problem
      • Violent crime hurts people directly, hurts the economy and hurts society
      • Violent crime can cause voters to pick right-wing authoritarian candidates who promise 'law and order' and implement bad, harsh policies
      • Violent crime is disproportionately committed by African-Americans, so it provokes racial tension
      • Over the last few years, there has been a moderate increase in murder/manslaughter and forcible rape, while rates of different kinds of theft have remained constant or fallenMotor vehicle theft has remaind constant, while larceny, burglary and robbery have been declining.
    • Make it more attractive to become a police officer
    • Smarter policing
      • Automated policing like red light cameras is adequately trusted by African-Americans (more so than among whites), can reduce the rate of dangerous police encounters, and frees up officers for other things
      • Let departments use facial recognition technology without extraordinary restrictions
        • Facial recognition technology may be useful for some law enforcement tasks, such as matching surveillance footage of suspects against known offender databases
        • Facial recognition technology can be inaccurate, but identification will only be harder if facial recognition is not available as part of the police toolkit
        • Most facial recognition algorithms are probably less accurate on blacks and females than on whites and malesThe only credible report that I have seen was done by NIST, which found that facial recognition is generally most accurate with white males and least accurate with black females, although they still don't seem to have published anything that can be vetted, and they did find that a few software systems displayed no demographic differences in accuracy.

          The ACLU has claimed that Amazon's Rekognition disproportionately misidentifies people of color with known criminals, but they used non-recommended settings, they looked at lawmakers rather than a more representative sample of the population, they did not publicly pre-register their methodology, they have not shared details of their analysis and they have not gotten it accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or conference. Given these problems and given the ACLU's ideological position, they certainly might be producing biased results which exaggerate the problems with facial recognition.

          Some criticisms of facial recognition are actually based on facial analysis software; for instance, a study showing that gender classification algorithms are less precise on people with dark skin was incorrectly described by the New York Times as a study on facial recognition. Per NIST, "facial analysis is a separate technology that should not be confused with facial recognition testing".          , but just because facial recognition is more accurate on a particular group doesn't mean it is bad to use itObviously all misclassifications are regrettable if we do not fundamentally oppose the idea of facial recognition, and the less precise the system is on people of any group, the less useful it is. But the idea that we should be especially worried about demographic disparities in misclassification is not obvious.

          The Axon AI Ethics Board's 2019 report, pages 26 and 28-30, recommended against the use of facial recognition on body camera footage because of these disparities. The report is notable because one member of the team, Miles Brundage, is an Effective Altruist. Unfortunately the report fails to provide any consideration of the impacts of disparate accuracy beyond simply stating that innocent people of color will be more likely than innocent whites to be incorrectly flagged; it doesn't look at impacts on criminals and it doesn't look at the counterfactual of human efforts. The report also seems to assume that women are disadvantaged compared to men in the criminal justice system, which is the exact opposite of reality.

          In practice, a disparity in facial recognition accuracy has no direct implications for prosecutorial and penal outcomes, as suspects are only indicted when the police find clear evidence for their guilt, and their outcomes are decided by judges and juries not by algorithms. The real impact of a racial disparity in precision is that if a dark-skinned person commits a crime, law enforcement will have to pursue more leads and gather more evidence in order to find a real suspect. This means that policing will not be as quick and effective against dark-skinned criminals as it is against light-skinned criminals, but at the same time, it means that more innocent dark-skinned people will have to endure the hassle of being investigated by the police as suspects - unless facial recognition is so inaccurate on dark-skinned people that the police give up on even trying. Ironically, this suggests that the racial disparity in facial recognition precision will actually reduce the disparity in indictments of African-Americans compared to whites, so there will be less racial disparity in follow-on criminal justice outcomes like incarceration. But it also implies that there will be a disparity with African-Americans facing greater amounts of black crime and minor police harassment, two problems which already disproportionately harm the African-American community just like incarceration. Overall, there are potential problems stemming from racial disparities in precision, but they don't consistently exacerbate (or reduce) overall racial inequality.

          So by far the most important criterion for facial recognition is precision per se. A facial recognition system that is 95% precise on whites and 90% precise on blacks is better than a facial recognition system that is 90% precise on people of either skin color (and if you really preferred the latter, you could in theory dumb down the first software to make it work that way; that would just be absurd). Inequality is a concern, but not one so significant as to limit us to Pareto improvements: a facial recognition system that is 95% precise on whites and 90% precise on blacks is still better than a system that is 91% precise against people of either skin color.

          The alternative to facial recognition systems is to use more informal human cognitive processes. I do not know of good evidence on the precision of human facial recognition, but it seems reasonable to believe that individuals with dark skin are more likely to be misidentified, at least as long as the majority of police officers are whites who have grown up in majority-white neighborhoods.

          The gender disparity where facial recognition is more accurate on men than on women is also relevant. But in this case, the context is partly reversed. Whereas facial recognition is less accurate with the racial group which suffers the most discrimination in the criminal justice system, it's more accurate with the gender group which suffers the most discrimination in the criminal justice system. So even if lower facial recognition accuracy does systematically disadvantage particular groups, it does not systematically disadvantage people who normally face discrimination in the criminal justice system, further undermining the idea that facial recognition entrenches demographic disparities in the criminal justice system.

          But ultimately, theoretical precision is an incomplete framework for thinking about facial recognition technology, as humans looking at pairs of faces can already do a very good job, and any match generated by facial recognition software will presumably still be looked at by police officers before they take any real action. It's more about saving time for law enforcement and allowing them to quickly search thru large numbers of potential suspects. And the technology could improve in the future, especially if police departments are allowed to use facial recognition software and benefit from experimentation and experience.
        • Facial recognition technology could pose a risk for explicit abuse like privacy violation, so prudent oversight and regulation is warranted
      • Automated gunshot detection seems a bit useful but may not be worth the money and effortTwo quasi-experimental studies of the Acoustic Gunshot Detection System (AGDS) in St. Louis, Mares (2021) and a report by the NYU Policing Project, have shown that it led to a major increase in gunshot reports. Mares (2021) also found that it sometimes reduces police response time. But Mares (2021) also calculated that the amount of police effort required to address all these reports, which are often not related to crime, is very high. The two studies both suggested that AGDS led to a reduction in gun assault, with Mares (2021) finding statistically insignificant evidence of a 16% decline, and the NYU report finding statistically significant evidence of a 30% decline. Mares (2021) is probably more trustworthy because it has been published, because the NYU Policing Project gets some unrestricted funding from the makers of the AGDS system, and because the NYU report seems to have been initiated on the basis of a prior relationship with the company. Meanwhile, both sources found no decline in arrests or other crimes including homicides.

        Of course, AGDS can improve in the future, and experimentation may be worthwhile. AGDS can also provide useful data to crime researchers; Mares (2021) says "the ability of AGDS to accurately record gunshots may be important as it could help researchers understand the degree to which gunshots are underreported" and "AGDS may well have analytical and academic applications due to its accuracy in capturing gunshots in an outdoor setting".

        There are allegations of AGDS operators "altering" evidence at police behest but this can be benign human oversight to ensure that the AI decisions do not violate common sense. It can also be genuine foul play by the police, but the police may do this with all sorts of evidence so it's not a problem with AGDS in particular, and the courtroom can throw out tampered evidence anyway (if it's known to be tampered).

    Courts

    Penal system

  • Make the penal system less harsh
    • Abandon mass incarceration
    • Reform carceral systems to be less hellish and criminalizing
      • Currently, conditions can be terribleA 2019 Justice Department investigation found that Alabama's prison conditions are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment. For more anecdotes, see stories about medical neglect at an Alabama women's prison, prisoners losing access to needed medicines, or sexual assault being ignored by prison authorities.
      • Newer, less crowded and higher service prisons increase welfare and reduce recidivism
      • Prison labor
        • Reform prison labor
        • Voluntary prison labor should be allowed at least in some cases
          • Basically beneficial to both the prisoner and the employer, as they both agree to the arrangement
          • May reduce employment for free laborers, but any such disemployment effect is presumably outweighed by the economic benefits to prison laborers, consumers and company stakeholders. If prison laborers displace free laborers in a simplistic manner, prison employment might increase returns to capital at the expense of returns to laborSince prison laborers get paid much less than other American laborers, a company could theoretically substitute a prisoner working $1/hour for a free wage earner working $8/hour, with the difference being reinvested or pocketed by shareholders or company owners. but considering the low productivity of prison labor, such substitution seems unlikely. One potential compromise, which is not ideal policy but may be politically expedient, is to limit prison industries to manufacturing goods that are otherwise imported from overseas
          • Political impacts are more likely to be negative than positive, but dubious overallMay provide a political incentive against decarceration. Specifically, companies profiting from prison labor may lobby the government to continue mass incarceration, or government officials may prefer mass incarceration because they view it as economically beneficial. This is a very plausible story, but I haven't seen evidence that such a causal mechanism actually exists and drives incarceration to a significant degree, and it's plausible that no such mechanism really affects incarceration rates.

            When voluntary prison laborers are rewarded with early release, judges, prosecutors and politicians might compensate by assigning longer prison sentences, and voluntary prison labor may encourage prison officials to place more fines upon prisoners as the officials expect prisoners to have more money, but again it's unclear if such causal mechanisms exist.

            Conversely, the prevalence of prison labor is often used as a left-wing criticism of incarceration, with many referring to the practice as "slave labor". In that sense, the presence of voluntary prison labor may actually encourage voters and politicians to reduce incarceration in order to avoid what they see as a terrible infringement of human rights.

            In the longer run, America's carceral state and the politics surrounding it could change so that these arguments about the indirect political impacts of prison labor become obsolete. Meanwhile, eliminating voluntary prison labor is likely to create a common understanding of the practice as fundamentally immoral, so it could be another example of the one-way liberal ratchet of rights. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, but since it reduces optionality for future generations, we should exercise additional caution before we make a potentially irreversible choice.
          • Can improve prisoners' behavior; according to a quasi-experimental evaluation of over 7,000 offenders, prison vocational programs have substantially beneficial in-prison and post-prison outcomes
          • Insofar as voluntary prison labor can benefit prisoners, it may slightly reduce the deterrent effect of prisons, but this seems like a speculative and minor downside
        • Appropriate stance on penal labor is unclear
          • Note that the line between voluntary and involuntary prison labor is blurry, as prison policies may make life more difficult for those who do not agree to labor that is nominally voluntary
          • Many of the same considerations apply here as for voluntary labor discussed above, but of course when labor is dubiously voluntary or clearly involuntary, then it is often harmful to the prisoners. Then again, involuntary labor may serve as a deterrent against crime
          • Truly involuntary penal labor, levied as a punishment for crimes, could be better or worse than ordinary prison sentences, depending of course on sentencing times. Maybe 6 years of prison with penal labor is an all-round better sentence than 8 years without prison labor, for example
          • Amanda Askell, an accomplished consequentialist philosopher and member of the EA community, has voiced the view that penal labor should be constitutionally forbidden. However I haven't seen her provide proper argumentation for this view and I'm not sure if she believes it for consequentialist reasons or if she thinks this is a case where a nonconsequentialist principle should overrule the consequences
    • Supplant prison with smart monitoring
    • Cut stupid laws
    • Make the sex offender registry system less overused and destructiveSee this article about one ridiculous case and some overview of the general problem.
    • Only suspend or revoke driver’s licenses for offenses directly about driving safety
    • The death penalty should be eliminated, or strictly and smartly reformed
      • "Studies have neither proven nor disproven a deterrent effect" of the death penalty. Considering how few people are executed, an absolutely-small-but-proportionally-significant deterrent effect seems plausible, but it's also plausible that there is no effect whatsoever as the prospect of execution is so remote for a criminal. There are also claims that serious criminals don't fear death at all, and that a life in prison is actually scarier than execution, but these arguments are unconvincing
      • The death penalty is significantly more expensive than alternative punishments
      • The death penalty eliminates options for productive impacts after incarceration, most importantly exoneration, but also perhaps some kinds of labor and rehabilitation that may be performed while in prison. Execution also eliminates the risk of the victim committing further crimes while in prison, but that seems less important
      • One study estimates that 4% of death penalty victims who were sentenced between 1973 and 2004 have been innocent, which is high enough as to be morally intolerable. Future executions are likely to involve fewer innocents, but it remains a worrisome riskThe proportion of innocent victims is likely to be lower (perhaps much lower) now and in the future thanks to forensic evidence and other improvements to the criminal justice system, but still won't be negligible. Juries still convict people in the absence of complete forensic proof, relying on other kinds of evidence with known flaws, including DNA evidence when the science is not robust enough to completely rule out a false positive. Furthermore, even a foolproof DNA link might still be caused by botched or outright fraudulent mishandling of evidence.

        All that being said, it's plausible that so few execution victims will be innocent as to make the practice potentially acceptable at least in states with a more cautious application of the death penalty. This is very subjective, but if say 99.5% of execution victims are truly guilty, then I think we can regard it as potentially acceptable, although even that leftover 0.5% is still a worrisome figure.
      • Execution is deeply hurtful to families of the condemned
      • Death sentencing results in lower well-being for the survivors of the crimes compared to life imprisonment without parole
      • I hesitate to say that the death penalty would ideally be eliminated from every single state; one would have to examine practices in each particular state before making that judgment. Some states might be practicing it well. That said, the bad outweighs the conceivable good, so eliminating the death penalty nationwide would at least be better than the status quo
      • If the death penalty is kept then it should be reformed, and a well-run death penalty might be better than no death penalty, but there is no unambiguous path to doing it well
        • Stretching out the appeals process is a dubious idea. Death row appeals are already such a lengthy and expensive process yet they have still failed to prevent a significant number of innocent people from being executed, suggesting that the process is flawed, and doing more of the same flawed thing doesn't seem likely to do much good. Meanwhile, dragging appeals out even further would both add fiscal cost and, by increasing the time delay between conviction and execution, further weaken any deterrent effect
        • Shortening and simplifying the appeals process might be worthwhile in narrow contexts if we can identify particular elements of the appeals process which aren't actually effective at screening out innocents, but in general it would clearly be a terrible idea to make execution quick and easy
        • The only way to make the death penalty sensible is to simultaneously reduce the execution of innocent people *and* cut down on the time and cost of the appeals process, which seems like a contradiction. It might be done with a different format of appeal which is quick and straightforward but nevertheless very reluctantFor example, I imagine an automatic waiting period of four years after sentencing (for public debate to run its course, for new evidence to surface, and to guarantee an option for commutation or pardon after additional gubernatorial and presidential elections), followed by a panel of experts on forensics and probability spending 30 days reviewing the case. Then the panel may affirm that they are unanimously totally confident in the person's guilt and then the execution will go ahead. If the panel does not produce such a strong positive affirmation, which may be because they feel that four years and thirty days are not enough to settle everything, then the sentence is automatically commuted to life in prison., but whether such a thing is possible to implement in America is very doubtful

    Weight

    My survey gives a weight of 4.6 points for criminal justice.

    Education

    Policy position

    Unbundle college

    • A central problem with our college system is probably that we are bundling too many functionalities into the same institutions
      • The list of college functions, most found in each one, is unusually long
        • Undergraduate education
        • Graduate education
        • Credentialing / certification of knowledge
        • Professional research
        • Investment (endowment funds)
        • Sports
        • Aid for racial minorities and the poor (affirmative action and need-based aid)
        • Space for free expression and exchange of ideas
        • Supportive community for young people
      • Critiques of the college system are constant and disparate; everyone has a problem but there is not much agreement on solutions. This suggests that it is a 'wicked problem' driven by colleges' competing constraints and incentives
      • Many people criticize the practice of bundling teachers with researchers, as it distracts good researchers and makes students listen to people who aren't very skilled or interested in teaching (though there are some defenders of this practice too)
      • The contradiction between university emphases on truth-seeking and social justice is particularly explained by Jonathan Haidt
      • The sprawling nature of our universities evolved for a reason, but it probably made more sense previously when institutions were fundamentally rarer and harder to access. An analogy can be made with the Christian Church: historically it had a sprawling role bundling spirituality, politics, community, social welfare, and criminal justice, which may have been beneficial in its original context, but as time went by it became increasingly clear that it was too large and needed to reduce its focus, and the rest of society had to constantly fight uphill in taking power away from it
    • Unbundling colleges and universities to focus more narrowly on particular functions may untie the "Gordian Knot". I have no strong recommendation but a variety of options are available and worth considering
      • Hire more dedicated teachers and researchers instead of professors with dual responsibilities
      • Help more kids go to 2-year community colleges which focus on early education and practical training, so that higher institutions focus more on advanced education and research
      • Define explicit truth-seeking and social-justice-seeking universities, as suggested by Jonathan Haidt
      • Replace government aid for college students with broader assistance (basic income or child allowance as I advocate in the poverty relief section, or baby bonds as a compromise), and replace affirmative action with cash reparations or welfare, so that we don't rely so much on colleges to be engines for social mobility
      • Give more weight and legal leeway to the use of standardized tests for hiring, so that college acceptance and GPA are less critical
      • Make radical changes to fully separate education, research, sports, investment, etc into different institutions
    • Somewhat unrelated, but we should also abolish DEI bureaucracies, mandatory diversity training and diversity statements

    College admissions

    • Make prestigious universities less selective in their admissions
    • Stop legacy admissionsLegacy admissions appear to be a clearly bad practice which reinforces a class hierarchy. The only defense seems to be that it cultivates ties with alumni and donors, but that requires a dubious assumption that colleges actually deserve so much financial support. If eliminating legacy admissions encourages people to focus more on alternative kinds of philanthropy that could actually be a benefit.
    • Insofar as admissions are restricted, use standardized testing as a major criterion
    • Unclear what we should do with affirmative action
      • Affirmative action seems to improve overall student achievement and socioeconomic mobility
        • Colleges often suggest that diversity is in their pedagogical interest – that students get a better learning experience if they are surrounded by fewer whites and Asians but more people of color. But it would be much more politically and legally controversial for colleges to admit to more ideological or PR-related reasons for race-based admissions, and it is possible that colleges use the idea of diversity merely to distract from their failure to uplift low-income individuals. So their claims that affirmative action is in their pedagogical interest are not credible, and we have to look at the issue more directly
        • Affirmative action can increase top students’ exposure to African-American, Hispanic and Native American cultures, while decreasing their exposure to white and Asian-American cultures. This isn't necessarily good, but if the ethnic distribution of students more closely reflects the ethnic distribution of American or global society, then probably students will get a bit better cultural learning. Note however that the impact of this may be a bit limited by the trend of racial neo-segregation in some universities and more informal self-segregation – maybe marginally increasing the size of minority groups doesn’t much increase interracial contact, as long as they separate into different groups anyway. Increasing the size of a minority community beyond a certain threshold may enable them to cloister themselves, thus reducing interracial contact. In any case, there is only a fixed quantity of people originating from different cultures, so affirmative action cannot increase the overall amount of exposure to particular cultures, it only shifts it around from less to more prestigious institutions
        • Peer effects can occur for college students. Insofar as affirmative action supplants more traditional meritocratic criteria for college admissions, it puts college students at top universities among peers who have more deleterious impacts on traditional academic standards. However, denied meritorious students will still probably go to lower-performing colleges and provide peer effects to other students. So the overall impacts on peer effects are not so clear. Just like with cultural exposure, there is only a fixed quantity of stronger and weaker students, so affirmative action cannot increase the overall amount of exposure to strong students, it only shifts it around from more to less prestigious institutions
        • Affirmative action means that some higher-performing white and Asian students are excluded in order to make room for lower-performing students who are African-American, Hispanic or Native American. So it overall reduces the accuracy of admissions sorting (top colleges will have worse students, and weak colleges may have better students), potentially reducing the accuracy of college degrees as signals of merit. This is bad for the American economy at least in the short run
        • Affirmative action seems to provide benefits for disadvantaged students which outweigh the harm done to advantaged students, but research is still mixed
          • There is good evidence that college admission, whether affected by affirmative action or not, can provide large career benefits to blacks, Hispanics, and anyone from disadvantaged backgrounds, while providing little or no benefit to more advantaged applicantsSee Dale and Krueger's study of the returns to attending a selective college, a study of a Texas policy where students in the top 10% of their class at any high school received automatic access to any state college, a study of California’s Prop 209 which banned race-based affirmative action, and a study showing that affirmative action in Texas motivated minorities to try harder.

            Also, this study found that all students but especially disadvantaged ones benefit from going to effective high schools.

            However, place-based affirmative action in selective high schools in Chicago produced worse academic outcomes for disadvantaged students, probably by giving them a lower academic rank compared to their peers; it did improve their quality of life by placing them in nicer high school environments, but this is probably zero-sum
          • How can the benefits of affirmative action outweigh the costs, when it's fundamentally a zero sum issue? My interpretation is that colleges mainly provide career value thru credentialing and signaling, which is unimportant for people who are already sufficiently meritorious and privileged as to get accepted into a top university, but is important for people who would otherwise appear less qualified. The default nature of college admissions is to reinforce an excessive status hierarchy, so just about anything that interferes with college admissions can weaken the hierarchy and provide net social benefit
      • Affirmative action seems to contribute to social tensions: the “deep story” underlying Southern white politics of resentment is the image of a queue where whites wait patiently as minorities cut aheadThe story is described by sociologist Arlie Hothschild. The connection with affirmative action is made by Joseph Heath.

        Affirmative action can placate progressives and African-Americans, thus reducing social tension from that side of the aisle. But affirmative action could also be fostering a more toxic sense of entitlement that will provoke similar tension elsewhere. Affirmative action is not the end of demands for equal racial outcomes, it merely lays the groundwork for more strident demands in other parts of society.
      • Affirmative action frequently benefits immigrants who have little or no claim to American racial discrimination against themselves or their ancestors; in these cases it has the same downsides of individual unfairness and social tension while not providing much benefit of addressing deep racial inequality

    College subsidies

    Economists generally oppose free tuition. EAs lean against increases in tuition subsidies. In this survey, 6 out of 17 opposed increases and 2 supported them; 9 were undecided or moderate. The average economist opinion is that a little more than half the value of a college education is just signaling, suggesting that subsidization of education isn’t worthwhile, the argument being notably made by Bryan Caplan. A 2017 study argued that increasing college attainment is socially beneficial in the long run, but it was flawed.The authors dismiss signaling theory based on an older (pre-Caplan) understanding of the issue. They suggest that signaling theory doesn’t matter because college attainment would still lead to more more accurate signals, but that is unclear: just because people are signaling more strongly doesn’t mean that the signals are getting more accurate. Finally, they assume that some jobs’ education requirements are fixed, which is dubious in the long run: generally lower education expectations may weaken the requirements for jobs, and higher education expectations may intensify the requirements. Even if the minimum academic requirements for a job remain unchanged, institutions can respond to a less-educated workforce by shifting some of the easier tasks away from their elite workers and onto others (e.g., hire more and better paralegals to take some workload off the lawyers), while achieving a similar level of overall productivity. A 2018 study of Colombian students bolstered the case for college providing legitimate gains to human capital.

    It’s really not possible to observationally distinguish whether the gains of education have more to do with human capital or signaling, although it is clear that the reality is at least a little bit of both. To judge further, we have to think in theoretical terms. But studies consistently show that cognitive training does not work, and studies also tend to show that other programs do not improve cognitive performance. And intuitively, if we compare college coursework with practical day-to-day workplace tasks, it is hard to see how college coursework can be substantively helpful except when it comes to hard skills like accounting and engineering. Conventional wisdom usually says that university is not very directly beneficial for most job skills, certainly not when compared to years of on-the-job training. Conventional wisdom does say that university is indirectly beneficial, but this is hard to believe, given the mounting psychological evidence that it’s not feasible to substantially change humans’ generic cognitive skills late in life. So the benefits are probably largely signaling.

    Merit aid for low-income students has a very good impact. However, public university is already mostly free for low-income students, who are primarily burdened by room and board, food and textbooks. Payments for college tuition or debt would benefit the middle class but not the lower class. Free tuition could actually worsen upward social mobility for the worst-off by increasing competition for college and job slots while not providing them with any financial benefits; some crowding seems to have occurred with Chilean free college and "Promise" scholarships. From a global perspective, increasing college attainment among Americans could just make things harder for everyone else. So our college subsidies are already in approximately the right place for minimizing economic inequality.

    The educated/uneducated divide in society is troubling. Free college tuition would encourage many people to study and most of the population would end up on the educated side of the divide. However, more meritorious or wealthy individuals could still attend more selective schools or graduate schools in order to stand out.

    Reducing college subsidies would increase the size of the uneducated class. This would move the dividing line from where it stands now up to a higher section of society. So education would not mark the difference between the middle class and the lower class, it would mark the difference between the middle class and the upper class.

    Either way, changing college subsidies doesn’t seem like it’s going to fix or exacerbate the problem of the educated/uneducated divide. But instead of thinking about the division between the educated and the uneducated, we can think about the division between the learning and the working. Specifically, it seems pretty unhealthy for a large chunk of society to be occupied in the university bubble. It creates a significant social disparity. And students have been major drivers of social unrest in modern history, extending up to recent American campus culture – and they have often organized in ways that are pernicious and disconnected from the rest of the population.

    Students tend to become more politically open-minded in their first year of college, but there may be some similar effect for high school graduates entering the workforce. College education for Democrats is associated with false beliefs about other Americans’ political attitudes and a lack of friends with opposing political views, whereas there are no significant differences among Republicans. One study found that college attendance has roughly neutral impacts on students’ political views, but there is a plausible theory that college education promotes cosmopolitan values including pro-immigration stances (which is a good thing).

    After adjusting for some basic factors, college students and their non-college-attending peers have a similar incidence of psychiatric disorders.

    Free tuition leaves college funding very vulnerable to cuts by austere or politically motivated state governments, but it’s unclear if that would actually be a bad or a good thing.

    Another problem with tuition subsidization is that it may make Americans less willing to admit immigrants.Both real and perceived fiscal problems caused by immigration affect the propensity of the state to accept more immigrants. Fiscal worries are by far the dominant motivation for British opposition to immigration. This problem mostly applies to low-skilled immigrants. Increasing college subsidies may reduce America's willingness to admit immigrants who could take advantage of social assistance. This counts as another, small downside. One option is to exclude immigrants from getting access to the same college subsidies, and this is better than excluding them from the country entirely, but it does help create the kind of socioeconomic underclass that threatens the health of liberal democracies.

    Overall, increases to federal subsidization of higher education would be wrong, but it is not clear whether or not things should be cut from current levels.

    Free community college actually seems like a good idea since it may reduce the grip of the 4-year college orthodoxy and undermine the status of elite universities, in addition to having more practical economic benefits.

    Subsidizing student loans drives tuition inflation.

    According to IGM top economists, forgiving all student loan debt would very probably be regressive, although forgiving debt up to a threshold for low-income borrowers could be progressive, and student debt relief would not support the recovery as well as general income-based transfer payments. A more recent working paper confirmed that forgiving student loan debt would be highly regressive. Forgiving student debt would also create a moral hazard encouraging more people to irresponsibly go into debt for college or other things. There is not a student debt crisis.

    School choice

    K-12 public schools

    Homeschooling

    Homeschooling produces good outcomes and can offer children a healthier alternative to the terrible social environment in regular schools.

    Other ideas

    Encourage failing universities to go into structured bankruptcy and repurpose more universities for alternative education models and purposes

    Sector-focused training programs produce large earnings gains

    Fredrik DeBoer’s upcoming book argues for a new kind of comprehensive education reform, where we acknowledge that humans vary in cognitive ability, acknowledge that we cannot improve people’s cognitive abilities very much, and work to provide more equal outcomes.

    "Teaching at the right level" where classes are organized by ability rather than age works well in developing countries and may be worthwhile in America too.

    It is not important to repeal property-tax-based funding for schools.

    Weight

    My survey gives the issue a weight of 4.3 points.

    Healthcare

    Policy position

    Healthcare supply

    Health insurance

    • Health insurance in theory
      • Why and when should health insurance actually exist? It has specific purposes and is not theoretically appropriate for all healthcare
        • Health insurance lets people pay to protect against the risk of unlikely and extreme conditions which exceed the typical healthcare expenses faced by most people
        • Health insurance programs can be convenient vehicles for subsidizing certain kinds of healthcare which the government possibly ought to encourage - see "when should the government subsidize healthcare?" below. That said, it may be a better idea to do this by subsidizing providers, at least in some cases
      • How should health insurance be organized?
        • Health insurance markets create incentives for insurers to provide better plans. However, this incentive has dubious value considering the complexity, confusion, and lack of easily measurable product success in the health insurance market and healthcare more generally
        • Options for consumers to shop among different health insurance providers or avoid buying insurance at all leads to the problem of adverse selection, although Bryan Caplan argues that adverse selection would not be much of a problem if the government didn't regulate insurers so much
        • It is possible to have multiple health insurance providers without competition. Compared to systems with a single insurer, this adds complexity and bureaucracy, but allows insurance plans to be tailored to different contexts
          • One system with multiple providers and limited competition is to have workers and their families be insured by their employer; America promotes this in soft form via subsidies for employer-based insurance. Compared to a more open health insurance market, this limits adverse selection and may encourage more people to get jobs, but overall it is bad, mainly because it inhibits labor mobility but also because it limits the theoretical benefit of letting consumers shop for health insurance plans
          • America's division of public health insurance between Medicare (for the elderly and disabled) and Medicaid (for the poor) has significant implications for the political economy of healthcare and the kinds of insurance that people get
          • Restrictions on selling health insurance plans across state lines are another way that America limits competition among insurers
        • Systems without private insurance generally have reduced access to specialty care and procedures while failing to reduce overall out-of-pocket healthcare costs
      • When should the government subsidize healthcare?
      • Health insurance has downsides compared to open market acquisition of healthcare, meaning it should only be used when necessary
        • Anticompetitive - health insurance inhibits transparency on healthcare prices and often locks down provider options so that no functioning healthcare market even exists. Competition among providers takes the form of institutional favors and lobbying to insurers with only indirect input from actual consumers
        • Moral hazard - consumers may take more unjustified risks knowing that someone else is going to have to pay for treatment
        • Complexity - America's health insurance system is legendarily confusing and gives rise to massive bureaucracy
        • Political economy - private insurers exert political influence and can be an obstacle to rational healthcare reform; this doesn't seem to be a problem for public insurers
      • Unclear whether it's politically safer to have too little government healthcare or too muchAccording to Bryan Caplan, "when you give government an inch, it takes a mile. Government involvement in health care started with small measures like vaccinations. Now it's over 20% of the budget, and rising fast. Government involvement in health care is too dangerous to allow in any form. We need to just pull the plug." But the amount of death caused by inadequate government healthcare has been quite staggering; if we had not embarked on early 20th-century public health efforts then the results would have been unconscionable. Caplan also says that domestic healthcare spending makes us less willing to fund global health aid, but that's totally unsubstantiated and I think the opposite is more likely to be true.
    • Concrete health insurance reforms
      • We should end the subsidy for employer-based health insuranceIt limits adverse selection and may encourage more people to get jobs, but overall it is bad, mainly because it inhibits labor mobility but also because it limits the theoretical benefit of letting consumers shop for health insurance plans
      • We should cut Medicare spending for wealthy Americans and cut Medicare coverage for long-term care hospitals
      • We should take steps to reduce Medicare fraud
      • We should change Medicare procurement of physician-administered-drugs so that there is more market competition
      • 1% Steps argues that we should promote preferred pharmacy networks
      • We should implement smart commercial insurer networks to encourage consumers to pick cheaper providers
      • We should improve adjudication for health insurance claims
      • We should discourage the worst-performing health insurance plans and nudge consumers into better choices; 1% Steps further argues that we should ban the worst insurance plans but this is dubious. We should also auto-assign Medicaid enrollees into better plans or, more controversially, into RCTs of different plans
      • We should reduce or eliminate requirements that health insurance programs have to cover every FDA-approved drug, because that seems to inhibit regulatory approval of new drugs
      • We should implement a moderate universal public health insurance program
        • Universal catastrophic coverage (UCC)Under UCC, patients face varying levels of copays and deductibles depending on their income level and the service offered, with the rates largely set to prevent people from facing medical bankruptcy or similar hardship. Low-income people could pay little or nothing. Effective preventive services could also be broadly provided for free, to encourage their use. Meanwhile, consumers could choose to get supplementary or complementary private insurance or just pay out of pocket for copays and deductibles and for getting better care.
          • See comprehensive description and argument for UCC by Ed Dolan of Niskanen
          • Supported by Brink Lindsey and Samuel Hammond also of Niskanen
          • Supported by economist Dana Goldman
          • UCC is a good fit for the theory of health insurance and subsidization that I described previously - we need a simple government program to support people against unusual hardship and contagious diseases and to maybe provide a modest amount of redistribution to the poor, leaving cash assistance as the main vehicle for poverty relief
          • Unfortunately UCC could leave significant reliance on employer-based insurance if we subsidize employers to provide supplemental plans, but the employer-based insurance subsidy might be eliminated at the same time
          • The ideal way to implement UCC would be automatic total enrollment with no premiums (see Dolan's paper for details and discussion)
        • More generous universal public health insurance plan
          • Popular and straightforward idea is to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 0; this is notably distinct from Medicare-for-All discussed below
          • Urban Institute analyzes a plan for universal health insurance with no premiums and income-based sliding-scale cost sharing, more generous than UCC, while banning private insurance
          • The main difference with UCC is greater level of generosity in the government subsidization of healthcare, which is a debatable choice
          • These plans would greatly diminish or possibly eliminate the reliance on employer-based insurance
        • UCC is more in line with capitalist philosophy, universal Medicare is more in line with social democratic philosophy. But there isn't a clear dividing line between these two proposals, there is a spectrum of options for making a more or less generous program
        • Different options seem approximately equally politically feasible: in theory, universal Medicare is more ambitious so it should have a harder time getting centrist votes, but Americans love Medicare for some reason and universal Medicare is a very simple idea, so who knows
      • Regulations on the health insurance industry to stop them from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions and risk factors may or may not be a good idea right now, but should be repealed after a universal public health insurance program is passedSee Dolan's paper on UCC. Also see Bryan Caplan's more general criticism of regulations on health insurers.
      • Inferior solutions for health insurance reform which may be better than the status quo but should be neglected in favor of implementing a plan like UCC or universal Medicare (described previously)
        • Government-subsidized reinsurance and high-risk pools (discussed within Dolan's UCC paper)
        • Individual mandate for health insurance
        • Public option
          • Achieving universal access to health coverage with a public option is possible but difficult
          • Public option is sometimes claimed to improve the insurance market by competing and forcing other insurers to do better, but this is dubiousThere is already a lot of competition among different health insurers, just one more from the government wouldn't necessarily change anything. The government plan would not be profit-seeking, so it could theoretically be cheaper than for-profit insurance plans, but there are already plenty of nonprofit private insurers. The public option could really affect the market if the government operated at a financial loss in order to be artificially cheap, and that makes it a dubious choice compared to the alternative of simply subsidizing private insurance, as well as a dubious idea overall. Alternatively, the public option might be cheaper by forcing providers to accept lower reimbursement rates, but that has problems of its own
          • Capping provider payment rates for all insurers participating in the ACA-compliant nongroup insurance markets would have similar effects as a public option but without the same government load and controversy
          • A public option could be used as transition towards a public guarantee - reduce premiums gradually until it becomes free and then enroll people automatically
          • Some propose letting people buy into Medicaid
          • Some propose letting people buy into Medicare, but Medicare is not well suited for being an under-65 public optionSee page 8 of this 2008 paper.
        • "Medicare-for-All" (M4A)Medicare-for-All is a misnomer, as it would greatly modify the current Medicare program to exclude private insurance (although private contracts would still be allowed) and provide completely free services except for applying some charges for prescription drugs and biological products.
          • M4A would provide health insurance to 30-35 million more people compared to the current (2020) system, and 5-15 million more people compared to more moderate reform plans involving a public option
          • M4A would be fiscally ruinous, requiring $3 trillion of additional taxes or borrowing per year
          • Most low income people would not financially benefit from M4A, as they are already on Medicaid. Some don’t have access to Medicaid, for instance due to work requirements, and they would benefit. Middle-income people would financially benefit. High-income people may financially benefit or suffer depending on how much they choose to rely on Medicare versus private contract care.
          • Total American health spending would slightly increase under M4ACRFB estimated that national health expenditures would increase 6% under M4A. Mercatus Center found that national health spending would very slightly decrease under M4A, but the assumptions in this study were generous and the reality is likely to be more expensive. Urban Institute found that a comprehensive single-payer plan similar to M4A (Reform 8) would increase national health spending from $3.5T to $4.2T, but this analysis had some flaws and does not really apply to M4A.
          • Total American healthcare consumption would substantially increase under M4A, which suggests that it's excessive subsidizationPart of how M4A controls costs is by letting the government be a monopsonist that forces health providers to accept lower prices. If health prices fall, and health spending slightly increases, then total health consumption must be increasing substantially. Also, logically, if the government pays for so many treatments to be completely free, then of course more people will decide to utilize them. While this is good from a narrow health perspective it's bad from a broad perspective of economic welfare; the government would clearly be subsidizing people to consume lots of healthcare which those people don't value as much as the equivalent amount of cash
          • The government monopsony would hurt healthcare providers who would now get artificially low payments, might become vulnerable from relying on a single payer for most procedures, and might have to deal with greater paperwork and payment delays due to the complexity of getting reimbursement from the state as opposed to private insurers
          • M4A would entirely eliminate people’s dependence on employers for health coverage, thus improving economic mobility and security
          • Systems without private insurance (of which M4A would be one) generally have reduced access to specialty care and procedures while failing to reduce overall out-of-pocket healthcare costs
          • The net impact of M4A on productivity is likely to be small or negative
          • M4A seems bad for the political systemM4A would eliminate private insurer lobbying, which is good. But more importantly, it might foster an unhealthy degree of entitlement among relatively privileged middle-class people expecting all their health expenses to be paid by the government, and it could lead Americans to become very opposed to low-skill immigrants who would presumably get full coverage under M4A.
      • Unconventional, attractive ideas

    See Econlib Podcast for how properly free-market healthcare might work.

    Public health funding for the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States has saved lives for $300,000 each.

    There is really no agreement among EAs for how to change America's health insurance system, except no one believes that we should just keep the status quo. In this survey, 12 out of 17 had one preferred option for universal health insurance, and 5 out of 17 were unsure or moderate.

    Opioid crisis

    Scientific studies suggest that the opioid crisis is mainly caused by the war on drugs rather than by overprescription of painkiller medication. This is not a settled matter but it at least appears to be the case that continued reductions in opioid prescription would be an overreaction and that decriminalization would be a good step.

    It’s not yet clear to me whether there is a continued need to punish opioid manufacturers, not only because it’s unclear how much they are responsible for the crisis, but also because they already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits, were heavily publicly vilified, and lost revenue thanks to the rapid major decrease in opioid prescriptions.

    Other issues

    The FDA should publicize data from its clinical trials.

    Anti-stigma campaigns may be the wrong way to approach mental health.

    We should replace our medical malpractice system with a compensation system similar to Denmark’s.

    Electing more female politicians reduces maternal mortality, though this may come at the expense of other priorities.

    We should make provisions for at-home dialysis and compensate kidney donors for their sacrifice. We should fully reimburse kidney donors for their sacrifice and allow kidney exchange chains to be initiated by deceased donors.

    Institutional review boards for human subjects research do more harm than goodSee this book, summarized here.. They may have played a role in stopping potentially lifesaving human challenge trials during the COVID-19 pandemic. And anecdotally, IRBs can be downright ridiculous. The conventional wisdom is that IRBs are important for avoiding things like the Tuskegee Study, but while that study was definitely unethical, it actually did not directly allow much harm and might still have been approved by IRBs had they existed at the time, and has not severely degraded people's attitudes towards healthcareAfrican-American vaccine hesitancy is not explained by the Tuskegee Study, although older African-American men in the decades afterwards did reduce their healthcare participation causing up to 1.5 years shorter life expectancy because of it. It's also worth noting that the way that public figures have framed the study is itself presumably partly responsible for people's reactions; politicians and bureaucrats who warn that the healthcare system is dangerously corrupt and racist are themselves promoting distrust among the public, and this is not an acceptable consequence when the claims are probably not even true in the first place. Furthermore, the existence of IRBs creates an institutional culture which wants to justify IRBs and therefore is likely to foment distrust of the rest of the healthcare system. and the basic problem with the Tuskegee Study was that participants were given too little healthcare rather than too much, so restrictions against experimental treatments run in the opposite direction from one of the moral lessons of that study. The Guatemala syphilitic experiments were far more egregious and certainly would have been stopped by institutional review at the time, but rejection of that kind of nonconsensual experimentation is by now so baked into global culture and legal systems that separate IRBs are not necessary. Meanwhile, IRBs do plenty of active harm by restricting research for far more minor reasons.

    We should reform our organ donation system. Agarwal et al (2020) propose much better mechanism for organ allocation.

    Weight

    The survey gives healthcare a long-run weight of 4.6 points.

    Infrastructure

    Policy position

    According to IGM top economists, more infrastructure spending would increase average incomes, and the US should increase infrastructure spending.

    However, our infrastructure is mostly pretty good, and our roads, highways and bridges are fine and should not get more funding. Infrastructure spending is disproportionately allocated to rural regions and roads/highwaysSee these stats about the 2020 BUILD grants.. High speed rail projects face major practical obstacles and only provide limited environmental benefit (the costs of high speed rail tend to exceed the social cost of the carbon that is saved), so it's not clear if they are worthwhile. Instead, the big infrastructure priorities are things like water, internet, and electricity. Increasing funding for local urban mass transit is also a good idea, although it's still unlikely to be particularly beneficial.

    We should reduce the prevalence of stroads.

    The biggest problem with American transportation infrastructure is not a lack of political will to spend money, it's extremely difficult approval processes. A related problem is cost excesses stemming from this vetocratic bureaucracy. Fixing these underlying problems would do the most to promote better infrastructure.

    Weight

    The survey gives infrastructure a long-run weight of 4.2 points.

    Labor

    Policy position

    • Provide paid maternity leave
    • Unions
      • Make it easier to form work councils and other alternatives to adversarial unions
      • Longshoreman unions have seriously harmed port efficiency
      • Airline scope clauses are harmful
      • Right-To-Work (RTW) lawsThese laws ban contracts between a labor union and an employer in which the employer agrees not to hire anyone who does not join the labor union. seem more likely to be beneficial than harmful but the matter is still debatable
        • A 2019 study found that RTW laws increase total employment and suggested that they may increase total factor productivity
        • A 2020 study found that RTW laws often have no impact on inequality but do increase inequality in areas where unions were previously strong
        • RTW laws reduce the prevalence of unions, which has political impacts. The historical decline of unions as political engines is often cited as a source of political ills in America. However, I'm unsure if that narrative has strong evidence behind it and I'm skeptical that increasing union membership would turn back the clock on these political ills. Additionally, white collar unions are increasingly being used for social activism and cultural policing rather than economic bargaining, and in that context they seem more pathological
        • In the narrowest sense, a right-to-work law is a restriction on society, since it forbids businesses and labor unions from making a mutually agreeable contract. However, it also serves to reinforce a spirit of individual freedom against commercial collusion, analogous to antitrust law, with the difference being that here the 'cartel' is comprised not by companies but by laborers
      • Controversies about unionization at specific companies (e.g. Amazon) are essentially a kind of culture warring and probably ought to be ignored by politiciansWhat really matters are the overall laws governing unionization; specific companies are less important. And whatever companies and workers do, as long as they respect those laws, their decisions are private matters that typically won't benefit from political scrutiny and controversy.
    • Ban or reform noncompete agreements
    • End at-will employment
    • Economists largely agree that unionization boosts wages
    • Worker representation on corporate boards does not impact worker wages

    Unemployment insurance is by far the most responsive safety-net program to job loss. Economists are uncertain about the economic side effects of unemployment benefits. Two studies have found that unemployment insurance has a small negative impact on employment, but this is outweighed by the benefits for recipients. One study found that unemployment insurance probably has no significant impact on overall employment. Unemployment insurance seems like a healthy move for our political economy, to prevent people from becoming disaffected and desperate. More generous unemployment insurance increases fertility for men and decreases it for women; the former effect is larger so the net effect is to increase fertility. A strong social safety net also simplifies policymaking by creating a situation where regulatory policy questions can be evaluated on their merits instead of being saddled by distributive demands.

    We need to modernize the infrastructure for providing social insurance and use it to provide better unemployment insurance, reemployment programs and paid sick leave.

    California's AB 5 law is bad.AB 5 is considered bad policy by Scott Alexander, Max Ghenis, and LA Neoliberals (in a video call, members of the latter mostly agreed that AB 5 is bad, the reason they were uncertain about Prop 22 was that it had problematic stipulations against further legislative action, which ultimately led the courts to overturn Prop 22 anyway.).

    Ridesharing reduces traffic fatalities by 4%, for lifesaving benefits equivalent to $2.3-5.4 billion per year.

    AB 5 interferes with the trucking industry, which is particularly bad considering the importance of trucking and the shortage of truck drivers.

    Weight

    The survey gave this issue a long-run weight of 2.4 points, but I've since added paid family leave to this topic, and I don't think most people would have guessed that family leave would fall under "labor." To adjust for this, I give it a weight of 3.6 points.

    Taxation

    Policy position

    Progressivity

    Progressive social systems are generally better as they help reduce inequality. Conversely, an overly progressive tax system can undermine the incentive to work hard. But it’s important to remember that progressivity must be judged as a combination of taxation and distribution. Flat or regressive taxes could be offset by good use of the revenues. In fact, a nearly optimal system is to have flat taxes combined with a lump-sum transferBoard and Midrigan (2020) find that a basic grant combined with a flat tax on capital or labor is nearly optimal, and more progressive taxation only slightly increases welfare. Gruber and Saez (2000) find that a large basic grant combined with regressive taxation is optimal for most redistributional preferences..

    Some argue that we need much steeper taxes on the wealthy because the current system is not progressive. However, America’s tax system is actually progressiveAccording to Splinter (2019), Bloomberg Opinion, Tax Policy Center, and finally Dylan Matthews who argues that our tax system is the most progressive in the developed world. However, American tax progressivity is lower once you account for state and local taxes.. Some also argue that we need much more progressive taxation because of an emergency of inequality, but inequality in the US has not dramatically increased since the 1960s; famous arguments by Thomas Piketty are now known to be exaggeratedFor an overview, see this Economist article or this Congressional primer. For economic research, see the following five papers: Magness and Murphy's critical study finding systematic distortions, the Sutch (2017) study finding some errors in Piketty's wealth trend statistics, the Magness (2019) study finding that Piketty overestimated recent wealth concentration in the UK, Geloso and Magness's study showing errors of overestimating 1930s inequality, and Smith et al (2020)'s analysis of top wealth trends in America. , and Gabriel Zucman’s presentation of data and arguments on this matter has included systematic misrepresentations and distortionsI've seen many cases, but this is a good example.. Wealth inequality turns out to be significantly lower once we take into account the value of social security benefits. Nobel economics winner James Heckman believes that “careful studies show much less growth in disparity than what is picked up in the popular press and by populist politicians.” Moreover, the primary driver of American inequality is differences in labor income; capital earnings are a secondary factor.

    Some argue that the ultra-wealthy should be taxed to reduce their influence on American politics, but this is a very weak argument.The political influence of very wealthy individuals is relatively minor compared to the influence of corporations, industry associations and other special interest groups. Political contributions are capped at $5 million per year, so the mere quantity of money possessed by the ultra-rich doesn't give them direct political influence. Finally, the impact of money in politics is somewhat limited, and it's not necessarily malign. Money makes a difference in lobbying for policy changes, but in a more nuanced manner than explicit quids pro quo.

    Despite the flaws in popular narratives which scapegoat the wealthy, economists do generally agreeSee the 2014 Fuller and Geide-Stevenson survey, and this IGM survey. that inequality is too high and there is still a problem with insufficient taxation at the top of the wealth distribution. Increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires is desirable. The ultra-rich in particular need to be taxed more. EAs mostly agree.In this survey, 11 out of 17 agreed, 1 disagreed, and 5 were unsure or moderate. However, this will not solve a probably greater problem which is entrenchment of the upper-middle class and barriers against upward mobility.

    Income taxes

    Economists don’t agree on whether or not the top bracket’s income tax rate should be above the Bush levels. Tax cuts below the Bush levels would probably increase growth, but cuts do not “pay for themselves” fiscally via increased growthSee IGM surveys about real and hypothetical tax cuts.. A hike on the current top federal bracket (>$500,000) to 70% is likely to lower economic activity, but this may be outweighed by additional revenue. Marginal increases in the top bracket income tax rate would certainly raise federal revenue, but merely increasing income taxes on the top bracket (>$380,000 at the time of the survey) would most likely be insufficient to cut US budget shortfalls even by half, although the deficit-to-GDP ratio has decreased since the time of the survey.

    Economists are likely to be overly focused on the short run, in line with the dominant paradigm of voters and policymakers. Barrage (2018) shows that under a more long-run perspective, the optimal rate of labor income taxation is quite high. But Barrage’s model shouldn’t be taken at face value: it assumes that the social planner maximizes long-run dynastic utility rather than maximizing long-run consumption, so it double-counts the utility of the children of current households. Also, we don’t have a low savings problem anymore.

    Capital gains taxes

    IGM economists are 2-to-1 in favor of keeping capital gains taxes lower than income taxes, but other economists are more split. They are also split on the question of whether reducing capital gains taxes would improve the economy.

    We should amend capital gains taxes so that very wealthy investors have to prepay their taxes before they sell stocks.

    Wealth taxes

    Economists surveyed in 2019 mostly considered wealth taxes to be inferior to increases in estate and/or capital gains taxes.

    Evidence on the efficiency and distortions of wealth taxes is limited and somewhat mixed. One study found that wealth taxes slow down the economy in the long run, but other taxes may be worse. The possible unconstitutionality of a wealth taxSee articles from Tax Foundation, NYT Opinion, and WSJ Opinion. may require it to be structured in a more distortionary manner.

    Compared to capital gains taxes, wealth taxes encourage efficient investment and reward good investors. The flip side of this is that capital gains taxes do a better job of targeting rents and other undeserved extraordinary returns. Still, it seems wrong to punish all successful investors just to target rent-seekers. So wealth taxes are better in their basic structure.

    Much of the problem with wealth taxes is enforcement; a wealth tax in France led to problems with tax dodging. However, new proposals are different and America has superior abilities to stop tax evasion. FATCA would eliminate many of the avoidance problems faced in Europe.

    Wealth taxes would encourage more rapid spending on luxury consumption, political contributions, and philanthropy. It’s not clear if this is generally good or bad. Of course the tax would also reduce the amount of money that is ultimately available for the rich to use on these things, although the cap on political contributions means that it probably wouldn’t make much difference there.

    Wealth taxes are not an efficient way of reducing the influence of the wealthy on politics compared to other tools. However, wealth taxes can be better for political economy than other taxes because they can quickly create a more equitable distribution of wealth and thereby reduce the risk of an unstable future condition where aggressive redistribution is demanded by the masses against entrenched elite opposition.

    A swift, onetime wealth tax can be a nondistortionary way to raise revenue and redistribute wealth, but this is difficult to achieve, especially given American legislative and constitutional barriers. And actually, a onetime wealth tax is sort of like an inferior version of the consumption tax.

    A recent Saez-Zucman paper provides a long defense of wealth taxes. I have not looked at it yet: https://t.co/TNBLYQpZ8I

    Note that in practice, American politicians have only proposed adding a wealth tax that specifically targets the ultra-rich, without any concurrent reduction in capital gains taxes.

    The matter is unclear.

    Other taxes

    Consumption taxes can be good. They can be a good way to tax wealth. The main objection is that they are regressive, but as noted previously, this can be outweighed by the progressive uses of their revenue. According to a comparison across countries, the effect of increasing consumption taxes is usually to create a more progressive social system. Alcohol taxes are good.

    Top economists agree that closing business tax deductions would improve efficiency. The pass-thru deduction should be repealed. We should require require large pass-thru businesses to file as C corporations and close other loopholes. We should reduce tax incentives for businesses, except for R&D credits. We should implement expensing for capital investment for both economic and environmental reasons.

    • Fix excessive state and local competition over businesses
      • 2019 Good Jobs First paper: promote state cease-fire pacts, impose subsidy caps, clarify federal law against pulling jobs across state lines, provide federal incentives for fairer practices, and reform processes for public comment and transparency
      • Mark Funkhouser: "We need a national law that prohibits corporations from extracting bribes from state and local governments and bans governments from donating tax dollars to private entities"
      • Niskanen Center agrees
    • Give less special tax treatment to small businesses

    Top economists agree that closing personal tax deductions would improve efficiency. Tax credits and deductions should be capped per household. We should not repeal the SALT cap.

    We should reduce or eliminate tax preferences for mortgages and other debt (p.60).

    Property taxes and especially land value taxes are generally superior to other types of taxes due to causing less economic distortion. Switching to land value taxes would greatly increase the savings rate, but we currently have lots of savings anyway. Land value is hard to measure, however, so arguably the optimal land value tax would be low and not enough to displace other forms of taxes.

    We need better enforcement of existing tax laws. The IRS should get a larger budget. It will pay for itself many times over and reinforce rule of lawA CBO analysis found that an additional $40 billion of IRS funding over 10 years would increase revenues by $103 billion, but this is a substantial underestimate because it does not take into account the increase in voluntary tax reporting that would happen as a result of stronger enforcement.. We also need to crack down on tax havens.

    We should make it easier for people to file their taxes.

    AI-optimized tax policy looks promising.

    We should try auctioning off rights to receive individuals' income taxes.

    Weight

    The survey gives this issue a long-run weight of 3.9 points.

    Poverty relief

    Policy position

    Paternalistic benefits vs cash

  • Cash benefits are broadly superior to paternalistic benefits
    • Paternalistic benefits are directly inferior at meeting people's needs
      • Main question is who makes more rational spending choices, people looking out for themselves or the government choosing things for the people? Economist opinions and empirical results usually suggest that people do better for themselves
      • The deadweight loss of distorting consumption decisions amounts to 5% for veterans’ benefits, 70% for Medicaid spending, and 25% for Medicare spending. In other words, $1 in cash to a Medicaid recipient does more good than $3 of Medicaid spending
      • Health programs can greatly outperform cash handouts in very poor countriesSee GiveWell's cost-effectiveness analysis of various top global health charities compared to GiveDirectly., but it's plausible that this wouldn't generalize to the United States
    • Paternalistic benefits involve a little bit of administrative cost and complexityPaternalistic benefits have a bit more administrative cost. TANF grants have administrative costs of seven percent, and SNAP programs spend eight percent on administration. By comparison, administrative costs account for less than one percent of Social Security costs.
    • Paternalistic programs treat people as if they are economically irrational, so they demean people and create extra personal burdens, and might socioculturally embed the irrational economic behavior that they are trying to avoid
    • Cash assistance offers a fairly straightforward opportunity to garnish money from delinquent debtors
      • Effective debt collection is uglyDebt collection tyically means taking money from poorer people to give to richer people. That said, debtors accept it in the first place when they signed the contract. but it is necessary for a functioning debt system; without functioning debt collection the price and availability of credit will suffer to the detriment of everyone who needs credit
      • Garnishing cash assistance is preferable to garnishing wagesIt's simpler (no need to deal with the employer), economically better (doesn't discourage people from working harder), and more morally fitting (take away the money that people are getting for free, not the cash that they legitimately earn)
      • Unclear if garnishment will be done with cash assistance. I haven't seen anyone propose it, but it seems more politically acceptable than wage garnishment (which we already have)

    Means-tested versus universal benefits

    Means testing can be a good idea given an insufficiently progressive policy regime, but in theory it seems best to have a system with universal benefits.

    In practice, means testing can be too burdensome and inefficient. Many people fall thru the cracks. So means tested programs can be quite bad. Medicaid work requirements are an example of a very poor means testing program.

    Scaling benefits by reported income is easy. However, the distinction between targeted and universal benefits can disappear at this point. For instance, a universal basic income plus more progressive taxation is equivalent to a negative income tax.

    EITC is a rebate payment for working people with low to moderate income. Economists surveyed in 2014 were almost equally split among agreeing, agreeing with provisos, and disagreeing that it should be increased. A 2020 paper looking at the past several decades contradicted previous views and argued that EITC probably has little or no effect on employment, though that would mean that all of the benefits of EITC go to low-income people rather than being captured by employers, so it’s a decent redistributive tool (albeit not as efficient as a basic income with phaseout). Another 2020 paper reconciled the literature and argued that EITC does indeed increase employment.

    Means testing can impose additional administrative costs.

    Size of benefits

    More redistribution within the US achieves greater reductions in inequality.

    A generous welfare state provides a greater income-smoothing effect as people who are sick, young, or unemployed get money while contributing in their peak earning years. This is not necessary if consumers have rational behavior and easy access to credit markets, but neither of these things are widespread.

    Some argue that redistribution would cause inflation. This is incorrect because the money supply would be unchanged and the Federal Reserve stabilizes inflation. Redistribution might inflate or deflate certain types of goods relative to each other, but the value of that is mostly unclear. The most likely impact is an increase in housing costs, because housing supply is more limited than other basic goods, and this seems like a downside due to the chronic crisis of high housing costs in America. Still, this would not be nearly a big enough effect to cancel out the benefits of redistribution.

    A strong social safety net simplifies policymaking by creating a situation where regulatory policy questions can be evaluated on their merits instead of being saddled by distributional demands.

    Generous redistribution is often believed to increase workers’ bargaining power, but this is debatable.

    Generous compensation makes it easier for people to pursue ethically impactful work that doesn’t turn a profit. However, it also makes it easier for people to pursue zero-sum or negative-sum political activism, or volunteer work that has little robust or long-run impact.

    Some people think that mass unemployment is inevitable due to automation, thus mandating generous support for the unemployed. But automation did not cause the recent decline in manufacturing jobs, and generally is not a major factor in unemployment, wage stagnation or inequality. We are not currently experiencing an automation revolution. This might change if robotics and artificial intelligence become good enough to cheaply perform all manner of new jobs rather than merely displacing workers from current sectors (with a caveat: wages for humans contributing to software research will still grow indefinitely even as software becomes more and more superior to humans), but that is some time away. According to an AI expert survey, AI won’t be generally capable of fulfilling all human tasks or jobs until sometime between 15 and 200 years in the future. Cash transfer programs are relatively quick to implement, so there is little reason to establish them preemptively. If automation ever does structurally replace a major share of human labor, the resultant economic explosion and political urgency will rapidly lead to adequate expansions in social assistance.

    There is a political problem with generous benefits. The moralism and lifestyle changes associated with social assistance programs risk turning them into entrenched entitlements with no prospect for reform or replacement. The early cancellation of a UBI pilot in Ontario has provoked protests and a class action lawsuit.

    Another political problem with generous poverty relief is that it can indirectly interfere with immigration policy. Both real and perceived fiscal problems caused by immigration affect the propensity of the state to accept more immigrants. Fiscal worries are by far the dominant motivation for British opposition to immigration. This problem mostly applies to low-skilled immigrants. Increasing poverty relief may reduce America's willingness to admit immigrants who could take advantage of this social assistance. This counts as a downside, as my immigration section shows that we should greatly expand immigration. One option is to exclude immigrants from getting access to the same benefits, and this is better than excluding them from the country entirely, but it does help create the kind of socioeconomic underclass that threatens the health of liberal democracies.

    • Poverty relief seems to have a slightly deleterious effect on family structure
      • It is beneficial for more children to be raised in two-parent householdsChildren from two-parent households do much better in life, and there seems to be good evidence that the households are indeed a major cause of these outcomes rather than a mere correlation. That said, more marriage on the margin may not be as good for children. If a lack of poverty relief forces women to marry in order to get support from a father who they would generally prefer not to live with, that could be a significantly worse household compared to those with intrinsically desired marriages., although it is possible that delayed or rarer marriage leads to higher quality marriagesAuthors of a 1997 study remarked, "it is tempting to conclude that higher benefits [causing a delay in marriage] could have deleterious effects for the children. In a marital search model, however, longer searches generally will lead to better matches. The ultimate effect of higher benefits on the child's lifetime exposure to fatherlessness therefore could be ambiguous."
      • Heritage Foundation argues that poverty relief theoretically makes it possible for women to raise children without needing to marry and that certain kinds of means-tested welfare in particular can penalize them for marrying
      • Two-parent childraising has been declining at the same time that the welfare state has been rising, but this is dubious correlational evidenceBirths to married couples declined sharply in the 1960s and early 1970s; because this started in 1961 it only partially and dubiously coincides with the welfare expansion of the 1960s (namely the "Great Society" of 1964-65). Since then, births to married couples have remained coughly constant, despite the large increases in the welfare state since then.

        It's possible that two-parent households are just getting rarer. But the rate of new marriages in the United States rose in the few years after the Great Society and remained about constant until long-term decline started in the 1980s.

        Increases in marriage could be negated by increases in divorce. But the divorce rate and the divorce-to-marriage ratio where constant in the mid-1960s. They started increasing rapidly in 1968, but this seems to have been due to no-fault divorce laws. Since 1976, divorce has declined and the marriage-to-divorce ratio has remained equal.

        The percent of children born out of wedlock has been rising since the mid 1950s, and the Great Society appears to coincide with an acceleration of this trend in the mid 1960s. However, this could simply reflect an increase in single-parent childbirth, which arguably isn't a bad thing.

        Instead of birth and marriage rates, we can look at the percentage of children living in different households. According to Pew Research, the share of children in one-parent households has steadily grown at the expense of the share in two-parent households since the 1960s, but according to the Census Bureau this trend stopped around 2000. It isn't good enough data to say whether there is any kind of coincidence with the Great Society. The steady change does coincide with the general growth of welfare spending over the latter part of the 20th century, but there doesn't appear to have been much rise in the share of children in one-parent households in the 21st century despite the continued increase in welfare spending.        , and the decline in two-parent childraising might be due to the sexual revolution and cultural modernity insteadSee the previous notebox for comments about the nature of our decline in two-parent childraising. Changing social norms seem like an equally or more fitting explanation for these trends in family structure.
      • 1997 twins study suggested that welfare reduces marriage but only slightly"High levels of welfare benefits lead initially unwed white mothers to forestall their eventual marriage; a 10% decrease in welfare payments would raise the fraction of mothers who marry within a year of their first birth from 30% to 32%. After five years, the fraction that marries would be 70 to 71%, rather than 68%." Meanwhile, "welfare benefits have no effect on time-to-first-marriage among blacks." The tradeoff of a 2-3% lower likelihood of marriage against the value of 10% higher welfare payments is debatable, but when considering that welfare also helps married mothers and people without children, the net impact seems clearly positive.

    Child benefits

    Child poverty is a particular problem in America, so we definitely need poverty relief to be directed at families with benefits scaled to their size.

    Child benefits can increase the birth rate.

    Universal childcare can be helpful or harmful depending on the quality of the program. It probably increases fertility but is probably less cost-effective at it compared to other programs. Proposals for universal child care often take the misguided form of subsidizing demand while restricting supply. Instead, we should relax regulations on both home and formal day-care centers.

    The child tax credit (CTC) is a benefit for families with children. It's good, but limited by low participation caused by unnecessary means testing. We should make it a universal benefit. Currently, Democrats are pushing the American Family Act which would expand the CTC, and it is well supported by economic evidence. Niskanen Center is pushing CTC expansion. A similar child benefit in Canada significantly reduced poverty. Politicians should support the American Family Act or other CTC expansion plans.

    We need a child allowance. Child benefits appear to be mildly effective at increasing fertility. Typical arguments against it are flawed.

    A baby bonus is likely to be the most cost-effective way to increase fertility.

    Basic income

    The majority of economists believe that the existing welfare state should not be replaced with a comparable level of UBI, though that may change with a better proposal for implementation. My perception of views from economics graduate students and professionals is that they have mixed views on UBI in general.

    Basic income reduces labor force participation.Basic income can give people a baseline of funds that they can use for entrepreneurship and retraining. But it can also allow people to subsist more easily without working at all. This is suggested by 1970s basic income trials in the US and Canada; data scientist Chris Stuccio summarized evidence from them showing that a basic income reduces the quantity of labor by 10%. He also found evidence that a 2017-2018 basic income experiment in Ontario reduced the number of employed people by about 20%. A recent experiment in Finland providing basic income to the unemployed did not lead to them gaining employment, though the study was flawed. Meanwhile, there is also evidence that VA disability compensation (which is somewhat similar to a basic income, between $1,600 and $34,000 per year) reduces labor force participation.

    And basic income may have additional long-run cultural impact discouraging people from working, as illustrated by the characterization of UBI as “NEETbux” and the idea that it serves as insurance for unemployment-from-automation.     Of course, if basic income is used to replace other social programs, this may not occur.

    Here is a calculator to look at the impacts of specific UBI plans.

    Federal Job Guarantee

    A Federal Job Guarantee (FJG) would ensure minimum wage employment for anyone in need of it. This would be well targeted towards the most needy. It would be non-paternalistic, as the benefits would be cash income.

    The economic viability of an FJG can depend on the minimum wage, but we only need to look at one case. Current candidates only propose it with a $15/hour minimum wage. In this case, it might attract a large number of people out of the private sector and thereby cost a lot of money. And the government agencies might be forced to take lazy or even disruptive employees and pay them the $15/hour wage. However, it could direct more labor towards useful public goods projects. Overall I feel pretty neutral towards the FJG. It is not a substitute for other poverty relief policies.

    Baby bonds

    Baby bonds are government-run savings accounts that are made for children and released to them when they get older. In the most common proposal, recipients can use the money for certain government-approved purposes such as education, housing and retirement savings. This is less paternalistic than the existing welfare state, but more paternalistic than plain cash transfers. Children of lower income families would gain much more, making it well-targeted.

    Baby bonds could soften the black-white wealth gap among young adultsSee this 2018 paper and this counterargument from Matt Bruenig., which would reduce racial division and tension in the country. But this would be true of other progressive redistribution policies as well.

    Baby bonds could discourage people from working more to support their children, but this seems like it would be relatively minor: people mostly work for themselves or for their family’s near term needs, at least when they are poor.

    Baby bonds seem disproportionately likely to be used for education expenses, which is socially suboptimal (see the analysis of free college in the ‘education’ section).

    Ultimately, baby bonds are just worse than child allowance - there's no point making families wait 18 years to use the money and child support is much more important than college.

    Housing vouchers

    Food stamps

    Food stamps are extremely beneficial, but they could be phased out if we had a more generous basic income and child allowance instead.

    Supermarket access

    The “food desert” theory, that the absence of supermarkets in poor neighborhoods causes nutritional inequality (and therefore ought to be deliberately rectified), is mostly false. The continued proliferation and awareness of food delivery services (e.g. Amazon Fresh, Instacart) seals the matter even further.

    Conclusion

    Ed Dolan's proposal for integrated cash assistance is a good synthesis of these various ideas:

    • A basic grant (about $6,000 per year) that would be paid to all eligible adults, regardless of their employment status, supplemented by a universal child allowance ($4,500 per child per year) that would not depend on the employment status or earnings of parents.
    • A wage subsidy that would provide a bonus for each dollar of earned income to low-wage workers, up to a maximum benefit (about $2,400 per year). The subsidy would be the same for all workers, regardless of family status.
    • A phaseout that would reduce the combined basic grant and wage subsidy at a moderate rate, beginning at a high enough level that all families and unattached individuals would be guaranteed a reasonable degree of income security.

    EAs mostly support this plan. In this survey, 7 out of 17 called it excellent and 6 said it was at least an improvement over the status quo. 3 had undecided or other views, and only 1 opposed it.

    Matt Bruenig similarly recommends a $4,500 child allowance along with elimination of the EITC. It arguably should be modified slightly to give more benefits to one-child families. Any option for that would still save money relative to Dolan's proposal with a $2,400 maximum wage subsidy. The savings could be used to increase the basic grant, increase the child allowance, stretch the phaseout, or fund other priorities in other parts of the government.

    In lieu of such a comprehensive reform, we should at least expand our existing programs such as the Child Tax Credit and food stamps.

    Weight

    The survey gives this issue a long-run weight of 5 points, but due to sloppy wording of the question I suspect that some respondents may have been including social security in their conception of the issue. So I give it an adjusted weight of 4.7 points.

    Occupational Licensing

    Policy position

    Top economists agree that "occupational licensing reduces mobility and wages for workers in many sectors where they could safely deliver services that consumers would prefer to those offered by licensed workers". Top economists also agree that we should loosen licensing regulations on what kinds of services healthcare workers are allowed to perform. Brink Lindsey and Samuel Hammond call for reducing occupational licensing rules. Occupational licensing slows growth, reduces economic and geographic mobility, increases student loan debt, and creates a tiered, exclusionary economy.

    Current occupational licensing standards do not promote higher quality services, but stifle competition and raise prices. Basic occupational licensing laws were effective in the early 1900s but they are much more stringent now.

    There is a good theoretical argument for expecting America’s government to err on the side of excessive licensing restrictions: the government is vulnerable to regulatory capture by special interest groups who seek to harm competitors by erecting barriers to entry for their industry, while consumers/voters are generally irrationally risk-averse.

    The industry groups which engage in regulatory capture disagree (for instance, optometrists claim that strict licensing rules for optometrists are necessary), but of course this means little.

    Weight

    The survey gives this issue a long-run weight of 2.4 points.

    LGBT Issues

    Policy position

    • Youth gender transition drug therapy and surgery should be available with substantial oversight
      • There is weak evidence that giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to youths is beneficial to their mental health; no RCTs have been conducted to my knowledge
      • There is a somewhat credible consensus among experts to allow youth transitionsIt appears to be a consensus among most physicians, psychologists and other practitioners. One could justifiably worry about ideology and bias distorting their judgments, given the strong political pressures in and on academia and the media to support progressive ideas on gender politics, and examples of apparently biased science and journalism. But Jesse Singal, a liberal science journalist who has skeptically reviewed many pro-transgender activist claims, nonetheless agrees that child gender transitions shouldn't be banned.
      • The general trend of the government is to place too many regulations on self-expression and self-medication, so on priors we should generally expect restrictions on transgender therapies to be overly strict
      • As a matter of common sense, allowing youths to make their own decisions about gender transition should increase their average well-beingIndividual liberty typically leads to better life paths. While some people will inevitably make mistaken decisions (for instance, see Katie Herzog's account of detransitioners), mistaken transitions will presumably be less of a problem than the damage done by denying the option entirely. Note that either choice, to transition or not to transition, is only partially reversible. It is not a good solution to simply mandate youths to grow up before deciding what gender they want to be because the effectiveness of gender transition procedures is highest when started early. Anecdotally, older cis people with regrets about not transitioning earlier seem more common than transgender people with regrets about transitioning.
      • The impact of youth gender transition on fertility is unclear
        • On average, transgender individuals and people who are sexually attracted to transgender individuals seem less likely to raise children. Withholding transition support reinforces heteronormativity and heteronormativity probably raises fertility
        • Withholding transition support from questioning youths may leave them even less likely to raise kidsCloseted or unknowing trans people may be less likely to become parents, compared to openly trans people, as they suffer the downsides of living as the wrong gender.

          Also, the same people may end up transitioning either way, and the older people people get before transitioning, the less likely they are to realize their desires and get a passing appearance, and the less time they have left to pursue relationships as their preferred gender. Additionally, there are people who are specifically sexually attracted to transgender people and encouraging more, earlier transitions will also help those trans-interested people find spouses.

          My own experience after reaching queer identity in my mid-20s is that my relationship life has been essentially cut in half; had I been more positively exposed to queer ideas and options early in life then I would have had a better chance at starting a queer relationship that could lead me to raise a family. Bear in mind though that this is extremely weak anecdotal evidence which I only bring up in the absence of any scientific evidence or surveys that I am aware of.
      • There is a risk of left-wing officials and professionals promoting youth gender transitions too readily, firstly because they can always make mistakes about what's best for childrenSee Thomas Sowell's book about bright late-talking children for one example., and secondly because the ideological vigor of the transgender acceptance movement in educated society creates a risk of bias and blind spotsThe severe and downright malicious behavior of many transgender rights activists and the level of toxic groupthink about the subject in some educated circles behooves us to retain some healthy skepticism about their judgment when they claim that a given process is sufficient for a youth to make a good decision. For instance, considering the viciously hostile reaction of many transgender rights supporters to discussions about detransitioners, one wonders if there are social workers who would refrain from properly informing children about that phenomenon. And see my sources page for examples of left-wing political pressure on gender topics in academia. But I am really just speculating here as I have not (yet) looked into the specific practices of how youth gender transitions are handled.
    • LGBT workplace discrimination should be bannedAnti-discrimination laws for race and sex have improved relative employment for protected classes; this presumably corresponds to better aggregate social and economic outcomes. This finding would presumably extend to anti-discrimination laws for transgender individuals, and such laws can also send a message of social acceptance, so we should prefer rules to stop workplace discrimination against LGBT people.

      The impact on fertility is unclear. Allowing employers to refuse employment to LGBT may promote slightly more heterosexuality since LGBT status is often socially determined rather than innate (it seems very probable that queer identities and behaviors are socially influenced; the more that media and social networks positively expose people to queer identities and behaviors, the more likely people are to consciously hold preferences for such things, and the less likely they are to be motivated to pursue traditional sexual identities and behaviors. A 2019 study found that 75-92% of gay activity is explained by environmental factors. A 2018 study found that social and peer contagion play a role in triggering gender dysphoria. LGBT identity is skyrocketing over recent age cohorts, with Generation Z being 12% bisexual, 2% gay and 2% transgender.), and the notion of being 'born this way' is a sloppy generalization that is actually false for many queer people. However, the spread of queer identity is mainly a consequence of structural change in society, like economic growth and the advent of the internet, and isolated acts of discrimination will not have a discernible impact on it in the long run. Moreover, queer people can raise families too and are just as good at it. Queer people currently seem less likely to raise families, but allowing employers to refuse employment to LGBT people would do more to discourage it further. Additionally, half-assed suppression of LGBT identity could leave people without any firm queer or straight identity upon which to build a family. (My own experience after discovering queer identity in my mid-20s is that my relationship life has been essentially cut in half; had I been more positively exposed to queer identity early in life then I would have had a better chance at starting queer relationships. I understand of course that this is extremely weak anecdotal evidence.) The best policy is to accept the fact that people's gender and sexual preferences are changing, and build a more inclusive pro-family culture which supports and encourages queer people to start families.      , but low in priority thanks to the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County and the strengthening of progressive orthodoxy in American institutions and culture in defense of anti-discrimination protections for gays and transgenders. There is just a dubious possibility that some bisexuals will still face discrimination in conservative institutionsThe issue isn’t necessarily settled because a careful reading of Gorsuch’s opinion suggests that workplace discrimination against bisexual people may still be legal. The argument for this is straightforward: per Gorsuch, discriminating against gays and transgenders means excluding them for a trait (attraction to or presentation as a member of a particular sex) that would be tolerated among members of the opposite sex. But discriminating against bisexuals merely means excluding them for a trait (attraction to both sexes) that can be consistently rejected among members of either sex. One law analyst has asserted that the ruling does indeed protect bisexuals, based on the fact that Gorsuch’s ruling was upholding a lower court ruling which explicitly declared ‘sexual orientation’ to be protected, but this is not persuasive to me. Still, I expect the apparent opening for bisexual discrimination to usually be ignored in practice. Employers will not know about it or will be worried that the law will be interpreted to protect bisexuals. And they are less likely to notice bisexuals or object to their presence in the first place, especially once they have to get used to hiring gays and transgenders.
    • Blanket bans on transgender athletes competing in their preferred gender category are wrongSome people worry that including trans women in women's sports will worsen the quality and fairness of the activity for ciswomen; others insist that inclusion is necessary for sports to be fair. There is no simplistic solution, sports organizations will have to (and already do) make rules based on criteria like testosterone levels. It is important to understand that no clear line between men and women can be drawn to satisfy any coherent philosophical idea of fairness; top athletes will always beat other athletes partly on the basis of their genes and early childhood environment as opposed to factors like personal dedication and training time, and in general transwomen can only 'unfairly' beat ciswomen in the same sense that, say, Ethiopian long-distance runners can 'unfairly' beat Samoan long-distance runners. It should also be emphasized that athletics serves the purposes of entertainment and recreation, it doesn't have to be an objectively philosophically rigorous way of identifying the most gifted or hardworking athletes. Allowing anyone who identifies as a woman to compete in women's events can undermine these purposes as ciswoman athletes can understandably feel cheated or outmoded and viewers can be dissatisfied, but broadly preventing transwomen from competing would hurt them and dissatisfy any audience members who prefer to see events that include transwomen. That said, if any men become transwomen at least partially in order to get placed in an easier sports category, it would be unequivocally bad to include them, as it clearly violates the spirit of the sport.

      Note that a binary division of events is not necessarily the right way to do athletics. We could eliminate women-only events entirely and put everyone in combined-gender events (just like Samoans have to compete in Olympic running against Ethiopians), or we could make a whole spectrum of categories for people with more masculine or more feminine characteristics (just like weightlifters are separated into a variety of categories based on their body weight). I'm not saying that we should go for either of these options, but it's worth understanding to help clarify that the dichotomy of men and women's sports is very much a social construction and that we have the freedom to run sports differently.

      Anyway, the prevailing consensus among most experts and sports officials seems to be that it is possible to implement regulatory standards which meet a good balance of perceived fairness for both types of women. And intuitively, it does seem clear that sufficiently strict rules can allow many transwomen who don't have a systematic advantage over ciswomen.

      Another problem with forbidding transgender athletes from competing in their preferred gender is that it can imply trans men competing in women's sports even after they begin obtaining systematic advantages from gender transition. Trans men who prefer to compete in men's sports may be forced to compete against women, which is simply perverse.

      One can justifiably be skeptical about the robustness of expert views on transgender sports (see my sources page for examples of left-wing political pressure on gender topics in academia), and perceptions of fairness are very subjective, so this is still a fuzzy issue. But given that, it is more reasonable to allow these decisions to be made by the sports bodies and local schools or school districts rather than state or federal legislatures. Even in the total absence of evidence for either side of this debate, local autonomy would be preferable in principle.      ; the specific rules for how to place transgender athletes are debatable and should be left to local and private decision-makingContinuing from the previous discussion, the value of sports depends heavily on subjective and almost arbitrary perceptions of fairness, which can vary by location and culture. Additionally, the scientific evidence and expert opinions pertaining to the topic seem to be lacking in reliability, especially considering that there is a strong risk of liberal bias among the relevant academics and officials (see my sources page for examples of left-wing political pressure on gender topics in academia). Therefore, it is hard to figure out the right answer for these issues and it is especially dubious to impose a single standard across an entire country, state, or school system. Moreover, given the local or private nature of sporting events, there is little benefit to standardization; it is better in principle to allow variation by school or sporting body. Then people with different preferences get different options, and experimentation can pave the way for better knowledge.

    Weight

    This issue is not particularly robust, and it doesn't impact existential risk.

    5.6% of America identifies as LBGT, or 0.2% of the world population. Many are already in very LGBT-accepting places, such as liberal cities and pro-diversity companies. However, others are more isolated.

    The policy impacts upon them are low, partly because the biggest issues are settled, although youth gender transitions are still a serious issue as mentioned previously. Moreover, the problem of harm inflation can limit the degree to which we can make things better.

    Most of the impact probably comes down to global efforts to promote LGBT acceptance in more hateful countries, but American politicians on both sides of the aisle tend to be supportive of those efforts.

    The survey gives the issue a long-run weight of 2.2 points.

    R&D

    Policy position

    IGM economists agree that the government should favor R&D using the tax code. There is moderately good evidence that direct R&D grants promote innovation, and strong evidence that R&D tax credits promote innovationSee Bloom (2019) and Rao (2016).. R&D rates of return fall around 44%This is a rough average of the studies listed in Hall(2009).. Defense R&D similarly has broad economic benefits, and spurs additional private sector R&D.

    We should double down on science and R&D (p. 85) to boost growth. Jason Furman has specific recommendations for how to simultaneously simplify and expand the R&D tax credit.

    We should roll back the excesses of IP law by ending the patentability of software and business methods, giving strong independent funding to the USPTO, dramatically shortening copyright terms, requiring copyright holders to register or pay taxes, and moderating or revoking the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules.

    Weight

    I didn't ask about this issue in the survey. As discussed in the beginning long-run priorities section, accelerating progress is not particularly important, so I only give R&D a long-run weight of 2 points.

    Social Security

    Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme but it is burdened with a large debt stemming from its generosity to early recipientsSee John Geanakoplos's lectures starting here.. Social security spending improves health and thereby reduces federal Medicare spending by $38 for every $100 of social security spending on the margin.

    We should cut Social Security benefits for the wealthy.

    Guns

    Policy position

    Crime, suicide, and recreation

    • Expert views
      • (Coming soon pending revision. Old version of this section had significant flaws.)
    • Evidence and intuitive judgment suggest that tighter gun laws would reduce crime and suicide
      • Research weakly suggests that gun restrictions reduce crime and suicide, though there is not much good quality researchRAND has conducted a direct review of evidence on gun control. They have found that evidence is very limited, and for many policies there is just no good evidence on their impacts, but whenever there is good evidence it indicates that restrictive gun policies reduce crime and suicide.

        Scott Alexander has reviewed literature which indicates that a good gun control program could theoretically prevent 2,000 murders per year in the US.

        A more recent study has found that gun ownership does not contribute to the suicide rate.
      • Intuitive judgment on guns and crime is super contentious and polarized, but to me and probably the majority of open-minded people it seems more plausible that gun control reduces crimeThe basic rationale for gun control is very straightforward: when people don't have guns, it will be harder for them to commit all the crimes that involve firearms (homicide, brandishing etc). Conservatives have several rejoinders to this: first, that the people who use guns for crime can easily get black market guns instead; second, that criminals can use knives or other weapons instead of guns; and third, that guns actually discourage crime because people will be reluctant to commit crimes at the risk of getting killed by gun owners defending themselves. If these arguments are true enough, they could imply that gun control would actually increase crime and violence. All of these arguments contain some truth, thus undermining the argument for gun control, but they are not strong enough to suggest that gun control wouldn't work at all.

        While criminals can and do get black market guns, these often come from the white market. Very many black market guns are stolen from other people. Thus, reducing the number of legitimate guns will decrease the number and increase the price of black market guns. And obtaining a black market gun is a risky thing to do which can get people into a lot of trouble. The owner of a black market gun has to be extra careful about not getting caught. So fewer people will obtain guns and the ones who do obtain them will be more reluctant to carry them around and commit many crimes with them. Of course nothing may stop truly hardened and experienced criminals, but they are just one portion of overall crime. Many people who commit murder with guns think of themselves as law abiding citizens up until or even after they commit a crime in the heat of the moment. The killing of Markeis McGlockton is a good example of the kind of crime that gun control can prevent.

        Criminals who cannot get guns will still carry other weapons like knives, swords, clubs, pepper spray and tasers. If they are extremely determined to commit murder with other weapons, it will still be possible for them to do it. However, in the many situations where victims have a chance to fight back or run away, they will have a higher probability of surviving if the criminal is armed with a less powerful weapon. Additionally, people who commit homicide with guns are not always determined to kill; sometimes they are simply trying to win a fight, or acting on a brief moment of anger or fear. In these cases, if the offender carries a less powerful weapon, the victim is more likely to survive the wounds.

        Finally, a reduction in gun owners should theoretically make people willing to commit more crimes, knowing that they are less likely to face a defensive gun use. But defensive gun uses are very rare, so they are unlikely to be a major factor in criminal calculations. They are extremely dangerous to the criminal, but it seems that very unlikely punishments don't do much to deter crime even when the consequences are severe. For instance, a tiny chance of getting killed by the death penalty is usually regarded to have little deterrent effect, and the same should apply to a tiny chance of being killed by people defending themselves. And criminals in general are not particularly rational; they are often driven by anger or other immediate emotions, and can be very dismissive of their personal safety. Additionally, while an armed society can discourage crime, it can also encourage criminals to arm themselves very well so that they are better prepared to win or at least survive against victims who carry guns, and this would increase crime risk in some ways.

        Note that these second and third counterarguments offered by pro-gun advocates contradict each other. If criminals can kill just as easily with knives or baseball bats, then homeowners should be able to defend themselves just as easily with knives or baseball bats. Or if guns are so lethal that they really help law-abiding citizens deter criminals, then they are so lethal that they are probably very useful to criminals as well. It can't go both ways. In reality, guns are more deadly than other weapons, so they do help homeowners deter crime, but the added advantage to criminals (who so often go after people who are completely unarmed) is more significant. One can suppose that certain weapons are a bit better suited to offense or defense, but here the alternatives to guns give an advantage to people who are defending their homes, because they can have large weapons (like spears or swords, or long guns if we are just considering handgun control) without having to worry about concealing them while walking down the street.

        Note also that the first and third counterarguments offered by pro-gun advocates push against each other to some extent. If people can easily obtain guns on the black market, then criminals will be very worried that the victims of their criminal activity might shoot back with a black market firearm of their own. After all, criminals defend themselves just like law-abiding citizens do, and criminals have no way of knowing if their next victim will be an honest person or a criminal. That said, even if there is a big proliferation of black market firearms, it will never reach the numbers we currently see with the legal gun market. The synthesis is that there will be both fewer offenders with guns and fewer defenders with guns, and the offenders with guns will be a bit less scared of defensive gun use compared to before, but they will also be fewer in number compared to before.

        Another point in favor of gun control is that sometimes the mere expectation of a firearm leads to violence. There are many cases where people shoot other people based on the fear that the other person is carrying a gun. For example, see the fatal shooting of a boy with an airsoft gun by a state trooper. If guns were less common in society, people wouldn't be constantly on edge expecting other people to have guns, and there would be fewer shootings like this.

        These issues are pretty subjective, and pro-gun advocates might have significant rejounders to these arguments, so I'm not super confident here. I don't place much weight in the intuitive point of view at all, preferring to look at the actual research on gun policy. That said, considering the lack of high-quality research, it is prudent to pay a little attention to intuitive judgment.
      • Common sense suggests that reducing the availability of guns should reduce the suicide rate; many people will still find other ways to commit suicide but some of them would change their minds, and other suicide methods are more likely to simply fail (although the goal of making suicide more difficult is controversial, see above)
    • Guns are useful for recreation, in spite of the risk of accidents, but this is outweighed by the benefit of reducing crime
      • Scott Alexander has reviewed literature which indicates that a good gun control program could theoretically prevent 2,000 murders per year in the US (a rather conservative figure compared to the RAND survey results) and determined that this is valuable enough to outweigh the recreational costs for gun owners
      • Gun recreation including target shooting, hunting, historical reenactment and tactical shooting shenanigans can all be done in satisfying manners even if people are limited to manually cycled long guns; semiautomatic guns and double-action revolvers are by no means necessary for gun recreation (although variety can always make things a bit more fun and interesting)
      • Many people die in gun accidents, but in most cases this may be considered an accepted risk of gun recreation - people know the risks they are taking when buying a gun or hanging out with gun owners, and they believe the recreation is worth the risk. It may not always be rational but the government should respect the personal choice given that there isn't strong evidence that people systematically irrationally neglect gun safety risks
      • Stringent gun control can interfere with hunting, which may be a good thing or a bad thing, given the uncertainty over the dynamics of wild animal welfare
    • The most important type of gun to restrict here is handguns, since they are used far more commonly in crime than other types of guns due to their ease of concealment. Shotguns are relatively uncommon in crime, and rifles are quite rare
    • 3D firearms printing weakens the ability of gun control to reduce crime but does not negate it
      • 3D printed firearms are inferior (mainly in reliability, durability, and practicality) to regular ones
      • Fully 3D printed firearms are impractical given the need for steel barrels; barrel production might be controlled even if 3D printing cannot be controlled
      • Not anyone can 3D print a gun, printing requires significant upfront capital expense and some knowledge
      • Illegal gun manufacturing puts the manufacturers and the owners of the guns at huge legal risk; this may not dissuade hardened criminal networks, but it would dissuade lesser criminals (as well as responsible gun owners)
      • Illegal 3D firearm printing could support organized criminal networks similar to drug cartelsThis might be avoided by legalizing gun production and sales by licensed companies, protecting the anonymity of buyers, while criminalizing the possession of firearms by other entities, but it is unlikely that the government will seriously consider a policy that is so technically and morally sophisticated (by government standards).
      • Some suggest ammo control instead of gun control to deal with 3D printed guns, but this is a terrible solution

    Conflict

    • Gun proliferation can help protect America from foreign invasion, but this is not a realistic concernAmerica has the world’s second-largest economy, the largest military budget, an extremely powerful nuclear deterrent, domestic political stability, two big oceans separating us from any remotely comparable power, an extensive network of allies, an international network of military bases, and a permanent seat with veto power on the U.N. Security Council. And not a single country lays claim to any significant amount of American territory. In this situation, America has extraordinary territorial security, perhaps unrivaled by any country past or present, and there is no conceivable need for citizens to arm themselves against foreign invaders. A repeat of the American Revolutionary War, where locals had to fight back against authority imposed by foreigners, is not plausible.
    • Gun proliferation may help states organize armies to wage conventional warfare against the federal government, but this is not a significant issue
      • The idea of conventional state warfare against the federal government is very far-fetched in the current political reality
      • Commercial rifles are not very suitable for modern military conflict because they lack selective fire, and shotguns and handguns have only niche military applications
      • State defense forces and National Guard units can acquire selective fire small arms regardless of the laws on private gun use
      • Gun proliferation could help state governments organize separatist militias, but it could similarly help the federal government organize loyalist militias
      • It's unclear whether states should be able to fight against the federal government; the only time this has happened in America was the Confederate secession in 1860, which was grievously harmful, but more generally speaking self-determination is a valid political right
    • Gun proliferation enables violent insurgency against the government, but this is probably a bad thing
      • Historically, the presence of guns in insurgencies in the United States has generally been net harmful, both for emboldening harmful insurgencies and for making them more destructive
        • The presence of guns in the 1791 Whiskey Rebellion was probably harmfulIt caused a bit of violence and turmoil, and heightened anti-tax stubbornness. Fewer guns would have made it less bad.
        • The presence of guns in the 1811 German Coast uprising was more likely to be harmfulThe slave rebels had no firearms of their own; they apparently seized militia equipment, but either they found no firearms or they were unable to use them effectively (see two videos on the subject). Ultimately, the rebellion was disastrous, with a hundred slaves killed for no apparent gain. Meanwhile, private guns were used in greater numbers and with greater effectiveness by the local volunteer militia that helped crush the revolt. So an absence of guns would have actually increased the prospects for a successful rebellion by evening the playing field between insurrectionary slaves and the local militia which fought for the status quo. A more successful rebellion would have had more political impact, embarrassing and frightening the slaveowning class, for better or for worse. That said, the military probably would have still eventually suppressed the revolt, especially since there would have been no private guns for the rebels to seize. If the revolt were suppressed purely by the military without involvement by local militia, then it might have involved less brutality towards the rebels. But with a larger rebellion, more African-Americans might have been killed. Overall, this is just a mess of complex considerations, but I lean towards saying that the guns were harmful.
        • The presence of guns in the 1854-1859 Bleeding Kansas violence was harmfulThe violence, which involved both proslavery and free-stater fighters, exacerbated tensions leading to the Civil War. It's very plausible that free-staters were morally justified in fighting, but clearly things would have been better if neither side had been so violent. It would have been better if there had been fewer guns to fuel violence (although there could have been more knife fighting instead).
        • The presence of guns in the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry was harmfulIn hindsight, John Brown's raid was bad because it failed and merely fanned Southern fears leading to the Civil War. It also led to the deaths of 19 abolitionists who could have fought for the Union (and they only killed one soldier who could have fought for the Confederacy). It would have been better for the conspirators to have had less access to firearms. The point of the raid was to seize guns to arm a larger rebellion, so it might have been attempted regardless of restrictive gun laws, but it would have at least been a milder affair.
        • The presence of guns for the 1970-1981 Black Liberation Army was harmfulThe BLA, using guns as well as other weapons, committed a number of murders and other lawbreaking activities which don't seem to have accomplished anything except for fomenting harmful right-wing backlash.
        • The presence of guns in the 2020 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest was harmfulThe occupation protest itself was clearly harmful, both for disturbing the local community and for provoking right-wing backlash. It probably didn't succeed in its political goal of reducing police funding, but if it did then that would be harmful too. Meanwhile, a number of shootings occurred in the protest area, including the homicides of two teenagers (who were apparently driving around shooting into the air) by gun-armed vigilantes.
        • The presence of guns in the 2021 Capitol Hill riot was harmfulThe attack was obviously harmful. None of the rioters fired any shots, but their possession of guns may have emboldened them to act more aggressively. Some right-wing online commentators had been looking forward to violence on the day of the attack, and at least five firearms were present among the protestors.
      • Compelling resistance movements to be nonviolent makes them act more righteously
        • Nonviolence minimizes the basic harms of political conflict: death, injury, fear, decreased commerce, and political polarization (which can still occur with nonviolent resistance, but less intensely than with violent resistance)
        • Nonviolence is probably asymmetrically effective for morally justified movementsWhat I mean specifically is that the success of a nonviolent movement depends heavily on whether its cause and practices are righteous enough to persuade people, whereas the success of a violent movement is less dependent on that (and more dependent on whether it has enough firepower). Most of my followers believe that nonviolence is asymmetrically effective., so forcing movements to use nonviolent tactics should pressure them to act better in order to be successful
      • Nonviolent resistance movements tend to be more effective than violent ones, so gun control should actually make resistance movements more effective, which may be good or bad
        • Nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance, judging by a general international analysis, multiple recent survey experimentsThis 2017 study includes three survey experiments on animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump protests, and finds that violent tactics reduce support. This 2020 study includes six experiments (including 3 preregistered ones) across a variety of movements, and finds that violent tactics as well as extreme nonviolent ones (blocking highways and vandalizing) reduce support. This 2020 study surveys residents of over 33 countries and finds that the greater support for nonviolent movements is a robust moral commitment., and the history of the 1960s American Civil Rights movementThree separate studies have shown that the 1960s Civil Rights Movement achieved successes thru the use of nonviolent tactics while violence set them back; this also appears to be the prevailing historical interpretation, although August Nimtz’s interpretation of history is that acts of violence were effective at promoting federal action on civil rights.. Movements choose violence for irrational reasonsTerrorist groups routinely engage in self-sabotaging behavior because “terrorism is a form of socialization or status-seeking;” similar dynamics may apply to other forms of political violence. Accomplices of political violence may be ignorant of political science research or may deny its validity. They may selectively highlight rare anecdotes and arguments which suggest that violence is effective, and may suppress research which promotes peaceful tactics. They may get caught in a spiral of chaos, polarization and stupidity.

          An example of this pattern is the 2020 David Shor controversy. Shor is a political data analyst who tweeted about a paper (which I have cited here) indicating that race riots hurt Democratic voteshare in 1968. Shor is a Democrat who was broadly aligned with Black Lives Matter aims but worried about the impact of their riots on the upcoming election. His statement provoked outrage among many leftists and BLM supporters, who called it “tone deaf,” “concern trolling” and “anti-blackness.” Many influential progressives joined the attacks. The moderators of a major email list for progressive data operatives banned him, calling his tweet “racist.” And Shor was fired by his employer. Note that much of this backlash wasn't formed out of a positive preference for violent tactics, but rather an ideological intolerance of criticism of BLM.          .
        • Probably the majority of resistance movements in American history have had good goals, but activists for morally righteous causes are disproportionately likely to choose nonviolenceFirst, if nonviolence is asymmetrically effective as I described above, then activists for righteous causes may be pragmatically steered towards the nonviolent route. Second, people who subscribe to good political causes may be more generally ethical and therefore more intrinsically averse to using violence. Modern-day support for nonviolent protests is primarily driven by moral commitment, and many members of the 1960s American Civil Rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., believed in nonviolence as a moral principle even when guns are available, so righteous causes will get relatively little benefit from gun control forcing them to be nonviolent
        • Most violent resistance movements in American history have had bad political goals (see the above list), and making them more effective could actually improve their effectiveness at achieving bad goals, but if nonviolence is asymmetrically effective as I describe above then maybe the worst movements really are more effective when they are violent, so an absence of guns could inhibit the worst movements
      • Gun proliferation does not help protect us from extreme dystopian scenarios
        • Private guns provide little or no protection from totalitarianism
          • No good evidence on the relationship between gun ownership and evil governments but it's certainly possible to maintain liberal democracy while implementing gun controlMany liberal democracies have stricter gun control than the United States. Whether measured by democracy, press freedom, or economic freedom, America is less free than Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of countries in Western and Northern Europe. Yet we have uniquely permissive gun laws and the greatest number of civilian guns relative to the population. This doesn’t rule out the possibility that countries are more likely to become authoritarian if they implement gun control – that would require more extensive data and rigorous analysis. But it does show that it is quite possible for liberal democracies to remain liberal democracies while implementing gun control, even in the face of a global turn towards authoritarianism (as has happened in the last decade). So if guns do stop totalitarianism, the effect at least is not particularly strong.

            Additionally, given that violent resistance isn’t as effective as nonviolent resistance as I described previously, it would be surprising if gun ownership dissuaded authoritarians.
          • America is very unlikely to become totalitarian, as described in the priorities section
          • Even if America does become totalitarian, nonviolent resistance is probably still be more effective than violent resistanceNot only do nonviolent resistance movements work better than violent ones, this pattern holds true even in authoritarian countries. Things may work differently for totalitarian regimes as opposed to most authoritarian regimes, but most collapses of totalitarian regimes still have not been driven by citizens rebelling with firearms.
        • Private guns increase the risk of mass killing and other forms of persecution
          • American citizens are very unlikely to suffer mass killing, as described in the priorities section
          • Mass killing is primarily associated with the absence of state authority, with the presence of a one-party state being the other but rarer factor in mass killing. Therefore, giving people guns to undermine government authority does more to move us closer to the conditions for mass killing
          • If mass killing or other persecution does happen in America, it is likely to be perpetrated by American citizens carrying privately owned firearms, so gun control could prevent itVarious mass killings thru-out history, including the American mass killing of the Indians, were perpetrated at least in part by civilians with private firearms.

            Many race riots and lynchings in American history have been perpetrated partly by citizens with private firearms.
          • If mass killing or other persecution does happen in America, it is likely to be done against people who lack firearm rights anywayIndians in the 1800s suffered mass killing and they did not have citizenship, and African-Americans suffered from racial violence and apartheid until the 1960s and they had few political rights. I've read conflicting things about their gun rights - it seems that Indians and free African-Americans had some gun rights but less consistently than whites did. And obviously, slaves had no gun rights at all. As described previously, when slaves rebelled for their freedom in 1811, the primary role of private guns was to suppress them rather than to aid them.

            Undocumented migrants have relatively few political rights, are not citizens, and are looked down upon by many citizens, so they are at higher risk of persecution compared to other Americans, but they are fully forbidden from purchasing firearms.

            This isn't coincidental - generally speaking, the granting of gun rights to people presupposes a level of political status which makes them unlikely to suffer persecution in a liberal democracy; conversely, denying gun rights to a particular class of people suggests a level of political denigration which makes them more likely to suffer persecution. Gun advocates like to argue the reverse and say that the presence of guns is actually the cause of other political rights, but this is really dubious. It is not plausible that African-Americans and Indians would have been treated equally in the 1800s and early 1900s if they had somehow acquired large stockpiles of guns; often they actually did get firearms anyway and they were still systematically persecuted. There is plenty of evidence and theory on how a variety of factors lead to liberal governance, and it is ridiculous to throw all of that aside to assert that actually private gun ownership is the main reason.

            The Holocaust shows the importance of citizenship in tempering even the most murderous regimes; Jews with citizenship in states recognized by Germany, especially Jews with German citizenship, were not treated as badly. According to Timothy Snyder, legal documentation and recognition of rights are very impactful, if underrated in the popular understanding of genocide.

            The fact that mass murder is most likely against noncitizens or second-class citizens can be used to support the idea that we should expand gun rights to these people, but in practice you don't see pro-gun politicians pushing for this (although a few truly principled Second Amendment supporters do). And while extending gun rights to disadvantaged groups might reduce the risk of persecution in theory, gun control for everyone seems like a much safer approach.
        • Technologies like AGI might lead to some kind of crazy future dystopia, but it seems very unlikely that private citizens with small arms could effectively fight back in such a scenario
    • Even if gun proliferation does help protect us against tyranny, this would not necessarily outweigh the more mundane downside of increased crime
      • As noted above, the risks of totalitarianism and mass killing in America are very low
      • Crime increases the risk of authoritarian government by provoking racial tensions and the election of right-wing "law-and-order" candidates who veer closer to fascism and provoke the left to become less liberal
    • The current pattern of gun ownership in America is unhealthy
      • Guns and especially rifles are disproportionately owned by right-wing demographicsAccording to a 2017 Pew poll, Republicans and Republican-leaners are more than twice as likely to own a gun as Democrats and Democratic-leaners. This could be partly due to the Republican Party taking a softer stance on gun laws, but the strongest explanation is presumably that the Republican Party is disproportionately favored by rural and suburban voters whereas the Democratic Party is disproportionately favored by urban voters, for a variety of reasons. The Pew survey found that 46% of rural citizens have a gun, compared to 28% of suburban citizens and 19% of urban citizens. Another factor is that gun ownership is a disproportionately male phenomenon (39% of men have guns compared to 22% of women) and so is support for the Republican Party (56% of women identify or lean Democratic compared to 42% of men). So gun ownership is not politically neutral; it is disproportionately concentrated among certain political views and demographics. It’s certainly possible for the political parties to realign so that gun ownership is not identified with a particular party, but it is hard to see how the geographic and gender patterns could change.; while this may inhibit right-wing movements because violent resistance is generally less effective, it may increase the risk of a very authoritarian right-wing movement succeeding thru violence. Again, with nonviolence being asymmetrically effective for morally justified movements, maybe right-wing movements (which are not morally justified) are an exception of a movement that can benefit from gun use. Moreover, it generally seems unhealthy for guns to be concentrated on one side
      • The current gun-owning demographic seems particularly politically irresponsible and downright dangerousThe American gun community is concentrated with right-wing partisans who often fail to recognize the unprecedented corruption of President Trump, the brutal behavior of many police officers, and the unfair nature of many aspects of the American political system (like the Electoral College and Puerto Rico’s territorial status). Right-wing groups have already agitated for violence not on the basis of any systematic repression of American freedoms, but because of a small string of antifa beatings, the Democrats’ lawful and justified impeachment inquiry against Trump, and lockdown policies to control COVID-19. The far right is most responsible for extremist violence such as hate crimes and terrorism, accounting for 58% of such incidents over the last ten years.

        Even insofar as guns are owned by organized groups on the left, the situation is troubling, as relatively high numbers of socialists and black nationalists own guns for political reasons.
      • Gun ownership has given rise to a pathological branch of "civil" society on the right including groups like far-right militias, the NRA, and political gun channels and groups on social media
      • This could be taken as an argument for more liberals to buy guns, but also suggests that the government should generally minimize gun proliferation as long as the imbalance continues (which it will for the foreseeable future)
    • The most important type of firearm to restrict here is centerfire semiautomatic rifles, since they are more dangerous in warfare than other small arms
    • The advent of 3D printing partially inhibits gun control from working against violent political movements but doesn't make it harmful or entirely useless
      • 3D printing has succeeded in making some guns but has a ways to go before it can produce high-power weapons at comparable levels of functionality, safety and cost
      • 3D printing machines could be monitored by the government so that they do not print firearms
      • Violent insurgencies are definitionally illegal and will always print firearms if they can (unlike in the context of crime and recreation, there can be no distinction between 'responsible law-abiding gun owners' who will not obtain illegally printed firearms and criminals who will do so, so implementing gun control will not create a harmful imbalance between well-armed bad guys and poorly-armed good guys)
      • Ammo control might be considered instead, but that seems even harder than preventing 3D printing of firearms

    The gun industry and proficiency culture

    • Gun and ammo sales to American civilians support the Western gun industry, which helps Western militaries and law enforcement
      • Gun and ammo sales to civilians promote company stability, experience, and economies of scale that would not be available if companies were solely dependent upon government contracts
      • American civilian gun purchases don't necessarily support companies which sell guns to the American government; both civilians and state operators frequently buy foreign guns. But generally speaking, American civilians tend to buy guns from Western gun companies (including SIG-Sauer, Glock, FN, etc), which tend to manufacture guns for Western users and their allies
      • In the short run, civilian gun demand can bid up gun prices and prevent the state from getting monopsony power, but in the long run this is probably outweighed by the benefit of growing the gun industry
    • Gun companies may refuse to sell arms to the American government if we implement gun control; Barrett Firearms (prominent manufacturer of .50-caliber anti-materiel rifles) refused to do business with the state of California after the latter banned .50 BMG guns
    • Gun recreation creates experienced gun users, thus improving firearm proficiency in America's military and law enforcement
    • The most important type of firearm to protect here is centerfire semiautomatic rifles, since they are far more similar to military rifles than other legal guns are

    Conclusion

    • Summary of arguments for/against gun control
      • Gun control can reduce crime, especially if it targets irresponsible gun ownership and especially if it targets handguns
      • Gun control can reduce the risk of violent insurrection against the government - contrary to the mythos surrounding the Second Amendment, this is actually a point in favor of gun control. This mainly matters if we can control the proliferation of semiautomatic rifles
      • Gun control can undermine the Western firearm industry and American firearm proficiency culture, which could have negative consequences for Westerm militaries fighting overseas
    • We should pass moderate regulations to reduce crime without seriously disturbing the civilian gun ecosystem
    • We should take small steps to minimize the risk of insurgency against the government without seriously disturbing the civilian gun ecosystem
      • Tighten restrictions on armor-piercing rifle ammunitionThere already are some restrictions on armor-piercing handgun ammo, so it's not totally implausible that we could make progress here. This would be helpful for preventing rebels from being able to penetrate body armor and light armored vehicles used by our police and military.
      • Stop imports of powerful guns and other tactical equipmentSemiautomatic centerfire rifles, centerfire rifle ammunition, night vision devices, and ceramic and polyethylene body armor. from countries which are not American allies - would reduce the availability of dangerous rebel equipment while increasing business for Western companies
    • Issues where gun law should be more permissive
    • Issues where the appropriate stance is unclear
      • Gun-free zones. While a gun-free zone obviously makes it slightly easier to perpetrate a mass killing, it could reduce the risk of homicide in other ways (as ordinarily law-abiding gun carriers could get drunk, angry, etc). Moreover, making schools into gun-free zones could at least make students feel safer and more comfortable. More importantly, gun-free zones in schools could foster a less violent mindset among the kids. Frequent exposure to guns may plant bad ideas in students' heads.
      • Stand-your-ground lawsTheir impact on firearm homicide is unclear, but they may reduce other violent crime and property crime. May reinforce good norms of social respect and sends a good message of "fuck around and find out", but may encourage reckless disregard for human life by "defensive" gun owners
      • Gun and ammunition taxes; they are estimated to reduce crime but would reduce gun ownership and proficiency rather broadly without targeting bad guys in particular
      • License requirement for gun ownership, with fees and mandatory safety training
      • Minimum age for purchasing and possessing rifles and shotguns18? 21? The current state-by-state differences actually seem pretty defensible considering the different factors of urban vs rural youths buying firearms. Also, allowing 18-year-olds to shoot may help some people get shooting experience before entering the military, but some military folks think this sort of thing does more harm than good by imparting bad shooting habits which are difficult to unlearn. Maybe we should raise the age requirement to 21 but leave an exception for 18-year-olds to buy bolt-action rifles and single-shot shotguns chambered in the smaller calibers - those are still deadly firearms, but the restriction could reduce the dangers of crime and hooliganism, while still allowing gun recreation and hunting for young people.
      • Rationalization of laws surrounding SBRs, SBSs and pistol bracesSomething should be done given the silliness of current regulation, but it's not clear what. We could follow a strict regime of banning all concealable weapons with powerful cartridges or multiple points of contact, or we could just legalize all of these guns, or find some middle ground that makes more sense than arcane judgments about the definition of a stock.

        I'm not sure if specifically targeting short-barreled weapons makes sense in the first place. The concept is essentially to ban weapons which are small enough to be concealed when necessary but too large to be practical for daily concealed carry, with the assumption that those weapons are disproportionately useful for criminals. It does seem like a reasonable idea, but it deserves questioning. While responsible gun owners cannot use such a weapon for holstered concealed carry, they can still carry it in a bag, a glovebox, or under a coat, not as a daily habit but as a special measure for dangerous occasions. The compactness of such a weapon is also helpful for home defense. Meanwhile, criminals still profit from the extra concealability of handguns while not always suffering from their inferior accuracy.

        If we do want to continue restricting short-barreled weapons, I think we should revise the law as follows:

        1) Replace the buttstock criterion with a minimum barrel length (perhaps 5") and/or minimum overall length (perhaps 10") criterion. The rules about what does or doesn't count as a buttstock are hard to enforce, confusing, and possible to circumvent (look up Rhett Neumayer's cheek gun concepts for the starkest loophole), which puts excessive strain on the ATF. Moreover, the practical effect of a rule against buttstocks is simply to make the weapons less accurate, which is the wrong approach; the primary goal should be to minimize criminals' firepower, not reduce the accuracy of their shots.

        2) Have the rule apply only to semiautomatic weapons and pump-action shotguns.

        3) Make an exception for semiautomatic .22LR weapons, which have substantially less firepower but widespread recreational use.
      • Assault weapons bansAssault weapons bans still allow guns which are very deadly on paper, they may be circumvented in some easy ways, and they seem to have no impact on ordinary crime, but they can reduce the availability of high-power tactically effective rifles and high capacity magazines which are dangerous in the hands of insurgents. Features like high-capacity magazines, barrel shrouds and pistol grips can slightly increase the combat effectiveness of rifles even if they aren't particularly important. Assault weapons bans also might reduce the risk of mass shootings; even bans on 'scary' cosmetic features might reduce the appeal for would-be mass murderers. That said, California-compliant versions of assault-style weapons still look fairly tacticool; most laymen probably can't even tell the difference.

        Just as assault weapons bans have limited benefits, they also have limited costs. Gun owners can purchase reasonably similar firearms, so the bans are just a manageable inconvenience to their recreation and home-defense efforts.

        Honestly, assault weapons bans seem to function as nothing more than an inefficient tax on certain firearms, since their main impact is to induce complexity and difficulty into the design and marketing process, dissuading both manufacturers and buyers without really changing anything of substance. But unlike a real tax, assault weapons bans do not raise money for the government.
      • Handgun ban
      • Ban on powerful semiautomatic riflesRifles in .22 caliber can certainly kill, but a group armed with them will be badly disadvantaged in a firefight against soldiers or cops, so they are not a big risk and should clearly be allowed (including 22WMR).

        Semiautomatic rifles of .223 caliber and higher are dangerous tools for insurrection. That said, they are also a central part of American gun manufacturing and gun proficiency culture. So this is a difficult tradeoff. I would probably choose to ban them but it's not clear enough to make a real recommendation.
      • Ban on semiautomatic large-caliber shotgunsThis might be feasible in some cases, but would only provide limited benefit against insurgency, because pump-action shotguns (which are politically impossible to ban) are nearly as effective in combat as semiautomatic ones. Militaries sometimes use pump-action shotguns instead of semiautomatic ones. It's plausible however that future improvements in reliability will make semiautomatic shotguns more dominant.

        The main risk on the current market is the proliferation of 12-gauge semiautomatic shotguns. 20-gauge shotguns are weak enough that they are not well suited for battlefield purposes, so they should still be allowed with semiautomatic actions. A specific threshold should be set somewhere below 20-gauge depending on how restrictive we want to be. While intermediate sizes are generally not offered currently, they obviously will be once we set a legal threshold and manufacturers try to build the most powerful guns that they can within the law.
      • Ban on NVGs, ceramic body armor and polyethylene body armor

    Weight

    This issue doesn’t merit scoring in the metric of short-run robust welfare. While evidence suggests that gun control will reduce crime in the short run, it isn't robust.

    Its long-run importance is low because of the prospects for 3D-printed firearms.

    The survey gives it a long-run weight of 2.1 points. However I reduce the figure to 1.4 points because the political prospects for significant changes to American gun law are so slim and I don't think most people sufficiently recognize that.

    Big Tech

    Space exploration

    Space exploration programs do not appreciably reduce existential risk in the foreseeable future and may be harmful. They also do not have any clear economic benefits, aside from incidental R&D impacts. However, American leadership in space may be important for the long-run future of humanity, so that expansion into space is not led by China. We should pursue space development efficiently, minimizing waste and red tape, but it's unclear whether we should spend more or less money on it.

    • Cancel the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft
      • Consensus of informed commentary that these are wasteful, inefficient, and underperforming programsSee the OIG report, Eric Berger's coverage, the NASA Spaceflight forums (especially comments by VSECOTSPE), Casey Handmer's blog, and Lori Garver's tell-all book.
      • The Artemis lunar program could be accomplished for less money without SLS/OrionFor the multiple ways to perform Artemis lunar landings without SLS/Orion and without significant additional spacecraft development, see videos by the well-regarded Apogee YouTube channel: 1, 2, 3. Note however that Apogee is too optimistic about the cost of Starship flights, or at least he goes by internal SpaceX costs rather than the price for NASA. Considering the $1.25B contract price for the second crewed Starship HLS landing, I'd estimate that these extended Starship missions will be somewhere in the realm of $1.6-2.4B, plus the extra $0.2B for lifting crew to LEO. Of course, that is still only a fraction of the $5.4B price of launching SLS, Orion and Starship HLS with NASA's current plan.

        Note that the Artemis program includes not just lunar landings but also co-manifested deliveries of components to the Lunar Gateway space station. These payloads probably cannot be co-manifested on Starship HLS due to the fairing design, and even if they could the extra mass would necessitate additional refueling flights. It will make more sense to send these modules on Falcon Heavy. Currently there are two modules planned to be co-manifested on SLS lunar landing missions, IHAB and ESPRIT. ESPRIT will mass about 4 tonnes which is well within the capability of a reusable Falcon Heavy to send to lunar orbit, costing $0.2B assuming a NASA contract is double the commercial price. IHAB will be larger, but it cannot exceed 12 tonnes assuming the projected performance of SLS Block 1B (38 tonnes to TLI, of which 26 tonnes will be used for Orion). By comparison, Falcon Heavy can probably carry over 20 tonnes to TLI in fully expendable mode, which could cost $0.3B. Admittedly, Falcon Heavy is limited by fairing size, but Gateway modules probably won't be particularly large, and a larger fairing might be designed without too much trouble if absolutely necessary. So two Falcon Heavy flights, totalling $0.5B, can carry the two Gateway modules. But if Falcon Heavy doesn't work for whatever reason, there are other rocket options in development - New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur Heavy, Ariane 64, and Starship, any of which would probably add little to the cost relative to the savings of eliminating SLS.

        Note that in theory, canceling SLS/Orion would include canceling Artemis II and saving more money that way, but considering how much work has already progressed on Artemis II we wouldn't save anywhere near the original $4.1B cost, and canceling a project so far along seems totally politically unrealistic as well as possibly a bad idea (even knowing that SLS/Orion will not be used for lunar landings, we could launch Artemis II anyway just to see what happens, learn, and maybe inspire some people).

        In summary, the cost of rockets and spacecraft for Artemis III/IV/V would drop from $16B to $6-8B, assuming current costs. And further lunar landings will cost roughly $2B apiece instead of $5.4B apiece.

        In reality, costs will not stay the same. SLS/Orion may become cheaper, and their manufacturers have promised as much. But by the same token, SpaceX Starship could become cheaper as well. And SLS/Orion have a track record of cost growth which could plausibly continue with the unfinished development of the Block 1B and Block 2 enhancements to SLS. Meanwhile, Starship's reusable design implies that very large reductions in cost are plausible. So while both the $5.4B and $2B figures may be overestimates, the upshot is still that the program will be much cheaper without SLS.

        In fact, considering the economics of spacecraft reusability, buying additional Starship flights could have a beneficial follow-on impact for SpaceX. It would make Starship cheaper, thus enabling SpaceX to offer more flights to NASA or other buyers and accelerating the American space industry as a whole.

        Canceling SLS also save even more money by eliminating research and development funding for the Block 1B and Block 2 enhancements. While research and development spending is usually a good thing, in this case we should be more skeptical because SLS is an old generation of spacecraft technology; developing new upper stages for SLS doesn't really advance the cutting edge like research and development programs should.
      • The Artemis lunar program would be more effective without SLS/OrionWith the plans referenced in the previous section, a Crew Dragon spacecraft could launch seven astronauts for each lunar landing, as opposed to four with the current Orion plan. And if desired, additional flights could fill up each Starship with more astronauts for relatively low additional cost, potentially enabling a big international program with a well populated lunar base. Additionally, Starship could return more material from the lunar surface to LEO.
      • The Artemis lunar program would probably be more flexible, rapid and reliable without SLS/OrionSLS and Orion are very limited in their launch cadence, with an average expected period of about two years between lunar landings. Additionally, Artemis I showed that SLS is extremely temperamental at the launch pad, with logistical difficulties as well as technical bugs such as hydrogen leaks. Finally, the co-manifestation of Gateway payloads on Artemis IV and V introduces new scheduling risks. So canceling SLS/Orion and replacing them with extra commercial launches would probably lead to a higher launch cadence with less schedule risk - until we see how effectively SpaceX can accomplish repeated launches of Starship, this is pretty speculative. Of course, Starship individually looks like it will be much more reliable than SLS, but it will be harder to execute the multiple Starship refueling flights which will be required to top off the fuel for Starship HLS to return to LEO.

        There is also less programmatic risk if SLS/Orion are ditched. Currently, SLS, Orion, and Starship are all on the critical path for lunar landings. Without SLS/Orion, the critical path would consist only of Starship and the (well proven) commercial flights to LEO. The risk of Starship running into new technical difficulties is present either way, but the risk of SLS or Orion encountering new technical difficulties can be eliminated.
      • The Artemis program is likely to be safer for astronauts without SLS/OrionFalcon 9/Crew Dragon launches and reentries will certainly be safer than SLS/Orion, as the former is both more technologically advanced and proven with a very good empirical safety record by spaceflight standards. However, the cheapest Starship-only plan entails refueling in space while crew are aboard, which seems like it will add a minor risk to the mission.
      • Even if cancelling SLS/Orion complicates the Artemis program, it's not a big deal anywayOther issues like spacesuit development may be the early limiting factor for Artemis, and in any case, it's not a very big deal if we don't land people on the Moon before 2030 - it's not an important mission, there is no rush to do it quickly. We'll still probably do it before China, and in any case, we already landed on the Moon in 1969 so it's not like we can lose the space race. And the Gateway space station has little real purpose.
      • SLS and Orion have very poor utility outside the Artemis program, due to their excessive costBoth SLS and Orion are far more expensive than commercial alternatives., extreme scarcityThe extremely low rate of production of SLS and Orion, the lack of SLS reusability, and the very limited degree to which Orion is "reusable" imply that as long as the Artemis program is ongoing there simply won't be any vehicles available for other missions. and (for SLS) excessive vibrationsSee the story of Europa Clipper, which was originally slated to launch on SLS but later switched to Falcon Heavy because of SLS's excessive vibrations. offsetting their minor performance benefitsSLS has strong performance for launching deep-space robotic science missions, but it would probably be wiser to use vehicles like Falcon Heavy (and eventually other commercial options) which do the same job much more cheaply and with less launch vibrations, albeit on slower trajectories. Note that the Europa Clipper launch contract switched to Falcon Heavy instead of SLS because of Falcon's far lower price and superior vibrational environment despite its slower trajectory. SLS will make more sense if the Exploration Upper Stage and other enhancements are built, but it is dubious whether this will actually happen. In any case, shaving a few years off of Solar System science missions just isn't important enough to justify the expense of using SLS. That money would be better spent doing a larger number of space science missions, or on something that more concretely benefits people.

        Meanwhile, Orion is not large enough to carry crew to Mars. Maybe it could be used for getting to Venus or near-Earth asteroids, I'm not sure, but Congress and NASA aren't planning any such missions anyway.        ; conversely, money spent on commercial alternatives to SLS (mainly SpaceX Starship, but potentially others) could do more to support the broader space industry
      • SLS reuses old technology, so relatively little of its funding is going into valuable R&D, compared to spending on Starship or any other new alternative"The SLS required no real innovation, including friction stir welding (FSW), which is a 30 year old technology that was already in wide use around the world. Sure, something might have been created specifically for the SLS, but we are far past the days where NASA has any impact on the technology world, and the SLS is not unlocking any innovations that any industry was waiting for."
      • As a politically easier alternative to cancelling SLS and Orion outright, demote SLS to a cargo-only role"[Homer Hickam's] idea to kill SLS is a 2-stage plan. First step: get SLS off the critical path by demoting it to a cargo-only role. Something else flies Orion. Second step: upon noticing that NOBODY uses SLS as a cargo vehicle, have it canceled entirely."
    • Cancel or heavily revise/delay the crewed component of the Artemis program
      • Both rockets currently planned for Artemis, SLS and Starship, are woefully inefficient for the job. Even considering Starship's superiority to SLS (see above section), it will still make for an extremely large and poorly optimized lunar lander, meaning that it is still much more expensive than what should be possible given more development timeSee the Blue Origin and Dynetics proposals for HLS, which were better in concept compared to Starship, but were badly executed designs and did not benefit from SpaceX's next-generation launch capabilities. By the late 2020s, we should be able to field something better.. Alternatively, it is possible that SpaceX eventually makes good on its promise of very cheap Starship launches. Therefore, delaying the program could save a lot of money
      • Even if we don't deliberately put off the lunar landings, the program is likely to fall so far behind schedule that better rockets and spacecraft could become available, and we may as well plan around this reality from the beginning
      • Even if it is possible to rush a lunar landing in the mid-2020s, the benefits are too dubious to justify the costs of spending so much money on SLS/Orion and Starship
    • SpaceX should be authorized a much higher frequency of Starship launches from Starbase, Texas
      • Allowing Starbase launches would offload some of the burden from Cape Canaveral, allowing more room for American spaceflight to grow
      • Starbase launches would be more logistically efficient than shipping rockets to Cape Canaveral or offshore platforms
      • Economic, social, cultural and recreational impacts of Starbase are positive
        • The FAA has determined in their draft assessment that the social, cultural and economic disruptions caused by Starship launches will be rather minor
        • Starship use would benefit the American economy, to a degree that clearly exceeds any economic disruption from Starbase activity
        • Starship use would reinforce American leadership in space
        • Starship use has social, cultural and recreational value to a significant number of people (e.g. SpaceX fans), and while this is a pretty silly thing to count as a policy impact, it still probably exceeds the amount of interest in the historic preservation sites and beaches which are slightly threatened by Starbase activity. For example, the number of people who watch Starship tests via livestream seems to greatly outweigh the number of people who visit the local beach
      • Environmental impacts of Starbase appear slightly negative in expectation but don't justify halting the project
        • All impacts on wildlife have indeterminate impacts on net animal welfare, due to the inherent uncertainties surrounding the issue
        • The FAA has already determined in their draft assessment that the environmental impacts of Starship activity will not be significantly negative. Additionally, when SpaceX operations bar access to the local beach, that actually protects the local ecology from tourist disruption
        • Out of twelve threatened animal types in the area of Cameron County, five are merely sub-populations of species with 'near-threatened' or 'least concern' populations elsewhereAplomado falcons are at 'least concern' of extinction. Piping plovers are 'near threatened' and their population is currently increasing; one other subspecies exists besides the one in the Gulf. The red knot is 'near threatened' although their population is currently decreasing; five more subspecies exist besides the ones in the Gulf. The local ocelots are merely the Texas population of a subspecies of Ocelot which lives from Arizona to Costa Rica, and the ocelot species overall is at 'least concern'. The Gulf Coast jaguarundi is not an actual subspecies, just a local population of the jaguarundi, a species at 'least concern' of extinction., and out of these five subtypes, only two are actually found in the dangerous vicinity of the launch site, and neither of those are really dependent on this particular areaPer the FAA's assessment, the piping plover has 142 'critical habitats' in the southeastern coast of the US, and the blast danger zone of the launch site occupies merely part of one of them. Three more critical habitats are found in the greater area potentially disrupted by launches. However even these 142 habitats are an undercount as the Atlantic subspecies of piping plover also lives elsewhere in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Baja. So 1-4 habitats will be disrupted out of perhaps 200 for the subspecies.

          The red knot is sometimes found near the launch site, but no 'critical habitat' has been designated for it. The overall population of the local subspecies of red knot is estimated at 6,000 individuals, of which only 2,000-4,000 live in Texas and Northern Mexico, of which only a small minority frequent the particular vicinity of the launch site (at least at any one time).

          The other three types - the northern aplomado falcon, the ocelot and the Gulf Coast jaguarundi - have not been detected by surveys in the vicinity of the launch site, but do have known populations elsewhere in the southern US and northern Mexico.          . Out of the seven actually threatened species, six do not face meaningful risk from rocket launches at StarbaseThe black rail, while endangered, has between 10,000 and 50,000 mature individuals worldwide. The eastern black rail subspecies has probably between 400 and 1,300 breeding pairs, most of which live on the upper Texas coast or in other states. Eastern black rail seem to have a minimal or sporadic presence in Cameron County but have not been seen in the particular vicinity of Starbase and the habitat within 0.6 miles of the launch site is not suitable for them.

          The local subspecies of West Indian manatee is endangered, but the species overall is merely 'vulnerable'. Regardless, it mostly lives elsewhere, and has not been sighted near Boca Chica since 1994. It is always underwater, and is therefore somewhat protected by disruption from the risks of rocket launches.

          The hawksbill turtle is critically endangered, but it has only been found nesting in Texas once in 1998 safely distant from Boca Chica. The endangered green sea turtle shows an observed average of 10 nests per year in Texas, of which half are found in the local area potentially disrupted by rocket activity. No nests are found immediately on Boca Chica beach, but a single individual was sighted on the beach in 2019. Only a single example of the 'vulnerable' leatherback sea turtle has been seen close to Boca Chica, in 2008, well outside the zone disrupted by rocket activity. A single nest of the 'vulnerable' loggerhead sea turtle was found at Boca Chica Beach in 2006; a few more nests have been found more recently in the wider, potentially disrupted area. All of these turtles have huge habitat areas spanning across the globe, so even if they do have a presence near Boca Chica, the loss of this tiny slice of coast would not seriously threaten them. The two turtles which are actually seen in the zone of potential disruption, the green sea turtle and the loggerhead turtle, have worldwide nesting female populations of 85,000-90,000 and 40,000-50,000 respectively.          ; the only species meriting real concern is Kemp's ridley sea turtle, but it still isn't a major problemKemp's ridley sea turtle is critically endangered and is heavily dependent on nesting sites in the Gulf of Mexico. Its overall population is estimated with 7,000 to 9,000 nesting females. Each year, an average of 200 nests are found in Texas, but only 7 of them are on Boca Chica beach. While rocket activity seems like it could contribute to strain on the population, it's minor enough that it presents no serious extinction risk. Additionally, I've heard (from a comment on the NASA Spaceflight forums) that whenever sea turtle eggs are laid in that area, the eggs are actually removed to be hatched in a protected location elsewhere, so in theory launches should hurt no baby turtles at all.. For none of these threatened species, subspecies and sub-populations have I seen any evidence or specific arguments that their absence would lead to serious disruption of ecosystems or disruption of human economic and recreational activity
    • Increase funding for NASA's Earth science programs, as great benefits can come from satellites studying things like agriculture, oceans, and the climate
    • Regulations to reduce the risk of accidents from uncontrolled rocket reentry are not worth the cost

    Abortion

    • The appropriate policy for general abortion cases is unclear
      • EAs tend to be either pro-choice, undecided or moderate on abortion See this survey of 17 EAs.
      • The general common sense intuition to protect individual liberty offers no guidance here, as abortion policy is an unavoidable tradeoff between the liberty of the mother and the potential child
      • Abortion policy is a tradeoff between a larger population and a better-off population, and the appropriate course of action is unclear
        • Empirical evidence tends to show that abortion availability reduces birth ratesOne paper found that abortion restrictions in Texas in 2011-2014 increased birth rates. However, another found that abortion restrictions in Texas in 2009-2015 appeared not to change birth rates. Legalizing abortion in 1973 slightly reduced birth rates in America. Abortion access for minors prior to 1973 reduced birth rates.; note that simply deferring birth from one year to the next has a negative effect on fertility
        • Restrictions on abortion cause significant economic harm to women including a 78% increase in debt and an 81% increase in negative public records
        • Unwanted children probably tend to have worse lives and worse social impactsAbortion legalization led to a generation-later drop in crime rates in the United States, although in Romania it did not. Such benefits are politically controversial among both the right and the left and therefore may be neglected in research. compared to wanted children, although on balance they are still valuable and productive human beings
        • In theory, for a more rational and egalitarian approach to fertility, we should equally incentivize everyone to have more kids while also granting widespread abortion access so that mothers can have kids exactly as they please. However, properly ambitious pronatal policy is politically implausiblePronatal policy actually faces the same obstacle as pro-life policy: the unborn do not get a vote or a voice, so the political system doesn't give a shit what they think. But pro-life policy at least has a gripping moral pull for people who regard fetuses as deserving of basic human rights, whereas pure pronatal policy can rely only on boring arguments about economic growth and total welfare., so abortion restrictions may be countenanced as a substitute measure
      • Abortion represents the commoditization of human lifeReverence for the concept of a human being declines in favor of renewed emphasis on the harmonious functioning of society, and the individual becomes replaceable subject to the circumstances of the parent. The shared humanity of the mother and fetus are forgotten, in favor of emphasizing the mother's job, hobbies, free will, and desire for privacy at the expense of the unconscious fetus which has none of those things., and it seems plausible that normalizing abortion with liberal laws may cause people to shift their attitudes in this manner in the long run. Commoditization of life is actually closer to a utilitarian perspective, so it is probably a good thing, but its controversial aspects should be acknowledged
      • The abortion procedure can cause pain to the fetus, and fetuses can be conscious, but this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. It is outweighed by the reduced pain for the mother not having to deal with a full term of pregnancy
    • Abortion should be allowed at least in certain exceptional circumstances
      • Legalize abortions for fetuses with serious developmental problemsObviously this depends on the specific problem with the fetus. If the child is likely to die before reaching adulthood, or live an extremely stunted life with a constant need for burdensome therapeutic attention, then the mother should obviously be allowed the option of deciding whether to carry the fetus to term. If it's a minor "disability", like if the fetus is expected to have a mild case of autism (not now, but soon there may be scientific tests for this), that does not justify abortion, as such people tend to have similar life satisfaction and social impacts to neurotypical people despite the traditional stigma. Or if the fetus merely appears to be slightly less physically healthy than usual, that is an objective flaw but of course it is sufficiently minor that it doesn't justify an abortion (unless we endorse pro-choice policy generally).

        But there is no clear dividing line between severe disabilities and minor conditions. As discussed previously, abortion policy is a tradeoff between a larger population and a better-off population, and depending on these priorities one could plausibly draw the line in a number of places between more or less severe disabilities. In practice this line has to be implemented by a bureaucratic or scientific process rather than being fully dictated by legislation. Pro-lifers tend to support abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormalities, but the devil is in the details of how providers and regulators are supposed to make this determination. And it seems likely to me that American policy will consistently err on the side of giving too little leeway to parents in cases of abnormal fetuses. While the pro-life movement of course tries to protect nearly all fetuses, pro-choice people seem reticent to make a particular push for abortion privileges in cases of fetal abnormality, because the pro-disability movement has substantial sway in social justice circles and because modern educated liberals are generally very hostile to practices which remind them of eugenics. So even if most Americans think parents should have more privileges to terminate flawed fetuses, the actual political and bureaucratic processes driven by political elites are likely to neglect their concerns. For this reason I tentatively recommend that policy should generally provide a little more leeway for parents to terminate fetuses with serious disabilities.
      • Broadly legalize abortion in cases of rapeThe impacts of such a policy can be somewhat debated just as abortion in general can debated, but it's a more extreme case of the downsides of pro-life policy, and it's particularly perverse to allow rape to be a mechanism of fatherhood. Of course it can be complicated to determine whether a rape actually occurred. In Georgia a police report of the rape is required, which seems like a reasonable standard to me.
      • Legalize abortion for minors, as it's particularly dubious to force girls to carry an unwanted pregnancy
      • Improve legal leeway for procedures that destroy a nonviable fetus, or endangers a viable fetus for medical reasonsWhile pro-life legislation generally makes basic exceptions to kill or endanger a fetus when necessary for the mother's health, in practice there are still problems, or at least potential problems, with women being unable to access procedures like D&C after a partial miscarriage or cancer treatment during pregnancy. Sometimes this is because of legal uncertainty and liability risks, but serious philosophical issues may play a role as well.

        One problem seems to be the common requirement that any fetus with a heartbeat must be treated as viable. If a fetus has a heartbeat but is not medically expected to survive, then obviously it should immediately be regarded as nonviable and the mother should be allowed to terminate it right away; there's no point endangering the mother just so that the fetus can die a 'natural' death.

        In practice I don't think we usually face black-and-white situations about saving the mother or saving the child, it's more about probabilities with medical issues that only pose a small chance of killing the mother. But while pro-life policymakers may be willing to leave the mother at a 1% risk of death in order to save a fetus, I think it would be better to place higher priority on the life of the mother.

    Minimum wage

    "Overall the most up to date body of research from US, UK and other developed countries [as of November 2019] points to a very muted effect of minimum wages on employment, while significantly increasing the earnings of low paid workers. Importantly, this was found to be the case even for the most recent ambitious policies."See this 2019 special report for the UK government by Arindrajit Dube. For an overview of the report and the surrounding debates, see Dylan Matthews' article. However, this body of research has been disputed by a number of experts who argue that minimum wages more significantly reduce employment in ways that are less measurableSee this 2019 article by Jeffrey Clemens, which is recommended by Jason Furman and Wojtek Kopczuk, and see other writeups by Samuel Hammond and Bryan Caplan.. Minimum wages also increase wage and price stickiness, causing greater unemployment increases during recessionsSee Clemens (2015), Clemens and Wither (2014), and this blog by Scott Sumner.. Overall, about half of top economists surveyed in 2021 believed that a $15 minimum wage would lower unemployment for low-wage workers, and most of the remainder were uncertain. Insofar as higher minimum wages do reduce employment, they also increase crime.

    It is difficult to evaluate the tradeoff of wages versus unemployment because there is such controversy over estimates of the magnitude of disemployment effects. According to a CBO estimate, raising our federal minimum wage from $12 to $15 would reduce total annual income by $7.9 billion, provide $5.4 billion to poor families, and provide $11.9 billion to families at 1-3x the poverty thresholdHere is the CBO study, but see footnote 80 of Dube's report which says that CBO was probably overestimating the increase in unemployment., which seems decent. The tradeoffs for other increases, like going from $10 to $12 or going from our current minimum wage to $15, are of course more favorable. A more recent study estimated that increasing the real minimum wage for U.S. teenagers by 1% reduces their employment by 0.2%, which also seems favorable. But I don't think these individual study estimates are very trustworthy.

    Minimum wages are not particularly effective at helping the poor because they increase consumer prices in regressive waysSee MacCurdy (2015), Lemos (2004), and Aaronson (2001).. And the burden of minimum wages falls disproportionately upon smaller, less-wealthy business owners, as opposed to big corporations. But raising the minimum wage does effectively reduce black-white economic inequality.

    High minimum wages may promote offshoring to lower-productivity, lower-income countries. This is a good thing for short-term economic welfare, but weakening the United States is bad in the long run.

    One study found that minimum wages reduce fertility with a $1 increase in the minimum wage leading to several percent decline in birth rates, especially in the context of an EITC. Another study found that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduces birth rates by 1.2%. This would no longer be a problem if we had an adequate child allowance providing comparable compensation to women who choose to have kids. Until then, it's a downside of high minimum wages. But much of it is driven by single women and teenage women, so it's not very objectionable anyway.

    Nationwide minimum wages do not match geographic variations in cost of living, so they can be economically disruptive in the short runSee articles on AEI, Pew Research, and Washington Post., but it's less clear if this counts as a downside in the long run - maybe labor is already being spatially misallocated by state-by-state variations in the minimum wage and a standard minimum wage would correct that. The idea that minimum wages should match the cost of living assumes that they are a generally effective anti-poverty measure, but in reality minimum wages are primarily beneficial in the specific context where monopsonistic employers get away with paying employees well below their labor productivity. Caleb Watney suggests that such monopsony is typically a problem in low-wage rural areas, so there should just be one low nationwide minimum wage. Alternatively, if such monopsony is equally common everywhere, perhaps the minimum wage should be indexed to something like the state median wage, which is still higher in costlier urban areas but doesn't seem vary as much as the cost of living. Actual minimum wages seem to vary just a little bit more than the state median wage. So it would probably be optimal to have less variance in the minimum wage than we do now, although greater state-by-state variance does provide more examples of policy experimentation. Any of these is better than the idea of raising the minimum wage to match arbitrary, aspirational "living wage" figures, although economists do tend to believe that having the federal government set a minimum wage that varies with state and/or local conditions would be better than the status quo.

    One major problem here is that national minimum wages generally apply to Puerto Rico, whose median wage is only about two-thirds as high as the poorest American states. The $7.25 minimum wage for Puerto Rico already faces controversy for being arguably too high, and I think experts would generally agree that raising it to $8 or more would probably be harmful to them. Unless Puerto Rico gets an exemption from federal minimum wage law, further increases in the nationwide minimum wage would trade off their possible benefits for the 50 states against harm to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico only has 1% of the American population, but they are worse off, and exacerbating their economic problems would be a uniquely bad thing. Also, only a minority of Americans live in states which rely on the national minimum wage, so Puerto Ricans constitute a larger share of the people who would be impacted by a modest national increase.

    Most economists surveyed in 2016 and early 2019 opposed a $15 minimum wage. EAs broadly disagree about the federal minimum wage, with preferences ranging from $0 to $15. See this survey. Employers worry a lot about minimum wages reducing jobs, but this is partly because employment can shift from less productive employers to more productive ones, and partly because they're just advocating for the policies that are in their economic interest.

    It's also worth noting that in the context of an ideal policy regime, minimum wages have less purpose because they are generally inferior to wage subsidiesAccording to Samuel Hammond, Caleb Watney, and the @ne0liberal Twitter account.. Wage subsidies provide better incentives to employers because they draw on a broad and fair tax base rather than specifically penalizing the employers who hire the low-skill workers. In addition, they can provide better incentives to workers because they can be structured to preserve differentials in low-skill wages. With a $15 minimum wage, a worker whose productivity is worth $10 per hour still gets paid the same if his productivity goes up to $15 per hour, so there is no immediate incentive for him to become a better worker, but with a wage subsidy he could be taking home $15 per hour in the first case and $20 per hour in the second case. Even with a proper wage subsidy, minimum wages can still be useful to correct the worst cases of employer monopsony, so we would still benefit from a minimum wage, it should just be low.

    Overall, I'd say that the current floor of $7.25 just seems ridiculously low in many parts of America except Puerto Rico, and I'd endorse an increase to at least $8.50 in the states. Meanwhile, raising it above $15 definitely seems like a bad idea. But generally speaking, the minimum wage is a topic with too much conflicting evidence for clear policy recommendations.

    Arts

    Policy position

    • It's probably better to cut arts funding, with a possible exception for freely available digital media
      • Does arts funding improve society?
        • Art subsidization almost certainly has no impact on cognitive ability
          • We should generally be skeptical of the idea that art has cognitive benefits
            • In general, long-term cognitive improvement is difficult, especially in adulthood, and it is a wise starting assumption that any activity such as art production or art consumption does not improve adult intelligence until good evidence is found to the contrary
            • Evidence which does indicate positive impact of art on intelligence can be readily suspected to be faulty, thanks to the replication crisis and generalizability crisis. Sensational findings of art making people smarter seem extremely susceptible to publication bias and have a track record of being undermined by later research
          • Art funding very probably does not provide cognitive benefits thru art production
          • Art funding almost certainly does not provide cognitive benefits thru art consumption
            • Listening to Mozart does not make people smarter; therefore, music of various genres which is produced under public arts funding presumably doesn't make people smarter
            • Even if art consumption does provide cognitive benefits, that's not a strong argument for art subsidization, because art subsidization just funds new art that probably substitutes for old art without increasing art consumption, and there is no reason to think that new art would have more cognitive benefits than old art
        • Unclear whether art tends to help or hinder people's understanding of the world
          • Realistic fiction often gives people enlightening new perspectives about the world (although it's strictly less informative than nonfictionBy nature, fiction is limited to anecdotal accounts which fall well short of the standards of modern historiography and statistics. Even the goal of communicating subjective perspectives about the world, which is a valid and useful complement to conventional nonfiction, can be done more rigorously thru systematic techniques of perspective sharing.)
          • Fiction often provides misleading perspectives about the worldFrom Gwern.net with ample citations (which I've removed for clean reading here): "Fiction can be unfairly persuasive, bypassing our rational faculties; it may be that we default to believing what we’re told and disbelief is only a latecomer. Information from fiction can substitute for nonfiction (time consumption is zero-sum between fiction & nonfiction) and in sufficient volume, discredit it, which can lead to direct harm - TvTropes’s “Reality is Unrealistic”, which is about self-reinforcing unrealistic fictional depictions of reality, claims that “…Nonetheless, the public is largely convinced that cars present a serious danger of explosion after a crash, which has resulted in many, many cases of well-meaning members of the public pulling injured victims out of cars, causing further injury to them, to get them away from the car before it explodes.” (SF, in particular, is often good inversely proportional to how much scientific truth it contains.) The author’s motive may be malign as easily as benign; readers can read a blatant allegory of Naziism like Spinrad’s The Iron Dream without cottoning on, and the generic fantasy/​medieval and science fiction settings/​plots are intrinsically hostile to almost all modern values (see for example “The Sword of Good”, or Brin on Lord of the Rings & Star Wars). The author’s intent may not even matter; one’s default reaction to being told something is to believe it, and psychology has found that unrelated input still affect substantially our beliefs (these effects are known as priming anchoring, availability heuristic, etc). These effects are not trivial; instances like hypotheticals change what purchases you make or whether you dislike someone, prime foreign goals, affect mood, and they can lead to the formation of vicious stereotypes. Priming & contamination is very bad news for anyone who wants to think that they are not affected by the fiction they read. People seem to believe what they dream, the more engrossing a fiction the more you blindly favor the protagonist and believe the story realistic, people who watch TV believe poetic justice actually happens outside stories and the world is more dangerous than it is and looks like TV (which may explain why it’s easier to brainwash people with TV into supporting the death penalty rather than gay marriage), perhaps because viewers can emotionally treat characters on screen as real and replacements for real relationships with negative consequences like reductions in family size or pregnancy rates... As a society, is it good to have our discussions and views about incredibly important matters like space exploration hijacked by fiction? It’s hard to see why fiction would yield discussion of equal or superior quality to discussions based on non-fiction. Fictional evidence is particularly fallacious. Consider discussions of Artificial Intelligence; if one sees any mention of fictional entities like HAL 9000 or Skynet, one can stop reading immediately, for the exchange is surely worthless. A discussion about the nonfictional entities SHRDLU or Eurisko, though, might be worthwhile."

            A 2022 paper argues that TV shows promote an overestimation of economic mobility, but its premise that Americans are mistaken about inequality and mobility looks flimsy, with just a few uncritical citations of literature and surveys which could easily be cherrypicked.
          • Robin Hanson questions whether fiction is a complement to reality or a substitute for it
          • Regardless of all of this, it's likely that new art substitutes for old art without increasing total art consumption. It's probable that new art is more informative/less misleading than old art, but the reverse is still possibleOld art is so obviously from a different milleu that it is easier to separate from reality. Also, newer art can be more prone to impose current values on the past, leading to misunderstandings of history - although to be fair, plenty of 'old' art imposed contemporary views on older pasts, a good example being The Lord Of The Rings presenting modern environmentalist and agrarian values in a medieval context (admittedly this is not fair to Tolkien as his legendarium is a fantasy world rather than historical fiction, it's just the easiest and best-known example).
        • Unclear whether art makes people more ethical
          • Art can be impactful as deliberate propaganda, which is probably net beneficial, but still it's a very mixed and debatable effect
            • While there are numerous cases where art seems to play an important role in pushing political, social and ethical movementsThere is a long tradition of novels telling realistic stories that support African-American political causes, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Bluest Eye, and gaining nationwide fame and attention.

              Political imagery seems impactful. Symbols such as the swastika, Che Guevara images, and the Obama 'HOPE' poster have been considered iconic as propaganda that may subversively draw people into political factions. Of course, you would be very hard pressed to find someone who actually attributes their political beliefs to exposure to such symbols.              , it is much harder to distinguish any causal impact of art in persuading people to act differently. It seems most plausible that art does have an impact but a small one
            • Religious restrictions on art do not seem to have weakened people's religious faith or ethicsMuslims generally believe that statues and images of Mohammed are wrong. Many (most?) Muslim societies have avoided images of man and animals more generally, and some have discouraged instrumental music. These are (only partially) compensated by substitute art in the form of calligraphy and nasheeds. Therefore one may wonder whether the introduction of such religious prohibitions could cause different social outcomes. The best time for a global comparison of religious worlds would be the period from the rise of Islam until about 1700, when the Christian and Islamic worlds were at roughly similar levels of political and economic development (albeit with modest disparities during the Islamic Golden Age and early European enlightenment). Both cultures at this time were very committed to their faiths and it doesn't seem that the Christian world was significantly more religiously devoted than the Islamic world. You could say that Islamic art is just as good as Christian art in quality and quantity, but if religious restrictions on art have no impact on overall art production then government subsidies probably don't either. The same principle applies in that humans will generally find some kind of art with which to satisfy themselves, regardless of how laws and funding work.

              Another comparison can be made between Protestant Christian traditions on one hand, and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions on the other. Early Protestants waged war on images of Jesus which they considered idolatrous, with some early Protestants opposing all imagery and a later consensus deciding that images were okay but statues were not. Protestant churches by tradition are also less artistically decorated than Catholic and Orthodox ones built at the same time. However, Protestants seem to have had just as much religious fervor as other Christians at the same time, if not more.
            • Obviously, art can be used as propaganda for either good or bad causes. Therefore, its impact should be considered as a reflection of the particular community which manufactures it. But arts production, for whatever reason, tends to come from a more socially and economically left-wing perspective than the current political balance. This suggests that if art does have an impact as propaganda, it's probably a good one, albeit with plenty of counterexamples
            • Even if the majority of propagandistic art tends to align with beneficial causes, one has to worry about the long-term effects of reinforcing an undeniably perverse system where questions of life and death are decided by made-up stories rather than meaningful ethical principles and arguments. There is of course no real evidence that producing more art discourages people from making up their mind thru rational principles, but it seems like a risk
          • Art can implicitly change people's goals
      • Does arts funding directly increase welfare?
        • Theoretical view, assuming consumer rationality
          • Freely available digital media is a public good, and media which is meant to be restricted as a club good is often pirated. And public funding for digital media could ideally come with a clause that the media has to be made freely available. This suggests that digital media (movies, TV, literature, music) are undersupplied and deserving of government subsidization
          • Other art performances (theater, opera, dance, symphony), physical products (sculptures, paintings) and art classes can theoretically be imaged and viewed freely over the internet but in practice people usually don't do that, the physical presence is considered a major aspect of the experience. In these cases, art is not a public good, we can expect markets to produce the right amount and government subsidization is a misuse of funds
        • Empirical view on the impact of art access
        • In some cases arts funding can be a welfare program, transferring money to artists who are relatively poor and providing art services to people who cannot otherwise afford them. However, art spending in general may not be progressive, and there is presumably a very large deadweight loss
      • Does arts funding improve the signaling function of art?
        • Probably the best explanation of art consumption is that it functions as signaling. Healthy signaling can be important in society, so this should not be used as an excuse to say that arts are worthless. However, it is not clear how government subsidization of the arts might affect the way that arts are used as signaling, and the effects might actually be pernicious. There is no real reason to believe that pumping more money into an ecosystem of signaling will make it better
    • Special considerations for government funding of offensive art
      • What does offensive art do for its supporters (aside from the same dubious and mundane impacts as any other art)?
        • Offensive art typically has some genuine original supporters, but these always seem to be a small minority of people involved
        • Offensive art draws a crowd of people who (consciously or not) appreciate the art merely as a political signal to show how much they disagree with or hate those who are offended. This is not a commendable social impact
        • Offensive art draws a crowd of people who genuinely appreciate it but were only exposed to it as a result of the political controversy. While their enjoyment of the art is valid, it displaces other media which could have been spotlighted for more decent reasons
        • Offensive art is offensive for a reason - that a substantial portion of the public judges it to violate their moral principles. While sometimes people are wrong about these things and there are cases where an important truth is offensively uncomfortable, on average offensive art is more likely than other art to promote harmful attitudes among the people who appreciate it
      • What does offensive art do for its detractors?
        • Provokes unhappiness and frustration in the short run. Just because people can theoretically avoid the offensive content doesn't mean it doesn't harm them; incidental exposure and the mere knowledge of offensive content can cause distress. However, there may be no net effect of offensive content in the long run, as people grow accustomed to new standards of what is or isn't offensive
        • Probably aggravates them to greater political hostility and polarization
        • Undermines their faith in government, as they see their tax dollars going into art which they regard as deeply wrong
      • If we cave into everyone's demands to not support art which they find offensive, that could encourage people to just act more offended. If a government agency is subject to a heckler's veto, it could become overly burdened by public relations and liability. However, a comfortable middle ground may be achieved. Even if a middle ground can't be reached, a government which only supports the most inoffensive art still sounds better than the opposite extreme, which is for the government to wantonly support all kinds of racism, blasphemy and obscenity, inevitably leading to more culture warring

    Weight

  • This issue is unimportant. The NEA's annual budget is only $160 million. If arts funding is wasteful, at least it's not a big waste, and if it's beneficial, such a low amount of money probably doesn't accomplish much anyway. While arts may be a bigger issue at the local level, overall I find it best to generally ignore the matter.

    • Capitalism and socialism

    America should not become socialist.

    The best way to ensure this is to promote competent moderate or left-leaning politicians who will solve America's problems without pushing the Overton Window too far in either direction. Right-wing leaders can leave too many of our problems unsolved, thus provoking dissatisfaction with capitalism. Very right wing leaders can directly radicalize the left into being more supportive of things like socialism. And of course far-left leaders may build momentum for socialism.

    But it would mostly be redundant to score politicians separately like this. My platform already gives points to politicians for solving problems like recessions and inequality. A separate, holistic analysis of whether the politician seems to bolster or undermine socialist movements wouldn't add anything in nearly all cases.

    Politician scoring

    Policy scoring

    To assess a politician's policy views, we can give them scores on the above issues and take a weighted average. I use a -3 to +3 scale.

    Fitness assessment

    Properly evaluating candidates requires more than just checking their views and performance on specific policy issues. We also must assess candidates for the variety of traits which determine someone's fitness for office.

    The process for doing this well is inescapably contentious and intuitive. Unlike policy impacts, fitness for office cannot be quantified in any practical manner. But that does not mean our evaluations cannot be rigorous. I think the most rigorous approach to fitness for office is not to enumerate an explicit checklist of qualifications, but to start from a place of genuine familiarity with the American political system, to acquire a solid understanding of candidates' life stories and personalities, to see their track record of delivering positive results, to see how they are rated by a wide variety of insiders and experts, and finally to draw upon this knowledge base for a holistic evaluation.

    Some general points should be kept in mind. First, political experience is, generally speaking, a good thingThe longer that legislators stay in office, the more skilled they become. It’s just common sense that work experience is highly relevant to one’s competence at any job. You would not hire a politician to run a business, so why would you pick a businessman to run a country? The skillsets are different. The root of sentiments against experienced politicians is that people observe our government delivering poor outcomes and then take that as evidence that our career politicians share some kind of special personal shortcoming. But in reality, the failings of government are mainly due to partisan differences and structural incentives. Electing an outsider just means that someone inexperienced will face the same problems and will probably perform even worse. For maximal potential, a candidate for a given office should have experience in that type of office (legislative, executive, bureaucratic, or judicial) and experience at that level of office (federal, state, or local). Diverse experience is also valuable. Experience outside of politics, like in the private sector or the military, still counts for something; it's just not a good substitute for political experience.

    A challenge to the idea that experience is important comes from presidential rankings. Generally speaking, the political experience of America's presidents has not been correlated with historians' rankings of how good of a job they did. One response is to say that historians' rankings are too flawed to trust for this (and from what I've seen of historian ratings of presidents, they have so many problems as to be almost useless). Another response is to point out that this is conditional upon candidates being elected as president, so an actual underlying correlation may disappear due to voter selection. This could be an example of Berkson's Paradox, akin to height not predicting player performance in the NBA. Finally, one could say that another factor usually cancels out the benefits of experience: age.

    Experienced politicians tend to be older. The decline in physical vitality may be a problem, but I'd be more worried about cognition. As we get older, we lose some of our cognitive skills.

    Intelligence matters. There is very good evidence that higher intelligence predicts superior performance in a variety of contexts including the workplace. And I think the best psychological evidence suggests that higher intelligence is always advantageous, so there is no threshold beyond which people become too smart. Certainly there is no threshold that is low enough to matter for electoral politics (I don't think we ever elect any super-geniuses). That said, intelligence may not be particularly important. Matt Glassman believes that presidential intelligence is overrated by many people. Our elected officials must exercise sound judgment, but they can leave the difficult policy details to be figured out by special experts.

    So we should be worried about age-related cognitive decline, but the chart on the right (from the paper linked above) shows that it is not just a problem for the elderly. Even in our thirties we steadily begin to perform worse on cognitive tests. It's especially a problem for men. Some clinicians say that top politicians are ‘super-agers' who retain full cognitive skills even when they get very old, but I am wary of trusting these claims, especially given that cognitive decline affects the population pretty broadly and there isn’t evidence of generally increased variability in cognitive ability among the old.

    Another factor is that older people are more likely to have been exposed to lead in their childhood, something which can have negative effects on intelligence and personality.

    Some people are more inclined to judge other people's intelligence on the basis of university background. But as explained in my education policy section, there really isn't good evidence that universities make students smarter. Even if they do have an impact, the idea that it persists thru a decades-long career strains credibility. Intelligence is mostly determined by childhood environment and genes, and countless interventions which are hoped to enhance it later in life have disappointing results.

    That's not to say that we should ignore university background, just that we should be careful to interpret it as a just a signal of competence. Selective universities pick students with higher intelligence and conscientiousness, so someone who went to a very selective school is probably relatively talented. But this selection is modulated by a variety of factors. University admissions are complicated by their preferences for legacy students, athletes, particular races and genders, and other factors which aren't obviously predictive of political competence. Sometimes rich families more-or-less buy admissions slots. And remember that these things change; the admissions regime that operates in universities today is different from the admissions regime that operated back when most of our current politicians went to college. So judging the impressiveness of a politician's university background can be tough. In rare cases you can find information about a politician's grades or test scores, and that will give a clearer picture of their basic talent.

    You can also look at what politicians are saying now to get a sense of how accurately they understand the world, but keep in mind that their speeches and social media comments are usually written by other people in their office. If a politician makes many false or misleading claims, it may be a reflection of sloppy fact-finding in their office, or it may be a deliberate distortion for political reasons that reflects poorly on their character. You can look at fact checkers to get a sense of politicians' accuracy. PolitiFact is convenient and mostly accurate, although it may have a small bias against Republicans.

    Ultimately, what we want to do most of all is understand how a politician performs in office. Do they work hard? Do they manage their staff well? Do they exercise good judgment and moral fiber? If a candidate has held a prominent political office, we can usually find details of how close people rated their tenure. Remember that a candidate’s public persona can be very different from how they really govern; barring improvements in psychometricsSome character aspects can be (roughly) predicted from facial appearance. Among males, face width-to-height ratio predicts a variety of masculine behaviors, including worse performance at hedge fund management, but the implications for politics are not very easy to judge.

    It's worth noting of course that evaluating people based on their appearance is an ethical can of worms. Typical lookist prejudice is unequivocally immoral, and even a rational, scientific attempt at using pyschometrics for hiring would raise serious and troubling moral questions. But politics is a special case. Since politicians are voluntarily auditioning for positions of enormous power, they can't really complain about citizens judging them as ruthlessly as possible.    , only close behind-the-scenes reporting can properly uncover their characteristics. And remember that judgments about their personal characteristics can be very subjective. Without the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to tell the difference between someone who possesses a quality in the right amount and someone who possesses too much. For example, a resolute governor seems good, until he has too much of it and loses the ability to cooperate with the legislature. Things also depend on context; James K. Polk’s skilled martial leadership and imperial determination may have been unfortunate in the Mexican-American War but could have been profoundly valuable had he been president during World War II. Generally speaking, rather than getting attached to a particular type of character, we must ask one simple and very important question: does this person have a track record of delivering positive results? (But beware the Peter PrincipleThe Peter Principle is the idea that employees in an organization will get promoted to their level of incompetence. If a worker does well, he'll be promoted to a new position, but if he does poorly in that position, he'll stay there and never get promoted. So over time, and organization with meritocratic promotion will find itself filled with incompetent workers. I don't know if it's generally true, but we should always remember that politicians who are good in one position may not be good in another..)

    We also need to evaluate corruption. Major politicians often come with scandals, but headlines and social media often blow them out of proportion. Read arguments from both sides to get to the bottom of scandals. And if a politician has a long track record without much evidence of corruption, remember that this counts as positive evidence that they are not corrupt, so they should be trusted more than a new politician who has no track record at all.

    There are some correlates of corruption, but I don't find them convincing. A 2020 literature review found that elected women tend to be less corrupt than elected men, but it was based on studies from outside the US, especially from developing countries, so it’s not good enough to make judgments here. One study found a relationship between politician obesity and corruption, but this evidence also comes from outside the US, and it may be spuriousThe relationship seems to be largely driven by the Baltic countries being uniquely thin and non-corrupt. See comments here. .

    Moving beyond true corruption, politicians take money in ways that are legal but can still raise suspicions. PACs influence policymakers, albeit in a more subtle manner than explicit quids pro quoSee this 2013 paper. And according to David Shor, "the non-transactional money is now all of the money.". Politicians may be similarly influenced by wealthy individual donors. And generally speaking, businesses have disproportionate influence on the policymaking process in AmericaSee studies by Yackee and Yackee (2006), Jacobs and Page (2005), Gray et al (2004), and Gilens and Page (2014)., which they use to reduce welfare spending (a bad thing, according to other sections in this report). But the policy results are not all bad: billionaires press for some good policies more frequently than the average voter does. A 2019 book by Jonathan Rauch argues that mega-funders and political machines are good for suppressing mass populist demagoguery.

    Moreover, no politician is free of funding influence entirely. A politician who doesn't rely on PACs or wealthy individuals will instead rely on many small donors. Yet small donors represent a relatively politically engaged, polarized, and ideologically extreme section of the American people. They are not obviously more benign than traditional big money. This is especially true when we care about global issues; even if small donors are better than big donors for the American people, they are likely to lack the cosmopolitan values and global links of wealthy elites (so for example, small donors will be more opposed to international trade).

    Overall, judging politicians based on where their money comes from is typically not a reliable practice. It can make sense in specific contexts: for instance, a politician who takes a lot of money from oil companies is unlikely to be very effective at fighting climate change. That can be considered when a politician is scored on air pollution in their policy profile. But it isn't right to say that one politician has generically better character than another just because more or less of her funding comes from a particular kind of donor.

    On a similar note, some candidates receive varying degrees of support from foreign people or governments. Again there we should not generically judge someone as a good or bad character on this basis, but we might take note of it for specific foreign policy issues.

    After considering all these factors and producing a kind of judgmental biography of a candidate, we can give her a rating (typically between -3 and +3) for her fitness for office. Per the principle of epistemic modesty, if many informed and value-aligned people come to different conclusions here, then we should take an average of their views.

    Merit scoring

    A politician's overall merit score can be determined by taking the weighted average of their overall policy score and their fitness score. Fitness for office is important, but it's harder to judge reliably compared to policy platforms, so I give it 35% as much weight as the policy assessment. This is partly informed by my small survey of EAs.

    Here's a short example. Suppose two candidates are running for the office of Lord of the Seven Kingdoms: Bran Stark and Edmure Tully. Let's simplify to two policy issues: criminal justice (weight of 4.6) and government (weight of 15). The total weight of policy issues is 19.6, so the weight of fitness for office is 8.8.

    On criminal justice, Edmure is mildly above average, so we give him 1 point, whereas Bran is exceptional so we give him 3 points. On government, Edmure is average so we give him 0 points, whereas Bran is terrible and gets -3 points. Next, we assess Edmure as having slightly above average fitness for office, with 0.5 points. Bran meanwhile is rather unfit and gets -1.5 points. Edmure's merit score is (1*4.6 + 0*15 + 0.5*8.8)/(4.6 + 15 + 8.8) = 0.32, and Bran's merit score is (3*4.6 - 3*15 - 1.5*8.8)/(4.6 + 15 + 8.8) = -1.56. Thus we conclude that Edmure Tully and not Bran Stark should be Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.