Others can speak better than I can on this, but I will note that I consider this policy debate sufficiently one-sided that I would support it being what the EAs call a ‘cause area.’
Nitpick: Being confident that the sign of an intervention (stop the sliding towards oversight-free seizure/freezing of assets) is positive, and even the EV quite large, is not enough to make it a good cause area. Of course, you (Zvi) know this, and probably have more reasons for why you think it would make a good cause area, but I found the argument-as-written to be locally invalid.
Yup. For instance, even if this issue scores high on importance, I would be astonished if it were particularly tractable. And it may be neglected in the sense that there are insufficient constituencies against authoritarianism; but it’s certainly not neglected in the sense that institutions with power are often incentivized to accumulate more of it.
Nitpick: Being confident that the sign of an intervention (stop the sliding towards oversight-free seizure/freezing of assets) is positive, and even the EV quite large, is not enough to make it a good cause area. Of course, you (Zvi) know this, and probably have more reasons for why you think it would make a good cause area, but I found the argument-as-written to be locally invalid.
Yup. For instance, even if this issue scores high on importance, I would be astonished if it were particularly tractable. And it may be neglected in the sense that there are insufficient constituencies against authoritarianism; but it’s certainly not neglected in the sense that institutions with power are often incentivized to accumulate more of it.