In the environmentalism example, X should be subdivided into “carbon dioxide + pollution + loss of biodiversity + rising sea levels + running out of natural resources + species going extinct” And then you have 1 axis on which things are improving, and 6 axis along which things are getting worse.
Single-issue environmentalists have a series of issues teed up. They’ve allowed climate change to be almost the monofocus in major media for a long time, because it really is the most pressing issue. Now that we’re starting to make obvious progress, with a recent news article noting that it’s becoming cheaper to build solar than to buy just the fuel for a natural gas station, it’s time to start teeing up the next issue. Insofar as we appear to be making real progress on climate change, expect to see other environmental problems come to the fore.
It’s not that these problems aren’t real. It’s that successful political activists are those who know how to think strategically about how to position their most important and tractable issue, and how to transition to new issues when the old ones get addressed.
Insofar as a political issue is progressively solved, expect to see some people who’d formerly focused on it drift away to other causes. Those who are left will be those who have the most singleminded focus on that specific issue. They will be smaller and have less ability to get things done, but if you ask them, they’ll always have the next disaster to work on—because to them, there is only one issue.
The benefit I think we can hope to get by consulting political activists is to find out the most pressing issue in the domain they care about. By talking to environmentalists, we can find out what the most pressing environmental issue is today (climate change). By talking to gender activists, we can find about about the most pressing gender issue (probably rape or trans rights). By talking to YIMBYs, we can find out about the most important urban planning issue (housing).
But we can’t find a nuanced discussion on how to prioritize between issues, or learn very much accurate information about the world, because both of these discussions will be subsumed within the political activists to the advancement of their agenda. This is normal and as long as we recognize it, we can still engage productively with even single-issue activists. There is probably a rich discussion to be had on how they prioritize their agenda.
Example from Bloomberg today:
We’re Succeeding on Climate. We’ll Fail on Biodiversity
Single-issue environmentalists have a series of issues teed up. They’ve allowed climate change to be almost the monofocus in major media for a long time, because it really is the most pressing issue. Now that we’re starting to make obvious progress, with a recent news article noting that it’s becoming cheaper to build solar than to buy just the fuel for a natural gas station, it’s time to start teeing up the next issue. Insofar as we appear to be making real progress on climate change, expect to see other environmental problems come to the fore.
It’s not that these problems aren’t real. It’s that successful political activists are those who know how to think strategically about how to position their most important and tractable issue, and how to transition to new issues when the old ones get addressed.
Insofar as a political issue is progressively solved, expect to see some people who’d formerly focused on it drift away to other causes. Those who are left will be those who have the most singleminded focus on that specific issue. They will be smaller and have less ability to get things done, but if you ask them, they’ll always have the next disaster to work on—because to them, there is only one issue.
The benefit I think we can hope to get by consulting political activists is to find out the most pressing issue in the domain they care about. By talking to environmentalists, we can find out what the most pressing environmental issue is today (climate change). By talking to gender activists, we can find about about the most pressing gender issue (probably rape or trans rights). By talking to YIMBYs, we can find out about the most important urban planning issue (housing).
But we can’t find a nuanced discussion on how to prioritize between issues, or learn very much accurate information about the world, because both of these discussions will be subsumed within the political activists to the advancement of their agenda. This is normal and as long as we recognize it, we can still engage productively with even single-issue activists. There is probably a rich discussion to be had on how they prioritize their agenda.