Effective altruism and political power

Adam Zerner

I just saw that Donald Trump is running for president. Which led me to the following thought: would any of the big names in tech have a chance at being elected president of the US? Elon Musk? Sergey Brin? Jeff Bezos? Reid Hoffman? Peter Thiel? Edit: Bill Gates?

Some follow up questions/thoughts:

As far as maximizing altruistic impact goes, would it be a good idea for them to become president?
Do these people care about maximizing altruistic impact? To what extent? If so/enough, why not do it?
What other "sane" people have enough reputation in the public eye to have a chance at acquiring a lot of political power? My first thought was tech people, but I'm sure there are others. Big hedge fund managers? Ray Dalio? Or maybe some famous scientists?
What does EA have to say about acquiring political power?

Edit: hypothetically, if one of these big-name tech people were to try to gain political power, how should they go about doing so?

Some follow up questions/thoughts:

As far as maximizing altruistic impact goes, would it be a good idea for them to become president?
Do these people care about maximizing altruistic impact? To what extent? If so/enough, why not do it?
What other "sane" people have enough reputation in the public eye to have a chance at acquiring a lot of political power? My first thought was tech people, but I'm sure there are others. Big hedge fund managers? Ray Dalio? Or maybe some famous scientists?
What does EA have to say about acquiring political power?

Edit: hypothetically, if one of these big-name tech people were to try to gain political power, how should they go about doing so?

Only if the goals are actually opposed to yours.

Nope, because for many resources the game is zero-sum.

Anyway, I think most politicians goals are vaguely similar in certain respects

So, taking a look at the XX century, for example, do you think that the value systems of politicians (or, by extension, political elites) can be safely ignored? 8-0

No, I don't think that the value systems can be ignored, I'm saying that ability to implement might be more important.

For instance, suppose you highly value environmentalism, but the party which puts environmentalism as their #1 option wants to stop nuclear power (as is typical of environmentalists). If you believe that nuclear power is the best clean, reliable option we have the technology for now, then you might vote for a party which has environmentalism lower down the list of priorities (and no-one wants the environment to be polluted) but has greater expertise.

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Effective altruism and political power

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Effective altruism and political power

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