What actions can a group take to affect policy that is better than pursuing wealth generation for each individual member?
so this conversation doesn't continue indefinitely I'll jump to the end. If you aren't directly contributing to SENS, SIAI, etc you should probably be getting rich so you can throw money at them. I have a limited amount of time and resources, I'm devoting them to increasing my own wealth generation rather than political conflict. If there is a policy that will have a direct effect on this avenue (such as say stem cell legislation) that is something I will be interested in. You have to pick your battles.
What actions can a group take to affect policy that is better than pursuing wealth generation for each individual member?
Making sure the government doesn't pursue economic policies that make this all but impossible for starters.
I've long opposed discussing politics on Less Wrong. Elsewhere, however, I have been known to gaze into the abyss; and so it came to be that I wrote a handful of blog posts of the Oxford Libertarian Society Blog. I had the deliberate intention of bring a little bit of rationality into politics - and so of course ended up writing in something like Eliezer's style.
I wanted to establish some theory first, so the initial posts were about The Conservation of Expected Evidence and Reductionism, and then one particular Death-Spiral.
As you'll probably notice, one of my defences against the little-death has been to err on the side of attacking Libertarian positions; I provided an account of Traditional Socialist Values so we remember that our enemies aren't inherently evil, and then analysed an abuse of The Law of Comparative Advantage, showing cases where it didn't apply.
I can't promise I'll update at all regularly.
Post inspired by Will Newsome and prompted by Vladimir Nesov.
http://oxlib.blogspot.com/