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shminux comments on What is the most anti-altruistic way to spend a million dollars? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The way you formulated a question is not conducive to getting the answers you want, because people start thinking of something along the lines of the Holocaust, 9/11, or other memes associated with evil.
I recommend rephrasing it as follows: point out the most anti-altruistic legal ways a person or an organization have spent $1M. Thinking about it this way, there is no shortage of examples, none resulting in Kawoomba losing much sleep. In fact, a large chunk of what most governments do is both legal and anti-altruistic.
For example, suppressing one's right to die with dignity, and thus forcing doctors and nurses to torture thousands of helpless and elderly people against their will, often for years, before they are allowed to finally die, is arguably legal, anti-altruistic and doesn't cost a lot to perpetuate. The resulting disutility by most measures outweighs 9/11 by many orders of magnitude.
Another example: resisting self-driving car adoption. This one is even worse, given that every year self-driving cars are delayed, costs about 30,000 lives in the US only.
Just look around you, money is spent in anti-altruistic ways all the time.
I think this is reasonable. I think my "not illegal" requirement should be stopping the really nefarious proposals, but evidently people here are darker than I thought (or think they are).
On the other hand, it makes it more concrete and takes on a more realistic issue of what ways people actuall spend their money are most harmful.
But remember, this is about marginal impact. 1 million to an anti-euthanasia group probably doesn't really affect policy a lot. And we haven't really even seen self-driving cars being resisted in earnest (they aren't near ready for prime-time yet, and their benefits are largely dependent on a large fraction of drivers adopting them).
Those are only examples, but
It can certainly tip the balance for a given state legislation or a ballot, such as the one in Maine.
Lobbying to shift funding away from NHTSA would be invisible.