Improving our political system: An overview

Abstract

Given our vast uncertainty and nearsightedness about the future, we should perhaps focus on putting society in as good a position as possible to address the challenges of the future. Or, put differently, we should optimise for a proxy along the lines of “how well is society working in 2100”. One important dimension of this is a functional political system. Efforts to avoid harmful political and social dynamics, and to strengthen democratic governance, are therefore of interest to effective altruists. This post examines whether attempts to improve our democracy3 are a cost-effective intervention from a longtermist perspective (with an emphasis on s-risks). While specific reform proposals have been discussed in effective altruism (e.g. 1, 2, 3), there has been no attempt at a systematic review of this cause area.