‘Bednets would be a more efficient use of those resources’ is a nearly-fully-generalizable argument against the vast majority of spending within the United States. Reducing US government spending on X by $2 million and increasing spending on bednets by $2 million would be an improvement for nearly all values of X, even if X is something that you support like scientific research, hiring police officers, repairing roads, lead abatement, or early childhood education.
Spending the money on optimal philanthropy is the wrong counterfactual to consider because the money that will be saved, if your proposed capital punishment reform is enacted, will not be spent on optimal philanthropy. My guess at the 4 most likely places where that money would go are:
Other criminal justice spending (e.g. incarcerating more people for other offenses)
General government spending (increasing the amount of spending on whatever policies the government is actually considering on the margin, not the ones that you think would be most valuable)
Reducing the government’s debt (or slowing the rate at which the debt increases)
Lowering taxes (or reducing the extent to which taxes are raised), leaving the money in the hands of specific Americans to use however they use their marginal disposable income
None of which are especially high-value.
Your proposal, to kill murderers after a quick trial, is basically optimized for saving money. You are vastly overstating the value of those savings, by valuing them based on the best possible use of any dollar, rather than on their actual likely use.
‘Bednets would be a more efficient use of those resources’ is a nearly-fully-generalizable argument against the vast majority of spending within the United States.
You are correct on many of your objections, though I disagree on this point.
Levels of action, talks about how we can either do something, or increase the rate at which we do something, or increase the rate at which we increase the rate… ad infinitum. It’s basically the difference from increasing a number directly, or increasing it’s 1st/2nd/3rd/etc derivative.
To do lives saved, we can give children bed nets to directly save lives. Or we can build factories to build bed net to save lives faster. Or we can invest in automated technologies to build faster factories. Or we can invest in general AI research to build automated technologies faster (eg, the singularity). By devoting resources to bed nets directly we save lives now, but by going up each level we save way more lives later. Thus, things like donating to SIAI, are saving more lives eventually than bed nets directly. But if you’re here, you probably already agree with SIAI above bed nets.
For example with the government’s case, scientific research eventually speeds up the rate at which we do everything, and education eventually speeds up the rate of the rate at which we do everything. In this manner, I wouldn’t consider bed nets better than sci research or education. And there are a lot of other programs that provide similar benefits. However, I don’t think imprisonment is one of those things where more funding gets us better meta-improvements.
You are vastly overstating the value of those savings, by valuing them based on the best possible use of any dollar, rather than on their actual likely use.
These inefficient programs should also get cut until their marginal utility is comparable. If they start wasting the money that was saved to imprison other people, then we fight that inefficient practice too. There are millions of ways in which our government is wasteful and inefficient. It’s the job of us voters to try and constantly push it to be less so.
‘Bednets would be a more efficient use of those resources’ is a nearly-fully-generalizable argument against the vast majority of spending within the United States. Reducing US government spending on X by $2 million and increasing spending on bednets by $2 million would be an improvement for nearly all values of X, even if X is something that you support like scientific research, hiring police officers, repairing roads, lead abatement, or early childhood education.
Spending the money on optimal philanthropy is the wrong counterfactual to consider because the money that will be saved, if your proposed capital punishment reform is enacted, will not be spent on optimal philanthropy. My guess at the 4 most likely places where that money would go are:
Other criminal justice spending (e.g. incarcerating more people for other offenses)
General government spending (increasing the amount of spending on whatever policies the government is actually considering on the margin, not the ones that you think would be most valuable)
Reducing the government’s debt (or slowing the rate at which the debt increases)
Lowering taxes (or reducing the extent to which taxes are raised), leaving the money in the hands of specific Americans to use however they use their marginal disposable income
None of which are especially high-value.
Your proposal, to kill murderers after a quick trial, is basically optimized for saving money. You are vastly overstating the value of those savings, by valuing them based on the best possible use of any dollar, rather than on their actual likely use.
You are correct on many of your objections, though I disagree on this point.
Levels of action, talks about how we can either do something, or increase the rate at which we do something, or increase the rate at which we increase the rate… ad infinitum. It’s basically the difference from increasing a number directly, or increasing it’s 1st/2nd/3rd/etc derivative.
To do lives saved, we can give children bed nets to directly save lives. Or we can build factories to build bed net to save lives faster. Or we can invest in automated technologies to build faster factories. Or we can invest in general AI research to build automated technologies faster (eg, the singularity). By devoting resources to bed nets directly we save lives now, but by going up each level we save way more lives later. Thus, things like donating to SIAI, are saving more lives eventually than bed nets directly. But if you’re here, you probably already agree with SIAI above bed nets.
For example with the government’s case, scientific research eventually speeds up the rate at which we do everything, and education eventually speeds up the rate of the rate at which we do everything. In this manner, I wouldn’t consider bed nets better than sci research or education. And there are a lot of other programs that provide similar benefits. However, I don’t think imprisonment is one of those things where more funding gets us better meta-improvements.
These inefficient programs should also get cut until their marginal utility is comparable. If they start wasting the money that was saved to imprison other people, then we fight that inefficient practice too. There are millions of ways in which our government is wasteful and inefficient. It’s the job of us voters to try and constantly push it to be less so.