Donations to change policy within the partisan subspace, however, only achieve good when they happen to be on the right side of partisan disagreements. Averaged over the disagreeing parties, such donations cannot on average achieve good unless there is a correlation between between donations, or donation effectiveness, and which sides are right. Even if you think you are right at the moment on your particular partisan policy opinions, you can’t think it good on average to encourage partisan donations, unless you think donations tend overall to go to the good or more donation-effective sides.
For every person that sincerely believes that the Flurb Party will change things for the better and donates $100 to it, there’s someone who believes that the Bleeg Party will change things for the better and donates $100 to it … so they cancel each other out. Allocating a bigger part of the economy to printing fliers and posters doesn’t seem like the best way to make the world a better place.
Only if Bleeg is truly so much worse than Flurb that the small tip in the chances of the election is smaller than the good your donation would make for a more worthwhile cause.
Also, advocating for partisan political donations in general in a context where the only effect of those donations is to tip the chances one way or the other is irrational (as opposed to advocating for donations to one side in particular, which could be reasonable if you’re certain enough that side is truly much better than the alternative).
As someone said in the comments to Robin’s post, the same goes for encouraging people in general to get out and vote.
I like Robin’s recent take on the question.
For every person that sincerely believes that the Flurb Party will change things for the better and donates $100 to it, there’s someone who believes that the Bleeg Party will change things for the better and donates $100 to it … so they cancel each other out. Allocating a bigger part of the economy to printing fliers and posters doesn’t seem like the best way to make the world a better place.
Is it good to prevent bad? If so, should I donate to Flurb simply because I hope to cancel out someone donating to Bleeg?
Only if Bleeg is truly so much worse than Flurb that the small tip in the chances of the election is smaller than the good your donation would make for a more worthwhile cause.
Also, advocating for partisan political donations in general in a context where the only effect of those donations is to tip the chances one way or the other is irrational (as opposed to advocating for donations to one side in particular, which could be reasonable if you’re certain enough that side is truly much better than the alternative).
As someone said in the comments to Robin’s post, the same goes for encouraging people in general to get out and vote.
Yes, you should. But another point is that you probably overestimate the chances that Flurb is good and Bleeg is bad. The magnitude as well.