So you want to change the world🍋
A rough guide to activism, altruism, volunteering & humility
The world could be a better place. Pretty much everyone agrees with that.
I’ve been passionate about nature conservation since my teens. And I have been around long enough to have tried, or at least dabbled in, many ways to encourage the world to do a better job at conserving nature.
This post is my attempt to categorise, and run an economic lens over, the ways that people, individually and collectively, try to change the world. (I’ll just be looking at democratic countries, as I have limited experience of non-democratic ones.)
What’s an economic lens got to do with changing the world? Well, if you want to see maximum change, then you care about the productivity of your efforts. You’re just one of 8 billion humans, so the numbers are against you. Most methods of changing the world require getting hold of other people’s money or their time, and on both fronts you have a LOT of competition.
So, you’ll need to carefully choose where and how to apply your efforts.
Activism — public campaigns to convince politicians
Activism covers many activities. At its heart, it’s an attempt to influence the decisions of those with power. The key question is what will influence them?
Some, perhaps most, politicians see themselves as opinion leaders rather than followers. Direct lobbying with appeals to their hearts or heads may change their personal views. But even those convinced by your appeals are constrained by the need to get elected, win government, implement programmes without reputation-sapping public pushback, and achieve re-election. It’s much easier to convince politicians when the public is broadly on your side.
I see activism as very useful in two situations:
The public is not (yet) onside but would be if they knew more about your cause. Your task is education: to let people know what is at stake, and recruit more to the cause.
The public (or at least the median voter) is onside with your cause, but the politicians are yet to realise this.1 In this situation, demonstrations of public support linked with effective lobbying can be very persuasive.
The common element in both situations is asymmetric information, and activism can help to overcome it. Activism becomes much less effective once information is widely available about details of your cause and levels of public support.
Private collective action — beyond the preferences of the median voter
If politicians or the voting public just won’t be persuaded, then what are your options? One answer is to look beyond government provision.
Non-government organisations
I was involved in setting up Bush Heritage Australia, a not-for-profit company, in 1991. Thirty-two years on, it owns 42 private reserves covering 1.2 million hectares. Similarly, Forest and Bird owns 27 private reserves in NZ. Such private actions builds on — and goes beyond — what publicly funded conservation can provide.
Social enterprises
For-profit businesses can, and often do, have goals beyond returning a profit to investors. For example, I helped create Echoview Software to automate the collection and processing of data for fish stock assessment — a crucial task for better management of the world’s fisheries. A for-profit company selling to fisheries managers world-wide could create software that was more usable, reliable, standardised and powerful than the in-house efforts of national fisheries management agencies.
Governance — pursue a position of power over others
Power in a democracy is distributed across individuals and institutions. While it is possible — especially in retrospect — to find examples of influential leaders, it is even easier to find examples of politicians who wooed the median voter, toed the party line, and left little mark on the world.
My one effort to stand for office was salutary. I received just 77 votes, enough to avoid why-didn’t-you-vote-for-me recriminations with family and friends. But the message from the electorate was clear — stick with my day job. Your mileage may vary.
Effective altruism — earn money to support worthy causes
Philanthropy takes advantage of division of labour. You can specialise in the activities that earn the most money, and donate that money to an organisation that employs people with skills more suited to pursuing your goals. This approach has recently gained a new name: effective altruism.2 A name already tarnished by the activities of some of its prominent backers.
That aside, the short-term problem with philanthropy is asymmetric information. How much do you really know about the effectiveness of the organization that you are supporting? You’d like your marginal donation to go somewhere it will actually make a difference; ideally a lot of difference. But you run the risk of backing the organisations with the slickest fundraising, rather than the one delivering the changes you desire.3
Perhaps more crucial is the medium- and long-term cost of remaining connected to your cause. Your day job, in say mergers & acquisitions, may create a large surplus to donate, but leave you feeling unfulfilled. If so, it may be time to try something else.
Volunteering
Volunteering is pretty much the opposite of philanthropy from a division of labour point of view. You are likely to end up performing tasks that could be purchased at the minimum wage, if only the coordinating organisation had that much to spend. On the plus side, you are very connected to the organisation’s activities. And it can be personally very rewarding.
Live quietly for your cause — demonstrate by example
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is he wants to live humbly for one.4
Lastly, I wouldn’t want to denigrate the importance of humility — being a living example for your cause. Sometimes that’s sufficient.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.5
By
This post inspired by, and in memory of, Jonathan West (1957-2023) — wilderness campaigner, economics professor, and loyal friend.
An application of Hotelling’s Law, which states that politicians gravitate toward the position occupied by the median voter, or more generally toward the position favored by the electoral system.
Effective altruism is also about putting money where it is likely to do the most good, regardless of your personal preferences.
Third-party services rating the effectiveness of donor-supported organisations is a partial answer to this problem. You are still left with the question of which rating service to trust.
J.D. Salinger (1969). The Catcher in the Rye, New York: Bantam.
George Eliot (1871-72). Middlemarch.