1,000
👀 hang on, you spent 50k mana, much of which was given to you in exchange for EA donations, on specifically diverting money away from EA and towards the Free State Project, an organisation with the aim of getting 20k libertarians, of which so far only 6k have kept their pledge, to move to New Hampshire, a state with a population of 1.4M, where in the town they most heavily concentrated in, the result was cutting essential emergency services, and a huge rise in murders, sex offenses, and bear attacks?
Don't get me wrong, I strongly support libertarianism in the broad sense e.g. democracy, decentralised government, government transparency/accountability, restorative/reformative justice, decriminalisation of drugs and sex work etc, but this seems like it potentially fails to even be a net positive value organisation, let alone being maximally positive as EA orgs aims for.
While you are of course allowed to do this, unless good evidence/reasoning is presented that this organisation does in fact do significant good, I'm gonna be quite distressed if they win the raffle.
@TheAllMemeingEye
1) >was given
I traded mana for dollars donated. Everyone I traded with got the best deal available, as far as I know, and I was happy to trade. They didn't trade the mana with me with the expectation I use it in x or y way. Also, my impression is that this is -ev (that, considering only the dollar value of mana, I would be better off donating the money directly instead of turning the money into mana to have a chance at donating money).
2) >diverting money away from EA
Is any action you take that isn't directly related or has the possibility to create an outcome that isn't directly related to EA diverting resources away from EA? I donated real money to charities, and spent the mana on the possibility of donating money to a non-profit that I believe has a possibility of bringing about more good in a way that is underfunded.
3) >aim of getting 20k libertarians
Yes, they got well over 20k to pledge their intent to move and are making an effort to get more movers.
4) >6k
Last official #s to my knowledge go to the 7ks after the influx of people moving away from covid tyranny and I have reason to believe the number is closer to 10k for movers. And that's not to say that's the number of libertarians in the state, that's the number of movers! Some reasonable upper estimates can be 30k or more given Gary Johnson's vote totals in 2016 and other indicators. There are many (regrettably) non voting libertarians.
5) >where in the town they most heavily concentrated in
That was actually never true, as the distribution of libertarians roughly follows the distribution of people in the state as is, with most of the population of NH and of libertarians being below Grafton, in Manchester and surrounding areas, and the coast.
6) >cutting essential services
If only! They made efforts to and failed to cut such "essential" services as the local library and the local school. Maintaining the roads was sufficiently popular that it was not cut. John Babiarz, Free Stater, was and I'm not sure if he still is, I haven't asked him recently, the Grafton fire chief and a volunteer at that. I've heard their one police officer is (allegedly) a corrupt jerk. Towns in NH that can't or don't pay for officers rely on state troopers for calls, which is its own side point about when officers are or aren't prophylaxis (mostly not, but sometimes they are).
7) >and a huge rise in murders, sex offenses, and bear attacks?
Here's where your reliance on wiki? and vox? or the bear book guy? betrays you.
7.a.1) >huge rise in murders
There was a double homicide in 2011 for a roommate dispute. Afaik has nothing to do with the FSP, the Free town thing, libertarianism, deontology, etc. etc. AFAIK Grafton had, and still has, the same single cop if you mean to imply that it was a consequence of defunding the police.
7.a.2) >murders
Wiki that you posted below says: "the first two murders in the town's history," which upon 5 minutes of effort proved to be immediately false. There is a documented murder by Enos G. Dudley, of his wife in March, 1848. Now before you say, oh so then the first murders in 200 years or w/e I have put 0 effort into looking into the historical crime records for the town of Grafton beyond asking ChatGPT. Any additional effort would likely yield more results against this already proven false claim.
7.b) > sex offenses,
Afaik, that's not true and was not demonstrated to be true. Wiki mentioned an "increase in sex offenders living in town." which might be true, but is not an increase in offenses or necessarily attributable to the libertarians in Grafton.
7.c) > bear attacks
Here is witness testimony from a NH Fish and Game literal bear biologist, Andy Timmins, that the claim is false. https://x.com/jeremykauffman/status/2040058646831198293
8) >wiki
Wiki has plenty of issues. Have you ever listened to the cofounder, Larry Sanger, about some of its persistent issues? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj00TeWzpHw
9) >fails to even be a net positive value organisation
I think that just as two examples, the occupational licensing reciprocity reforms that are in large part because of Carol McGuire, and the state budget management of Dan McGuire, are big net benefits from Free Staters and due in part because of the Free State Project have amplified the positive impact of every donor dollar spent. Those were just the two off the top of my head.
10) >maximally positive
I think, personally, that the only positive impact dollars spent on shrimp and AI welfare have, is that those are dollars hopefully wasted in pursuit of anti-human flourishing goals, that could've been spent on something more damaging to humanity than shrimp and AI welfare. Building a place, whether that be NH or Prospera or seastead in the middle of the ocean, where human beings can freely live, trade, and expand human knowledge, has such amazing upside.
@MarySmith even though I may not agree with many of your points, I do greatly appreciate that you engaged in good faith with systematically arranged counter arguments. In fact, if you feel up to it, I would highly recommend that you formulate some of your points to fit Wikipedia's neutrality and verifiability policies and edit the article to include them.
I value truth on both an instrumental level (being better informed helps me better carry out my preferred ethical system of utilitarianism) and on an intrinsic level (I assign a moderate probability that virtue ethics or deontology or something else may in the future turn out to actually be better), so I would want the article to more truthfully depict this organisation and movement, even if that proves me wrong and makes it harder for me to argue for my side. Winning debates through willful misinformation is a slow rot to truth seeking that would likely severely backfire on my cause in the long term.
Meanwhile, from your perspective, successfully refuting this potential slander against an organisation and movement you support on what is possibly the single most widely used information source on the internet would likely be extremely effective praxis. Countless people who potentially could join the movement will no longer be immediately off put by the troubling allegations upon looking it up. It could plausibly give as much benefit as a double digit percentage boost to the movement's total funding.
Now, I know what you're thinking, "great, YOU go do it then", but unfortunately I have severe life ruining ADHD and OCD that frequently stops me from doing basically any long tasks I set my mind to (see /TheAllMemeingEye/when-will-i-get-my-shit-together and /TheAllMemeingEye/when-will-i-get-my-shit-together-ro). The bulk of my Wikipedia edits and Manifold comments are not rationally premeditated uses of time, but instead impulsive responses that are hard to direct towards productive goals.
@TheAllMemeingEye I am modestly black-pilled on wiki improving as the wave of LLM enabled sloppification rolls-in, and as WP:RS, WP:PRIMARY, WP:NPOV, and to a lesser extent WP:NOR and WP:UNDUE are used by a decentralized block of left leaning editors to WP:CON through all of their edits containing their biases to shove out by majority any editors proposing edits that do not conform. I do not see this behavior from right leaning editors, but that's in part because they've probably jumped ship I would guess.
I think the "best" fix would be to bribe a presstitute 😉 from a RS to correct the record but that would not be a sure thing - "they" (the mob) could argue CONSENSUS against a single RS. Mob rule is mostly the rule of the land on wiki. Non-leftist editors get away with what they can and hope the eyes of Sauron don't see or take notice. You don't fight reverts too often or too hard if you want to keep your account/ability to make meaningful edits. Otherwise you create an immune response that might get everything you've ever done reverted. You don't want that!
@TheAllMemeingEye I'm sorry to hear about the ADHD. That's got to be really tough. If you want to be knocked out of your akrasia, you may benefit from something like Insight 1. I don't know what they're up to in Cali but it happens pretty regularly in Boston. It's a personal growth thing, but it's also like a group therapy thing.