EA - Paper summary: Longtermist institutional reform (Tyler M. John and William MacAskill) by Global Priorities Institute

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Paper summary: Longtermist institutional reform (Tyler M. John and William MacAskill), published by Global Priorities Institute on March 13, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.This is a summary of the GPI working paper "Longtermist institutional reform" by Tyler M. John and William MacAskill (published in the 2021 edited volume “the long view”). The summary was written by Riley Harris.Political decisions can have lasting effects on the lives and wellbeing of future generations. Yet political institutions tend to make short-term decisions with only the current generation – or even just the current election cycle – in mind. In “longtermist institutional reform”, Tyler M. John and William MacAskill identify the causes of short-termism in government and give four recommendations for how institutions could be improved. These are the creation of in-government research institutes, a futures assembly, posterity impact statements and – more radically – an ‘upper house’ representing future generations.Causes of short-termismJohn and MacAskill discuss three main causes of short-termism. Firstly, politicians may not care about the long term. This may be because they discount the value of future generations, or simply because it is easy to ignore the effects of policies that are not experienced here and now. Secondly, even if politicians are motivated by concern for future generations, it may be difficult to know the long-term effects of different policies. Finally, even motivated and knowledgeable actors might face structural barriers to implementing long-term focussed policies – for instance, these policies might sometimes appear worse in the short-term and reduce a candidate's chances of re-election.Suggested reformsIn-government research institutesThe first suggested reform is the creation of in-government research institutes that could independently analyse long-term trends, estimate expected long-term impacts of policy and identify matters of long-term importance. These institutes could help fight short-termism by identifying the likely future impacts of policies, making these impacts vivid, and documenting how our leaders are affecting the future. They should also be designed to resist the political incentives that drive short-termism elsewhere. For instance, they could be functionally independent from the government, hire without input from politicians, and be flexible enough to prioritise the most important issues for the future. To ensure their advice is not ignored, the government should be required to read and respond to their recommendations.Futures assemblyThe futures assembly would be a permanent citizens’ assembly which seeks to represent the interests of future generations and give dedicated policy time to issues of importance for the long-term. Several examples already exist where similar citizens’ assemblies have helped create consensus on matters of great uncertainty and controversy, enabling timely government action. In-government research institutes excel at producing high quality information, but lack legitimacy. In contrast, a citizens’ assembly like this one could be composed of randomly selected citizens that are statistically representative of the general population. John and MacAskill believe this representativeness brings political force –politicians who ignore the assembly put their reputations at risk. We can design futures assemblies to avoid the incentive structures that result in short-termism – such as election cycles, party interests and campaign financing.Members should be empowered to call upon experts, and their terms should be long enough to build expertise but short enough to avoid problems like interest group capture – perhaps two years. They should also be empowered to set their own agenda and publicly disseminate their resul...