Earlier this month, Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of Open Philanthropy and GiveWell, wrote an article on the different ways people think about how to make a difference in the world – something we care about for obvious reasons.

It’s informative for anyone who wants to classify their approach. It may also help you better better understand the basis for why you’re disagreeing with others.

Karnofsky asks us to imagine the world as a ship. We can ‘row’ to help the ship reach its current destination faster, ‘steer’ to navigate to a better destination than the current one, ‘anchor’ to hold the ship in place or prevent change generally, and/or try to make the world more like it was a generation or two ago, ‘mutiny’ to challenge the ship's whole premise and power structure, or focus on ‘equity’ to work toward more fair and just relations between people on the ship.

We’re mostly a ‘rowing’ organisation. We work to advance entrepreneurship, technology and growth in order to make us all better off, something we set out in our evolving policy priorities page.

Karnofsky himself is pro-rowing, but raises some concerns. For example, those in favour of this worldview (e.g. venture capitalists, tech founders, etc.) suspiciously seem to also be personally interested in getting rich. He wonders if we should trust entrepreneurs’ narrative about the world getting better when some seem to clearly benefit from it.

No doubt the motivation of some entrepreneurs and investors aren’t purely altruistic, but they aren’t the reason I think progress matters. Intellectuals like Karnofsky tell the most convincing story as to why the world is getting better, and entrepreneurs, innovators and investors are driving this change.

Another counterpoint raised are things like environmental damage, rising global catastrophic risks and rising inequality. ‘Rowers’ have some answers – for example, entrepreneurs are critical to solving environmental problems – but not all of them. Just to give a micro example, it seems right that the government banned microbeads in 2018 even though there were no doubt some plastic entrepreneurs and investors who lost out. While the unintended consequences of bans and regulations too often outweigh the benefits, they don’t always.

Similarly, there is a strong ‘steering’ and ‘anchoring’ case to be made for the risks that come alongside the huge opportunities from AI – something I raised here back in 2018. It’s something that the Effective Altruism movement is particularly keen on.

And not all approaches are in conflict. As Karnofsky says: “I think that much of the progress the world has seen is fairly hard to imagine without significant efforts at both rowing and equity: major efforts both to increase wealth/capabilities and to distribute them more evenly. Civil rights movements, social safety nets, and foreign aid all seem like huge wins, and major parts of the story for why the world seems to have gotten better over time.”

There is also reason to believe that as we get richer, we get better at dedicating resources towards equity, the environment, and to safety. This means that by 'rowing' you create more interest in 'steering' and 'equity'. So these seemingly differing aims feed into each other.

The Entrepreneur Ship
On the subject of boats, next month the long-time supporter of entrepreneurs, Guy Rigby, is rowing across the Atlantic with David Murray. If successful, they will be the oldest pair ever to row any ocean.

We’re a supporter of their efforts (they have kindly put our logo on the ship) as they’re raising money to support social entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneur Ship will work with UnLtd to co-fund a technical assistance package designed to support diverse leaders from start-ups to sustainable investment over the next 5 years. Find out more about supporting them here.

Big Deal
As Sam Dumitriu writes on the blog, our big cities often function as if they were small cities, losing the benefits of agglomeration. As the Centre for Cities has shown, improving public transport is part of the solution: “67% of people in big European cities can reach their city centre by public transport within 30 minutes, compared to only 40% of the people in Britain’s big cities.” Sam also argues for the densification of cities and suburban intensification near public transport.