Interview
Our very long-term future & other topics most politicians won’t touch | Andrew Yang (2021)
- Andrew Yang views the ideal future for humanity in 500 years as a post-scarcity society where people live in harmony with the environment, reversing climate damage, and pursue creative or communal goals without economic necessity driving their labor.
- He identifies the primary risks to achieving this future as the combination of climate change and the rise of authoritarianism, driven by a global shift from abundance to scarcity.
- Yang advocates for a "utopian" outlook as a political strategy, arguing that optimistic visions of a world without poverty or disease can unite people across divides better than problem-focused rhetoric.
- Regarding AI, Yang believes the technology will inevitably exacerbate income inequality and displace workers, noting that labor force participation in the US has been structurally declining.
- He proposes a "windfall clause" or an AI Value Added Tax (VAT) to capture the profits of AI-driven productivity increases, directing the surplus to the public via mechanisms like Universal Basic Income.
- Yang argues that current US political incentives are structurally incapable of addressing long-term existential risks because leaders operate on short news cycles rather than multi-decade horizons.
- He suggests that if given $1 billion to reduce political decline, he would fund ballot initiatives in 15 US states to implement ranked-choice voting and open primaries, aiming to break the duopoly's grip on polarization.
- Yang prefers ranked-choice voting over approval voting for immediate implementation because it already has momentum in 50 cities, including New York, and directly addresses the spoiler effect.
- He acknowledges that running as a third-party candidate (Forward Party) risks a "spoiler effect" but argues that the duopoly's fear of this outcome should be the leverage used to force voting reform rather than a reason to abstain.
- Yang proposes the creation of a "Future Congressional Budget Office" or a similar entity to formally analyze the long-term impacts of legislation on future generations, treating the unborn as a disenfranchised interest group.
- He founded "Humanity Forward," a lobbying firm and foundation, to advocate for policy changes like cash relief, democracy reform, and sensible crypto regulation, attempting to thread the needle between political viability and public good.
- Yang supports term limits for Congress (specifically an 18-year cap) to reduce the influence of lobbyists and increase the average age diversity of legislators, countering the current "gerontocracy."
- He believes the US government underinvests in preventative science, citing the disparity between the trillions spent on pandemic economic relief and the ~$30 billion allocated for pandemic preparedness.
- Yang advocates for significantly increasing US foreign aid, noting the current rate is roughly 0.2% of GDP compared to a desired target of 1.5%, which would be a "game changer" globally.
- He suggests reforming US science funding to prioritize high-risk, high-reward grants for young scientists (e.g., 25-year-olds) over the current seniority-dominated system of large, incremental grants.
- Regarding nuclear security, Yang calls for adding more "points of decision" in command chains to prevent catastrophic errors from false alarms and urges new arms reduction treaties with China similar to those with Russia.
- He supports human challenge trials for vaccine development, arguing that consenting volunteers pose a lower risk than frontline healthcare workers and that the method accelerates public good.
- Yang expresses strong support for effective altruism and long-termism, describing them as logical approaches to doing the most good with limited resources.
- He predicts that the next 100 years will require a fundamental shift in how the US government invests in basic research to prepare the "track" for future commercial and scientific breakthroughs.