You argue that funding is centralised much more than it appears. I find myself learning that this is the case more and more over time.
I suspect it probably is good to decentralise to some degree, however there is a very real downside to this:
some projects are dangerous and probably shouldn’t happen
the most dangerous of those are ones run by a charismatic leader and appear very good
if we have multiple funders who are not “informally centralised” (i.e. talking to each other) then there’s a risk that dangerous projects will have multiple bites at the cherry, and with enough different funders, someone will fund them
I appreciate that there are counters to this, and I’m not saying this is a slam-dunk argument against decentralisation.
One thing I think is decentralised funding will also make things like the FLI affair probably more likely.
On the other hand, if this is happening already, and there are systematic biases anyway, and there is reduction in creativity, its a risk I’m willing to take.
Lottery funding and breaking up funders into a few more bodies (eg 5-10 rather than the same roughly 2 or so?) Is what I’m most excited for, as they seem to reduce some of the risk whilst keeping a lot of the benefits
As always, I’d say we should view things on a spectrum, and criticism of centralisation should be viewed as advocacy for less centralisation rather than rejecting centralisation entirely.
I think this is a real problem, and I think the solution is more open discussion. Encourage people to publicise what projects they plan to do, and let anyone critique it in an open discussion. This will catch more problem, and help improve projects.
Over centralised funding had too many bad side effects. It’s not worth it.
You argue that funding is centralised much more than it appears. I find myself learning that this is the case more and more over time.
I suspect it probably is good to decentralise to some degree, however there is a very real downside to this:
some projects are dangerous and probably shouldn’t happen
the most dangerous of those are ones run by a charismatic leader and appear very good
if we have multiple funders who are not “informally centralised” (i.e. talking to each other) then there’s a risk that dangerous projects will have multiple bites at the cherry, and with enough different funders, someone will fund them
I appreciate that there are counters to this, and I’m not saying this is a slam-dunk argument against decentralisation.
One thing I think is decentralised funding will also make things like the FLI affair probably more likely. On the other hand, if this is happening already, and there are systematic biases anyway, and there is reduction in creativity, its a risk I’m willing to take. Lottery funding and breaking up funders into a few more bodies (eg 5-10 rather than the same roughly 2 or so?) Is what I’m most excited for, as they seem to reduce some of the risk whilst keeping a lot of the benefits
As always, I’d say we should view things on a spectrum, and criticism of centralisation should be viewed as advocacy for less centralisation rather than rejecting centralisation entirely.
It seems that the weight of that downside would vary significantly by cause area.
I think this is a real problem, and I think the solution is more open discussion. Encourage people to publicise what projects they plan to do, and let anyone critique it in an open discussion. This will catch more problem, and help improve projects.
Over centralised funding had too many bad side effects. It’s not worth it.