If we allowed founders to capture more of the surplus, then maybe the founder would end up with $50 billion, and the charity and its beneficiaries would only get $50 billion, which seems much worse for them. Given that our goal here is to help beneficiaries (and by implication charities, since any money charities save goes to the beneficiaries eventually), this seems pretty bad.
As far as I understand, your worry is that investors might pay so much for impact certificates that it lowers total impact (because it means less money to beneficiaries/programs). But shouldn’t investors take such effects into account when they decide what to pay for an impact certificate—and when they estimate what other investors will be will be willing to pay for the impact certificate? As far as I can tell, this argument seems to assume that the investors would be irrational, and/or that impact certificate prices will for some other reason deviate from what’s socially optimal. I guess the hope is that the socially optimal price will effectively be akin to a Schelling point, and that investors should try to guess what that price is. If so, they wouldn’t overpay for impact certificates, but simply pay the socially optimal amount. But maybe there’s some consideration here I’m missing—I’m not read up on these issues.
As far as I understand, your worry is that investors might pay so much for impact certificates that it lowers total impact (because it means less money to beneficiaries/programs). But shouldn’t investors take such effects into account when they decide what to pay for an impact certificate—and when they estimate what other investors will be will be willing to pay for the impact certificate? As far as I can tell, this argument seems to assume that the investors would be irrational, and/or that impact certificate prices will for some other reason deviate from what’s socially optimal. I guess the hope is that the socially optimal price will effectively be akin to a Schelling point, and that investors should try to guess what that price is. If so, they wouldn’t overpay for impact certificates, but simply pay the socially optimal amount. But maybe there’s some consideration here I’m missing—I’m not read up on these issues.