Most transparency in charitable endeavours is donor-driven, right? People want to see what you’re doing with their money. But that doesn’t apply here because it’s basically all just one guy’s money and he clearly DGAF what OpenPhil do with it. So all the usual stuff about conflicts of interest etc doesn’t really apply because Dustin knowns full well he’s giving his money to a small group of closely connected people to dispense with as they see fit. So I assume no one thought there would be any problems until FTX blew up and suddenly EA was under loads of additional scrutiny.
The purchase itself seem fairly reasonable, fwiw, although I don’t know much about the volatility in the super-prime property market. But assuming it gets used a lot for conferences etc, country houses are pretty great things and very useful.
But that doesn’t apply here because it’s basically all just one guy’s money and he clearly DGAF what OpenPhil do with it.
I don’t think this is true, my guess is that Moskovitz cares a lot about serving the good, also has his own idiosyncratic biases, and additionally defers a lot to Open Phil about the most effective ways to benefit the good. I think in many ways this is admirable—I imagine most rich philanthropists either don’t care about serving the good at all (and just to buy PR) or centers their philanthropy on their own idiosyncratic visions of what the good entails.
Joking on Twitter about the purchase is a fairly positive signal to me; I imagine if he spent on the order of $20m to buy a house in SF or a vacation home for himself instead, very few people will criticize him sharply for it. Being able to take the heat for an altruistic purchase that he’s unlikely to use himself (for a decision that he didn’t make himself) seems like a good quality to have, given that context in mind.
(This comment might sound overly positive towards Dustin and since I’ve been burned re: complimenting very rich people in the past, I should mention I don’t know much about him, have never met him in person, and will not be much more surprised than priors if he turned out to be a horrible person either personally or professionally).
this is a complete and total misread of what I was saying, by “doesn’t give a shit” I obviously meant that he doesn’t care about the apparent conflicts of interest wrt how OpenPhil dispense of his money, not that he doesn’t care about the eventual outputs.
How much does Moskovitz trust the OpenPhil team? Well, he only found out the money came from OpenPhil after the whole thing blew out on the forum. And that’s despite being the chair of the board of OpenPhil. So it seems that both OpenPhil staff don’t think it’s important to update (at least) the board on decisions of this magnitude, and the board doesn’t push for such updates.
Right. The board doesn’t push for updates presumably because Dustin doesn’t care! (I assume this is what you’re saying?) He was joking about it on twitter & seemed to think it all pretty funny.
There’s also a strong possibility Dustin was told, (i.e. it was mentioned in a team meeting ect.) and it was just forgotten. That is pretty common (depending on personality type).
Most transparency in charitable endeavours is donor-driven, right? People want to see what you’re doing with their money. But that doesn’t apply here because it’s basically all just one guy’s money and he clearly DGAF what OpenPhil do with it. So all the usual stuff about conflicts of interest etc doesn’t really apply because Dustin knowns full well he’s giving his money to a small group of closely connected people to dispense with as they see fit. So I assume no one thought there would be any problems until FTX blew up and suddenly EA was under loads of additional scrutiny.
The purchase itself seem fairly reasonable, fwiw, although I don’t know much about the volatility in the super-prime property market. But assuming it gets used a lot for conferences etc, country houses are pretty great things and very useful.
I don’t think this is true, my guess is that Moskovitz cares a lot about serving the good, also has his own idiosyncratic biases, and additionally defers a lot to Open Phil about the most effective ways to benefit the good. I think in many ways this is admirable—I imagine most rich philanthropists either don’t care about serving the good at all (and just to buy PR) or centers their philanthropy on their own idiosyncratic visions of what the good entails.
Joking on Twitter about the purchase is a fairly positive signal to me; I imagine if he spent on the order of $20m to buy a house in SF or a vacation home for himself instead, very few people will criticize him sharply for it. Being able to take the heat for an altruistic purchase that he’s unlikely to use himself (for a decision that he didn’t make himself) seems like a good quality to have, given that context in mind.
(This comment might sound overly positive towards Dustin and since I’ve been burned re: complimenting very rich people in the past, I should mention I don’t know much about him, have never met him in person, and will not be much more surprised than priors if he turned out to be a horrible person either personally or professionally).
this is a complete and total misread of what I was saying, by “doesn’t give a shit” I obviously meant that he doesn’t care about the apparent conflicts of interest wrt how OpenPhil dispense of his money, not that he doesn’t care about the eventual outputs.
Thanks for the correction, apologies for misreading!
How much does Moskovitz trust the OpenPhil team? Well, he only found out the money came from OpenPhil after the whole thing blew out on the forum. And that’s despite being the chair of the board of OpenPhil. So it seems that both OpenPhil staff don’t think it’s important to update (at least) the board on decisions of this magnitude, and the board doesn’t push for such updates.
Right. The board doesn’t push for updates presumably because Dustin doesn’t care! (I assume this is what you’re saying?) He was joking about it on twitter & seemed to think it all pretty funny.
There’s also a strong possibility Dustin was told, (i.e. it was mentioned in a team meeting ect.) and it was just forgotten. That is pretty common (depending on personality type).