If you consider Open Phil, GiveWell, and Good Ventures as one entity: they’ve had the ability to fill AMF et al’s funding gap for years, but have chosen not to, for reasons they consider good (this came out in 2015, I don’t know if there are more recent statements). Since they could easily afford both and in fact seem to have a deficit of projects they want to fund, this purchase is irrelevant. Their reasons for not fully funding bed nets should be evaluated on their own merits.
I respectfully disagree. A decision to not help others in a specific way is more or less problematic depending on the actual alternative chosen. When that alternative is something as aimed at making EAs and rich westerners enjoy themselves as buying a “castle” to host them in, it puts the funders’ judgment in a very different light.
It’s not that I’m convinced that buying a conference venue is actually that terrible a decision. But to justify this, OpenPhil and EVF need to work much harder than saying they’ll use it to host a vague collection of conferences and workshops, and explain why they even think all these events are really impactful enough, and how they’re sure no self-serving bias came into the decision.
If you consider Open Phil, GiveWell, and Good Ventures as one entity: they’ve had the ability to fill AMF et al’s funding gap for years, but have chosen not to, for reasons they consider good (this came out in 2015, I don’t know if there are more recent statements). Since they could easily afford both and in fact seem to have a deficit of projects they want to fund, this purchase is irrelevant. Their reasons for not fully funding bed nets should be evaluated on their own merits.
I respectfully disagree. A decision to not help others in a specific way is more or less problematic depending on the actual alternative chosen. When that alternative is something as aimed at making EAs and rich westerners enjoy themselves as buying a “castle” to host them in, it puts the funders’ judgment in a very different light.
It’s not that I’m convinced that buying a conference venue is actually that terrible a decision. But to justify this, OpenPhil and EVF need to work much harder than saying they’ll use it to host a vague collection of conferences and workshops, and explain why they even think all these events are really impactful enough, and how they’re sure no self-serving bias came into the decision.