You want to stop malaria on the grounds of maximum impact per dollar spent? Actually, this week the hot thing is criminal justice reform3 in a first world country—why don’t you go rationalize that cause for us?
I’m really annoyed by this line of reasoning, where once you give 1 dollar to the AMF then you can’t give anything else to any cause area that critics might not like, otherwise you’re killing children. If Moskovitz was spending it on boats instead it would be seen as ok? Should we criticize everyone that spends 1% of their net worth on something we don’t like? Was criminal justice reform ever recommended to small donors? Was it ever a GiveWell top charity?
This part enrages me:
If you’re curious what kind of press you can buy, consider this fluff profile of SBF by Dylan Matthews. Is Matthews’ conveyance of admiration feigned? I doubt it. Would he have gotten it past his editors if SBF hadn’t donated to his employer? Maybe. Would SBF keep donating to Vox if they didn’t deliver fawning coverage? I’m sure Vox editors wondered this themselves right up to the point where it became clear that there would be no donations forthcoming regardless of what they printed.
Please I encourage people to read the “fluff profile”! Dylan Matthews also literally wrote:
The enmity is particularly pronounced for Bankman-Fried, given the fact that crypto is, let’s be blunt, a completely useless asset class that has serious environmental costs.
(Disclosure: Bankman-Fried’s family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, is funding some of the Future Perfect section at Vox, so let me bite the hand that feeds me and say that I think him buying up Super Bowl ads and Vogue spreads with Gisele Bündchen to encourage ordinary people to put their money into this pile of mathematically complex garbage is … actually morally questionable. Bankman-Fried can do a lot of good with the money FTX produces, but parts of the production process make me increasingly uncomfortable.)
At the top of another article. Is Matthews’ conveyance of enmity and discomfort feigned? I doubt it.
As long as EA is reliant on large and especially on public donors, EA is owned by those donors and will over time evolve to serve them even more than they already do. [...] like everything else, EA will become a skinsuit shambling around and doing everything awful that the old charities do, and have nothing to do with its original goals.
There are thousands of donors in EA, and dozens of organizations doing all sorts of stuff independent stuff! My favorite example is Charity Entrepreneurship, and their incubated charities. They are doing really amazing stuff and are saving thousands of lives, I don’t see them (and all their 20 charities) going away any time soon.
I am literally an economist and I am sorry to report that this is the way of the world. [charities existing to optimize taxes and reputation] [...] But What If No One Will Donate If They Can’t Influence Us, or Generate Flattering Press About Having Donated. And What If No One Cares Anymore When We Talk About This At Parties Then you will have learned something valuable about the role of charity organizations in the world.
[Sorry for ranting a bit from now on] This kind of “altruism doesn’t exist” reasoning seems really common and really annoys me. I’m not donating 70% of my income to “optimize taxes” or “manage my reputation”, Giving What We Can just reached 8000 pledgers (I know not all pledgers actually end up giving >10% for their whole lives, but many do!).
SBF is a symptom, not a freak one-off. As long as EA is reliant on large and especially on public donors, EA is owned by those donors and will over time evolve to serve them even more than they already do.
For many people, EA is still a place to decide where to give their money and/or time. Not to get money. Many many EA direct workers are both donating significant amounts and earning significantly less than they would be in the private sector. ”Altruism doesn’t exist” seems especially common in some rationalists and post-rationalists that really cannot imagine someone being in any way altruistic: it’s always all signaling, nothing could ever falsify this.
Personal take: SBF/FTX stole a lot of money from a lot of people, and ruined the reputation of coworkers, families, industries, and politicians. I really think EA is making it all about ourselves in a very egocentric manner, and long-time critics are mostly using it to justify their existing “altruism is bad” or “EA is bad” takes.
I don’t think the claim is that altruism doesn’t exist. Rather, it’s that at the margin large contributors are prone to use charity for their own goals. As EA attempts to monetize ‘whales’, it’s pushed to twist itself into something that serves those goals, which in turn changes how good your own, smaller donations are.
It’s a ‘at the margin’ argument, and I don’t know how accurate it is. Maybe EA orgs are currently resistant to such processes. OTOH, the ones that are less resistant will be more appealing to big money, get bigger budgets, become more visible, and likely be copied. Seems unstable long-term.
This post really does not match my perspective.
Some parts I especially disagree with:
I’m really annoyed by this line of reasoning, where once you give 1 dollar to the AMF then you can’t give anything else to any cause area that critics might not like, otherwise you’re killing children.
If Moskovitz was spending it on boats instead it would be seen as ok? Should we criticize everyone that spends 1% of their net worth on something we don’t like? Was criminal justice reform ever recommended to small donors? Was it ever a GiveWell top charity?
This part enrages me:
Please I encourage people to read the “fluff profile”! Dylan Matthews also literally wrote:
At the top of another article. Is Matthews’ conveyance of enmity and discomfort feigned? I doubt it.
There are thousands of donors in EA, and dozens of organizations doing all sorts of stuff independent stuff! My favorite example is Charity Entrepreneurship, and their incubated charities. They are doing really amazing stuff and are saving thousands of lives, I don’t see them (and all their 20 charities) going away any time soon.
[Sorry for ranting a bit from now on]
This kind of “altruism doesn’t exist” reasoning seems really common and really annoys me. I’m not donating 70% of my income to “optimize taxes” or “manage my reputation”, Giving What We Can just reached 8000 pledgers (I know not all pledgers actually end up giving >10% for their whole lives, but many do!).
For many people, EA is still a place to decide where to give their money and/or time. Not to get money. Many many EA direct workers are both donating significant amounts and earning significantly less than they would be in the private sector.
”Altruism doesn’t exist” seems especially common in some rationalists and post-rationalists that really cannot imagine someone being in any way altruistic: it’s always all signaling, nothing could ever falsify this.
Personal take: SBF/FTX stole a lot of money from a lot of people, and ruined the reputation of coworkers, families, industries, and politicians. I really think EA is making it all about ourselves in a very egocentric manner, and long-time critics are mostly using it to justify their existing “altruism is bad” or “EA is bad” takes.
I don’t think the claim is that altruism doesn’t exist. Rather, it’s that at the margin large contributors are prone to use charity for their own goals. As EA attempts to monetize ‘whales’, it’s pushed to twist itself into something that serves those goals, which in turn changes how good your own, smaller donations are.
It’s a ‘at the margin’ argument, and I don’t know how accurate it is. Maybe EA orgs are currently resistant to such processes. OTOH, the ones that are less resistant will be more appealing to big money, get bigger budgets, become more visible, and likely be copied. Seems unstable long-term.