If all the incentive value of the additional salary was just to allocate employees among EA orgs, yet there were small differences in employees’ relative productivity between orgs… then it plausibly could be more efficient to have a cartel from the POV of the EA “output”. It’s sort of a solution to a collective action problem.
But some of the salary might draw in more skilled labor from outside EA orgs, and some may serve a price signal function to allocate the most skilled workers to the EA orgs that generate the most marginal impact from these skills, so are willing to pay the most.
But to me it’s not clear which effect dominates. I don’t think the standard perfectly competitive market arguments necessarily hold the day, if EA employees are intrinsically motivated.
If all the incentive value of the additional salary was just to allocate employees among EA orgs, yet there were small differences in employees’ relative productivity between orgs… then it plausibly could be more efficient to have a cartel from the POV of the EA “output”. It’s sort of a solution to a collective action problem.
But some of the salary might draw in more skilled labor from outside EA orgs, and some may serve a price signal function to allocate the most skilled workers to the EA orgs that generate the most marginal impact from these skills, so are willing to pay the most.
But to me it’s not clear which effect dominates. I don’t think the standard perfectly competitive market arguments necessarily hold the day, if EA employees are intrinsically motivated.
If funders value the impact of an EA employee at >20x their salary, then it seems likely that the latter effects dominate at the current margin.