I agree reports like Adam’s will move people from B to A, but I think they will also move people from C to A, by forcing them to examine their choices more carefully and hold themselves to a higher standard.
This model prompts two possible sources of disagreement: you could disagree about the relative proportions of people moving from B vs. from C, or you could disagree about how bad it is to have a mix of B and C vs. more A.
To address the second question, if you think that B is 2-10x more valuable than A, then even if donations in category C are worthless (leaving aside the chance they are net negative), an equal mix of B and C is better than just A, and towards the 10x end of that spectrum, you can justify up to 90% C and 10% B.
But let’s return to that parenthetical – could more C donations be net negative, even aside from opportunity cost? I think this risk is underexamined. I suspect most projects won’t directly do harm, but well-funded blunders are more visible and reputationally damaging.
We can imagine three categories of grants:
A. Publically justifiable
B. Privately justifiable
C. Unjustifiable :)
I agree reports like Adam’s will move people from B to A, but I think they will also move people from C to A, by forcing them to examine their choices more carefully and hold themselves to a higher standard.
This model prompts two possible sources of disagreement: you could disagree about the relative proportions of people moving from B vs. from C, or you could disagree about how bad it is to have a mix of B and C vs. more A.
To address the second question, if you think that B is 2-10x more valuable than A, then even if donations in category C are worthless (leaving aside the chance they are net negative), an equal mix of B and C is better than just A, and towards the 10x end of that spectrum, you can justify up to 90% C and 10% B.
But let’s return to that parenthetical – could more C donations be net negative, even aside from opportunity cost? I think this risk is underexamined. I suspect most projects won’t directly do harm, but well-funded blunders are more visible and reputationally damaging.