I agree with Jay; most accessible essay in the series yet. Keep it up! Suggestions for building a moral market:
Encourage more potential donors to post what sort of research they’d seek to fund.
If they then end up with multiple candidates coming forward, that can be resolved through a competitive hiring process.
Also encourage more potential donees to post their aspiring research agendas, to attract potential donors more easily.
Note: the prior suggestions might not be practical to enact until basic infrastructure of a direct funding moral market is set up.
Approach EA Ventures about vetting and normalizing direct funding. This could be one institution itself that doesn’t receive funding from the direct funding market, which could generate trust in EA Ventures as an evaluator. It could also serve as a light version of Givewell or GWWC responsible for assessing the viability of individuals. EA Ventures could make clear in reports their assessments are their own opinions, and other donors and donees are by all means free to make their open funding arrangements.
Multiple donors could form coalitions to fund a single donee. For donors, this could decrease salient feelings of risk aversion otherwise preventing funding, because not one single donor takes on all risk. For donees, being funded by a coalition of multiple donors could increase security in two ways. Firstly, if one donor stops contributing funds, one or more funders are still around to provide funding. Hopefully, partial interim funding would be sufficient to meet living costs for the donee until full funding is restored. Anyway, secondly, funding coalitions of more members can seem more trustworthy and reliable to potential new donors. A new donor will be more likely to fill an existing funding gap if they can see one or more other donors already trust the donee enough to carry out the desired work.
I agree with Jay; most accessible essay in the series yet. Keep it up! Suggestions for building a moral market:
Encourage more potential donors to post what sort of research they’d seek to fund. If they then end up with multiple candidates coming forward, that can be resolved through a competitive hiring process.
Also encourage more potential donees to post their aspiring research agendas, to attract potential donors more easily.
Note: the prior suggestions might not be practical to enact until basic infrastructure of a direct funding moral market is set up.
Approach EA Ventures about vetting and normalizing direct funding. This could be one institution itself that doesn’t receive funding from the direct funding market, which could generate trust in EA Ventures as an evaluator. It could also serve as a light version of Givewell or GWWC responsible for assessing the viability of individuals. EA Ventures could make clear in reports their assessments are their own opinions, and other donors and donees are by all means free to make their open funding arrangements.
Multiple donors could form coalitions to fund a single donee. For donors, this could decrease salient feelings of risk aversion otherwise preventing funding, because not one single donor takes on all risk. For donees, being funded by a coalition of multiple donors could increase security in two ways. Firstly, if one donor stops contributing funds, one or more funders are still around to provide funding. Hopefully, partial interim funding would be sufficient to meet living costs for the donee until full funding is restored. Anyway, secondly, funding coalitions of more members can seem more trustworthy and reliable to potential new donors. A new donor will be more likely to fill an existing funding gap if they can see one or more other donors already trust the donee enough to carry out the desired work.
Or to fund multiple donees.