I think that Fund recipients should return the funds only if legally required. The utility derived from money in the hands of recipients (assuming the Fund is competent in its deployments) far exceeds that of the average FTX victim. Fund recipients are not morally responsible for the wrongdoing of FTX, and should continue to use resources in the high EV way that ostensibly provided the bases for the grants.
The couple arguments against this do not likely hold up against the vast utility discrepancies from resource allocations...
One would be that EA has better press because it intentionally deprives fund recipients who are not legally obligated to lose funding. I don’t think it reflects well on EA if we encourage defunding programs we deem extremely high value to pay debts without legal basis.
Another would be that by not disgorging the entirety of a fraudulent actor’s benefits (by it being sheltered by grants) we potentially incentivize future fraud by EAs. I think given the endless recriminations and loss, it is hard to think that a silver lining of some ill-gotten gains being put to good use would encourage future bad behaviors.
The dedication of resources to the Fund recipients is likely very high EV and I think we should encourage these recipients to retain these resources for their purpose if legally permitted.
The couple arguments against this do not likely hold up against the vast utility discrepancies from resource allocations...
This kind of utilitarian reasoning seems not too different from the kind that would get one to commit fraud to begin within. I don’t think whether it’s legally required to return or not makes the difference – morality does not depend on laws. If someone else steals money from a bank and gives it to me, I won’t feel good about using that money even if I don’t have to give it back and will use it much better.
It is very different from the kind of reasoning that leads to fraud.
Fraud and many other kinds of other criminal behavior corrodes at the fabric of trust that enables our communities, large and small, to operate effectively. Thus, when you diminish the trust that members of society can place in each other, you do immense damage. Thus, in an EV calculation incorporating these kinds of activities, they are seldom justified because the harm risked is colossal.
A retention of a benefit in these circumstances where the grantee is not complicit and is not legally required to return it does not cause or risk the above harm in the least.
If a grant recipients’use of resources is extremely high EV, which it should be, the unnecessary defunding of it is obscenely immoral.
A individual who is in receipt of property that they know to have been stolen is complicit if they did not give reasonably equivalent value for it and do not return it. By knowingly retaining the stolen property, one becomes complicit in the continued deprivation of the victim’s property. This principle is widely accepted when it comes to someone who steals my car and then gives it to a friend for free.
The recipient is not culpable to the extent they already earned/spent the grant, or if the current owner of the car paid fair market value for it—in both cases assuming they had no reason to believe the money/car was stolen.
If that is the state of the law and they have a legal obligation to return it, they should. I just would not endorse returning if not legally obligated to.
More importantly though, we have a vast bias to have motivated reasoning in order to view ourselves as basically good and trustworthy, and we have no good reason to suspect anything else, so I really am not accepting that argument.
most human beings perceive themselves as good and decent people, such that they can understand many of their rule violations as entirely rational and ethically acceptable responses to problematic situations. They understand themselves to be doing nothing wrong, and will be outraged and often fiercely defend themselves when confronted with evidence to the contrary.
This critique applies only to unspent funds that have not been irretreviably committed and only applies to certain factual scenarios.
I don’t think we have enough information to evaluate this position. In some plausible narratives, the grant funds were straight up stolen from the depositors and given to the grantees. In other words, most or all of the “profits” could just be misappropriated client funds. The fact that FTX handed over the money to grantees doesn’t change that.
If someone steals my car and gives it to their friend for free . . . it’s still my car. The friend is not morally free to decide they would derive much more utility from the car than I would (or realistically, than my insurance company would from not having to pay the claim). Knowingly retaining my car without having provided appropriate value in exchange is just another form of theft.
In those scenarios, the conclusion that the victims should bear the loss leads to a conclusion that it’s OK to retain knowingly stolen funds if the cause is good enough and/or that it is OK to force people to involuntarily donate if the cause is good enough. In my book, it is tantamount to theft—the grantee is acting to continue the initial deprivation by the grantee’s confederate of the victim’s property
If we think it is OK to reduce Joe Crypto’s savings to 50K to avoid disrupting the work funded by FTX grants, have we all reduced our savings to 50K first? I can’t figure out a world where it is morally appropriate for a grantee or EA community member to decide it is OK to involuntarily appropriate Joe’s property on utilitarian grounds without having made an equivalent level of financial sacrifice themselves.
I am aware of the dangers of “you’re not donating enough” type logic. But EA is supposed to be impartial; we are not entitled to demand Joe Crypto make sacrifices for the cause we are not willing ourselves to make. So I think it is an appropriate question to ask here because we are potentially talking about involuntarily taking the money of someone who is less well off than we are without making an equivalent sacrifice ourselves.
Again, there are a number of scenarios in which I don’t think there is a moral obligation to return funds. In particular, if the grant was clean when made, any future bad acts by the grantor can’t retroactively render it the equivalent of stolen property.
For me, it comes down to whether the retention contributes to the social corrosion in a similar manner to the underlying fraud. My intuition is that it does not, and thus the question should be evaluated from the first order utility differences.
I do not think if there was some determination that a grantee had the right to retain the funds that(a) voluntarily relinquishing them to FTX victims would remedy much at all the social corrosion caused by the underlying fraud or (b) that exercising the right to retain would cause further social corrosion. I suppose if I am wrong on either of the points that I might be persuaded.
I think that Fund recipients should return the funds only if legally required. The utility derived from money in the hands of recipients (assuming the Fund is competent in its deployments) far exceeds that of the average FTX victim. Fund recipients are not morally responsible for the wrongdoing of FTX, and should continue to use resources in the high EV way that ostensibly provided the bases for the grants.
The couple arguments against this do not likely hold up against the vast utility discrepancies from resource allocations...
One would be that EA has better press because it intentionally deprives fund recipients who are not legally obligated to lose funding. I don’t think it reflects well on EA if we encourage defunding programs we deem extremely high value to pay debts without legal basis.
Another would be that by not disgorging the entirety of a fraudulent actor’s benefits (by it being sheltered by grants) we potentially incentivize future fraud by EAs. I think given the endless recriminations and loss, it is hard to think that a silver lining of some ill-gotten gains being put to good use would encourage future bad behaviors.
The dedication of resources to the Fund recipients is likely very high EV and I think we should encourage these recipients to retain these resources for their purpose if legally permitted.
This kind of utilitarian reasoning seems not too different from the kind that would get one to commit fraud to begin within. I don’t think whether it’s legally required to return or not makes the difference – morality does not depend on laws. If someone else steals money from a bank and gives it to me, I won’t feel good about using that money even if I don’t have to give it back and will use it much better.
It is very different from the kind of reasoning that leads to fraud.
Fraud and many other kinds of other criminal behavior corrodes at the fabric of trust that enables our communities, large and small, to operate effectively. Thus, when you diminish the trust that members of society can place in each other, you do immense damage. Thus, in an EV calculation incorporating these kinds of activities, they are seldom justified because the harm risked is colossal.
A retention of a benefit in these circumstances where the grantee is not complicit and is not legally required to return it does not cause or risk the above harm in the least.
If a grant recipients’use of resources is extremely high EV, which it should be, the unnecessary defunding of it is obscenely immoral.
A individual who is in receipt of property that they know to have been stolen is complicit if they did not give reasonably equivalent value for it and do not return it. By knowingly retaining the stolen property, one becomes complicit in the continued deprivation of the victim’s property. This principle is widely accepted when it comes to someone who steals my car and then gives it to a friend for free.
The recipient is not culpable to the extent they already earned/spent the grant, or if the current owner of the car paid fair market value for it—in both cases assuming they had no reason to believe the money/car was stolen.
If that is the state of the law and they have a legal obligation to return it, they should. I just would not endorse returning if not legally obligated to.
More importantly though, we have a vast bias to have motivated reasoning in order to view ourselves as basically good and trustworthy, and we have no good reason to suspect anything else, so I really am not accepting that argument.
From Dann Luu here: https://danluu.com/wat/
This critique applies only to unspent funds that have not been irretreviably committed and only applies to certain factual scenarios.
I don’t think we have enough information to evaluate this position. In some plausible narratives, the grant funds were straight up stolen from the depositors and given to the grantees. In other words, most or all of the “profits” could just be misappropriated client funds. The fact that FTX handed over the money to grantees doesn’t change that.
If someone steals my car and gives it to their friend for free . . . it’s still my car. The friend is not morally free to decide they would derive much more utility from the car than I would (or realistically, than my insurance company would from not having to pay the claim). Knowingly retaining my car without having provided appropriate value in exchange is just another form of theft.
In those scenarios, the conclusion that the victims should bear the loss leads to a conclusion that it’s OK to retain knowingly stolen funds if the cause is good enough and/or that it is OK to force people to involuntarily donate if the cause is good enough. In my book, it is tantamount to theft—the grantee is acting to continue the initial deprivation by the grantee’s confederate of the victim’s property
If we think it is OK to reduce Joe Crypto’s savings to 50K to avoid disrupting the work funded by FTX grants, have we all reduced our savings to 50K first? I can’t figure out a world where it is morally appropriate for a grantee or EA community member to decide it is OK to involuntarily appropriate Joe’s property on utilitarian grounds without having made an equivalent level of financial sacrifice themselves.
I am aware of the dangers of “you’re not donating enough” type logic. But EA is supposed to be impartial; we are not entitled to demand Joe Crypto make sacrifices for the cause we are not willing ourselves to make. So I think it is an appropriate question to ask here because we are potentially talking about involuntarily taking the money of someone who is less well off than we are without making an equivalent sacrifice ourselves.
Again, there are a number of scenarios in which I don’t think there is a moral obligation to return funds. In particular, if the grant was clean when made, any future bad acts by the grantor can’t retroactively render it the equivalent of stolen property.
Well argued.
For me, it comes down to whether the retention contributes to the social corrosion in a similar manner to the underlying fraud. My intuition is that it does not, and thus the question should be evaluated from the first order utility differences.
I do not think if there was some determination that a grantee had the right to retain the funds that(a) voluntarily relinquishing them to FTX victims would remedy much at all the social corrosion caused by the underlying fraud or (b) that exercising the right to retain would cause further social corrosion. I suppose if I am wrong on either of the points that I might be persuaded.