If we’re paying back, I think it makes more sense for this to become primarily the responsibility of major funders instead of individual grantees, for practical reasons. I don’t think individual EAs need to take on hardship to pay it back, and we can consider large funders paying on their behalf to be community support work or grants that they would have made anyway. Also, having major funders pay is more efficient than having individual grantees each worry about this.
Still, it might make more sense for this to come from cause-specific budgets, so that longtermist funding from FTX and associates is paid back from the longtermist EA budget, and global health and development funding from FTX and associates is paid back from the GHD EA budget, and so on. You shouldn’t be able to shift EA funding between causes by committing fraud.
I guess it’s more complicated than this, because FTX entering as a funder and disproportionately funding longtermism may have freed up funding for other cause areas. Still, I’d guess the counterfactual was disproportionately to the benefit of longtermism. We could try to simulate what would have happened without FTX and check where the extra money went. If only direct beneficiaries pay up, this is unfair to them, and indirect beneficies get away without paying.
If we’re paying back, I think it makes more sense for this to become primarily the responsibility of major funders instead of individual grantees, for practical reasons. I don’t think individual EAs need to take on hardship to pay it back, and we can consider large funders paying on their behalf to be community support work or grants that they would have made anyway. Also, having major funders pay is more efficient than having individual grantees each worry about this.
Still, it might make more sense for this to come from cause-specific budgets, so that longtermist funding from FTX and associates is paid back from the longtermist EA budget, and global health and development funding from FTX and associates is paid back from the GHD EA budget, and so on. You shouldn’t be able to shift EA funding between causes by committing fraud.
I guess it’s more complicated than this, because FTX entering as a funder and disproportionately funding longtermism may have freed up funding for other cause areas. Still, I’d guess the counterfactual was disproportionately to the benefit of longtermism. We could try to simulate what would have happened without FTX and check where the extra money went. If only direct beneficiaries pay up, this is unfair to them, and indirect beneficies get away without paying.