Philip Trammell: [...] in this write-up, I do try to make it clear that by investment, I really am explicitly including things like fundraising and at least certain kinds of movement building which have the same effect of turning resources now, not into good done now, but into more resources next year with which good will be done. I would be just a little careful to note that this has to be the sort of movement building advocacy work that really does look like fundraising in the sense that youâre not just putting more resources toward the cause next year, but toward the whole mindset of either giving to the cause or investing to give more in two yearsâ time to the cause. You might spend all your money and get all these recruits who are passionate about the cause that youâre trying to fund, but then they just do it all next year.
Robert Wiblin: The fools!
Philip Trammell: Right. And I donât know exactly how high fidelity in this respect movement building tends to be or EA movement building in particular has been. So thatâs one caveat. [Michaelâs note: Somewhat less relevant from here onwards.] I guess another one is that when youâre actually investing, youâre generally creating new resources. Youâre actually building the factories or whatever. Whereas when youâre just doing fundraising, youâre movement building, youâre just diverting resources from where they otherwise would have gone.
Robert Wiblin: Youâre redistributing from some efforts to others.
Philip Trammell: Yeah. And so you have to think that what people otherwise would have done with the resources in question is of negligible value compared to what theyâll do after the funds had been put in your pot. And you might think that if you just look at what people are spending their money on, the world as a whole⌠I mean you might not, but you might. And if you do, it might seem like this is a safe assumption to make, but the sorts of people youâre most likely to recruit are the ones who probably were most inclined to do the sort of thing that you wanted anyway on their own. My intuition is that itâs easy to overestimate the real real returns to advocacy and movement building in this respect. But I havenât actually looked through any detailed numbers on this. Itâs just a caveat I would raise.
(I think he also discusses similar matters in his write-up, but I canât remember for sure.)
Relevant quote from Philip Trammellâs interview on the 80,000 Hours podcast:
(I think he also discusses similar matters in his write-up, but I canât remember for sure.)