I think this is about scope of responsibility. To my knowledge, “EA” doesn’t own any Meta/Asana stock, didn’t have billions of (alleged) assets caught up in crypto, and didn’t pour $580MM into Anthropic. All that money belongs/belonged to private individuals or corporations (or so we thought...), and there’s arguably something both a bit unseemly and pointless about writing on a message board about how specific private individuals should conduct their own financial affairs.
On the other hand, EVF is a public charity—and its election of that status and solicitation of funds from the general public rightly call for a higher level of scrutiny of its actions vis-a-vis those of private individuals and for-profit corporations.
I don’t actually know the details, but as far as I know, EVF is primarily funded by private foundations/billionaires, too.
Also, some of this hedging could’ve been done by community members without actual ownership of Meta/Asana/crypto. Again, the lack of discussion of this seems problematic to me.
EVF and its US affiliate, CENTRE FOR EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM USA INC, are public charities. That means there is an indirect public subsidy (in terms of foregone tax revenues on money donated) by US and UK taxpayers somewhere in the ballpark of about 25% of donations. Based on the reports I linked, that seems to be about $10MM per year, probably more in recent years given known big grants. EVF also solicits donations from the general public on its website and elsewhere, which I don’t think is true of the big holder of Meta/Asana stock. (Good Ventures, which has somewhat favorable tax treatment as a private foundation, does not seem concentrated in this stock per the most recent 990-PF I could find.)
If an organization solicits from the public and accepts favorable tax treatment for its charitable status, the range of public scrutiny it should expect is considerably higher than for a private individual.
As far as I know, large philanthropic foundations often use DAFs to attain public charity status, getting the same tax benefits. And if they’re private foundations, they’re still getting a benefit of ~15%, and possibly a lot more via receiving donations of appreciated assets.
I also don’t think public charity status and tax benefits are especially relevant here. I think public scrutiny is not intrinsically important; I mainly care about taking actions that maximize social impact, and public scrutiny seems much worse for this than figuring out high-impact ways to preserve/increase altruistic assets.
there’s arguably something both a bit unseemly and pointless about writing on a message board about how specific private individuals should conduct their own financial affairs
I think you would care about this specific investment if you had more context (or at least I expect that you believe you would deserve to understand the argument). In some sense, this proves Jonas right.
I think this is about scope of responsibility. To my knowledge, “EA” doesn’t own any Meta/Asana stock, didn’t have billions of (alleged) assets caught up in crypto, and didn’t pour $580MM into Anthropic. All that money belongs/belonged to private individuals or corporations (or so we thought...), and there’s arguably something both a bit unseemly and pointless about writing on a message board about how specific private individuals should conduct their own financial affairs.
On the other hand, EVF is a public charity—and its election of that status and solicitation of funds from the general public rightly call for a higher level of scrutiny of its actions vis-a-vis those of private individuals and for-profit corporations.
I don’t actually know the details, but as far as I know, EVF is primarily funded by private foundations/billionaires, too.
Also, some of this hedging could’ve been done by community members without actual ownership of Meta/Asana/crypto. Again, the lack of discussion of this seems problematic to me.
EVF and its US affiliate, CENTRE FOR EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM USA INC, are public charities. That means there is an indirect public subsidy (in terms of foregone tax revenues on money donated) by US and UK taxpayers somewhere in the ballpark of about 25% of donations. Based on the reports I linked, that seems to be about $10MM per year, probably more in recent years given known big grants. EVF also solicits donations from the general public on its website and elsewhere, which I don’t think is true of the big holder of Meta/Asana stock. (Good Ventures, which has somewhat favorable tax treatment as a private foundation, does not seem concentrated in this stock per the most recent 990-PF I could find.)
If an organization solicits from the public and accepts favorable tax treatment for its charitable status, the range of public scrutiny it should expect is considerably higher than for a private individual.
As far as I know, large philanthropic foundations often use DAFs to attain public charity status, getting the same tax benefits. And if they’re private foundations, they’re still getting a benefit of ~15%, and possibly a lot more via receiving donations of appreciated assets.
I also don’t think public charity status and tax benefits are especially relevant here. I think public scrutiny is not intrinsically important; I mainly care about taking actions that maximize social impact, and public scrutiny seems much worse for this than figuring out high-impact ways to preserve/increase altruistic assets.
I think you would care about this specific investment if you had more context (or at least I expect that you believe you would deserve to understand the argument). In some sense, this proves Jonas right.