In reading more about this topic, I discovered that there has already been a lot of discussion about donor coordination on the EA Forum that I missed. (I don’t read the Forum very actively.) EAs generally think it’s bad to engage in a game of chicken where you try to let other people fund something first, at least within the EA community—e.g., Cotton-Barratt (2021).
My original thought behind making this post was that the extent of funging for animal donations seemed like a useful thing for various animal donors to be aware of, to be more informed about their giving choices. However, I can imagine that some people see it as a net-negative topic to bring up, because it may encourage more games of donation chicken among donors. My post also mentioned my criticisms of some existing EA animal charities, but I could have done that separately from the discussion of donation funging. I still think it’s reasonable for people to be more informed about how funging works, but I also see the downside of broadcasting that discussion.
I think it’s a fair topic to bring up in general, as long as the questioner isn’t seeking more than their “fair share” (as it were) of control over global allocation.
I think it’s important that overall funding levels reflect the collective wisdom of all donors, rather than larger donors “funding last” and setting global funding levels to their own individual judgment. Stated differently, suppose Big Fund thinks that funding should be allocated 50:50 between strategies A and B. But 80% of small/medium independent donors in the community think strategy A is better and donate to it exclusively. To me, that’s evidence that 50:50 isn’t the correct overall allocation, and it would be suboptimal for Big Fund to use its economic firepower to totally “correct” what the smaller donors have done. (That is not to say I think Big Fund needs to totally disregard the effects of other funders and allocate 50:50 in this circumstance. Nor am I confident in any specific mathematical construct, such as quadratic funding, to set the global funding level in this hypothetical.)
So in my example, Big Fund needs to take steps to ensure that its views are not overweighted in the global allocation of funds. It should then assure independent donors (those not giving through Big Fund) that they are exerting an appropriate amount of influence on global allocation (i.e., that they are not being practically forced to delegate their decisionmaking to Big Fund). Not doing that may suppress independent giving, as independent donors who feel they are being 100% funged by Big Fund will give based on their perception of the cost-effectiveness of Big Fund’s entire portfolio without weighing the cost-effectiveness of their preferred organization.
All that is to say that your post makes me think that communication on this topic to independent donors could be improved.
Makes sense. :) There are at least two different reasons why one might discourage taking more than one’s fair share:
Epistemic: As you said, there may be “collective wisdom” that an individual donor is missing.
Game theoretic: If multiple donors who have different values compete in a game of chicken, this could be worse for all of them than if they can agree to cooperate.
Point #1 may be a reason to not try to outcompete others purely for its own sake. However, reason #2 depends on whether other donors are in fact playing chicken and whether it’s feasible to achieve cooperation. If you genuinely have different values from other donors, you should try to do the best you can by your own values, which could include taking advantage of opportunities to donate less than your “fair” share.
It’s easy to feel warm fuzzies toward being “fair”, but we can imagine scenarios where those fuzzies don’t apply. For example, imagine that the USA and Russia are both contributing development aid to an international organization, and with any funds left over, Russia will buy attack drones from Iran. If there’s an opportunity to get Russia to contribute more than its “fair share” to the development aid, leaving less money left over for drones, the USA should try to do that.
Maybe being the kind of person who would never even consider aiming to gain some advantage for one’s own values is more effective at making cooperation actually happen, but being such a person could also lead to getting exploited. It seems non-obvious how exactly to best ensure that each party gives its fair share, especially when there are so many different possible donors to keep track of, and we have no way of knowing how much each entity would have contributed on its own.
In reading more about this topic, I discovered that there has already been a lot of discussion about donor coordination on the EA Forum that I missed. (I don’t read the Forum very actively.) EAs generally think it’s bad to engage in a game of chicken where you try to let other people fund something first, at least within the EA community—e.g., Cotton-Barratt (2021).
My original thought behind making this post was that the extent of funging for animal donations seemed like a useful thing for various animal donors to be aware of, to be more informed about their giving choices. However, I can imagine that some people see it as a net-negative topic to bring up, because it may encourage more games of donation chicken among donors. My post also mentioned my criticisms of some existing EA animal charities, but I could have done that separately from the discussion of donation funging. I still think it’s reasonable for people to be more informed about how funging works, but I also see the downside of broadcasting that discussion.
I think it’s a fair topic to bring up in general, as long as the questioner isn’t seeking more than their “fair share” (as it were) of control over global allocation.
I think it’s important that overall funding levels reflect the collective wisdom of all donors, rather than larger donors “funding last” and setting global funding levels to their own individual judgment. Stated differently, suppose Big Fund thinks that funding should be allocated 50:50 between strategies A and B. But 80% of small/medium independent donors in the community think strategy A is better and donate to it exclusively. To me, that’s evidence that 50:50 isn’t the correct overall allocation, and it would be suboptimal for Big Fund to use its economic firepower to totally “correct” what the smaller donors have done. (That is not to say I think Big Fund needs to totally disregard the effects of other funders and allocate 50:50 in this circumstance. Nor am I confident in any specific mathematical construct, such as quadratic funding, to set the global funding level in this hypothetical.)
So in my example, Big Fund needs to take steps to ensure that its views are not overweighted in the global allocation of funds. It should then assure independent donors (those not giving through Big Fund) that they are exerting an appropriate amount of influence on global allocation (i.e., that they are not being practically forced to delegate their decisionmaking to Big Fund). Not doing that may suppress independent giving, as independent donors who feel they are being 100% funged by Big Fund will give based on their perception of the cost-effectiveness of Big Fund’s entire portfolio without weighing the cost-effectiveness of their preferred organization.
All that is to say that your post makes me think that communication on this topic to independent donors could be improved.
Makes sense. :) There are at least two different reasons why one might discourage taking more than one’s fair share:
Epistemic: As you said, there may be “collective wisdom” that an individual donor is missing.
Game theoretic: If multiple donors who have different values compete in a game of chicken, this could be worse for all of them than if they can agree to cooperate.
Point #1 may be a reason to not try to outcompete others purely for its own sake. However, reason #2 depends on whether other donors are in fact playing chicken and whether it’s feasible to achieve cooperation. If you genuinely have different values from other donors, you should try to do the best you can by your own values, which could include taking advantage of opportunities to donate less than your “fair” share.
It’s easy to feel warm fuzzies toward being “fair”, but we can imagine scenarios where those fuzzies don’t apply. For example, imagine that the USA and Russia are both contributing development aid to an international organization, and with any funds left over, Russia will buy attack drones from Iran. If there’s an opportunity to get Russia to contribute more than its “fair share” to the development aid, leaving less money left over for drones, the USA should try to do that.
Maybe being the kind of person who would never even consider aiming to gain some advantage for one’s own values is more effective at making cooperation actually happen, but being such a person could also lead to getting exploited. It seems non-obvious how exactly to best ensure that each party gives its fair share, especially when there are so many different possible donors to keep track of, and we have no way of knowing how much each entity would have contributed on its own.