He is saying something about SBF’s charitable ventures, of which at least FTXFF is reasonably seen as an EA organization based on the staff list:
There’s a fundamental difference between Bankman-Fried’s charitable efforts and august ones like the Rockefeller and Ford foundations: these philanthropies are, fundamentally, professional. They’re well-staffed, normally run institutions. They have HR departments and comms teams and accountants and all the other stuff you have when you’re a grown-up running a grown-up organization.
. . . .
The good news for EAs is that Open Philanthropy, the remaining major EA-aligned funding group, is a much more normal organization. Its form of professionalization is something for the rest of the movement to emulate. [Elsewhere, the author has kind words for GiveWell as an organization.]
I am less than convinced, though, that this particular criticism is fairly directed at EA as a whole as opposed to SBF in particular. And it may be cultural/generational: how many 30-year old billionaires are going to be interested in passively giving away their wealth and letting Rockefeller/Ford-style bureaucrats decide where it goes? I’m a decade older, and that sort of passivity/disengagement feels awfully unappealing to me.
My take on the author’s criticism is to repeat the Cynic’s Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” If SBF really wanted to do it his way, what was EA-as-a-community supposed to do, refuse to take his money? That’s a major downside to hits-based donor development. If the EA movement continues to rely so heavily on a few megadonors, the Cynic’s Golden Rule will remain in full force whenever the megadonors wish. It is a testament to Moskovitz and Tuna’s humility that Open Phil operates as it does, not an expectation EA can demand of would-be megadonors with its non-existent leverage.
Agreed, I made the above comment responding to the forum post, and hadn’t read the article—I’ve added a follow-up comment responding to the article’s claims about philanthropic governance.
TLDR: As far as I can tell, the governance of FTXFF was fine and SBF didn’t have undue power. Even if he did have undue power, this seems totally unrelated to the multi-billion dollar blow-up, harm to countless people, harm to the EA ecosystem and to EA’s reputation.
He is saying something about SBF’s charitable ventures, of which at least FTXFF is reasonably seen as an EA organization based on the staff list:
There’s a fundamental difference between Bankman-Fried’s charitable efforts and august ones like the Rockefeller and Ford foundations: these philanthropies are, fundamentally, professional. They’re well-staffed, normally run institutions. They have HR departments and comms teams and accountants and all the other stuff you have when you’re a grown-up running a grown-up organization.
. . . .
The good news for EAs is that Open Philanthropy, the remaining major EA-aligned funding group, is a much more normal organization. Its form of professionalization is something for the rest of the movement to emulate. [Elsewhere, the author has kind words for GiveWell as an organization.]
I am less than convinced, though, that this particular criticism is fairly directed at EA as a whole as opposed to SBF in particular. And it may be cultural/generational: how many 30-year old billionaires are going to be interested in passively giving away their wealth and letting Rockefeller/Ford-style bureaucrats decide where it goes? I’m a decade older, and that sort of passivity/disengagement feels awfully unappealing to me.
My take on the author’s criticism is to repeat the Cynic’s Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” If SBF really wanted to do it his way, what was EA-as-a-community supposed to do, refuse to take his money? That’s a major downside to hits-based donor development. If the EA movement continues to rely so heavily on a few megadonors, the Cynic’s Golden Rule will remain in full force whenever the megadonors wish. It is a testament to Moskovitz and Tuna’s humility that Open Phil operates as it does, not an expectation EA can demand of would-be megadonors with its non-existent leverage.
Agreed, I made the above comment responding to the forum post, and hadn’t read the article—I’ve added a follow-up comment responding to the article’s claims about philanthropic governance.
TLDR: As far as I can tell, the governance of FTXFF was fine and SBF didn’t have undue power. Even if he did have undue power, this seems totally unrelated to the multi-billion dollar blow-up, harm to countless people, harm to the EA ecosystem and to EA’s reputation.