A gripe I have with EA is that it is not radical enough. The american civil rights movement of 1950-1960s was very effective and altruistic, even though it’s members were arrested, and it’s leaders were wiretapped by the FBI and assassinated in suspicious ways. Or consider the stonewall riots. More contemporarily, I think Uber is good for the world counterfactually. It’s good that Nakamoto made bitcoin. It’s good that Snowden leaked the NSA stuff. (probably, I’m less sure about the impact of these examples.)
Most crime is bad, and most altruistic crime is ineffective or counterproductive. But not all.
Edited to clarify that my experiences were all with the same organization.
Some personal examples:
I worked for an EA-adjacent organization and was repeatedly asked, and witnessed co-workers being asked, to use campaign donation data to solicit people for political and charitable donations. This is illegal[1]. My employer openly stated they knew it was illegal, but said that it was fine because “everyone does it and we need the money”. I was also asked, and witnessed other people being told, to falsify financial reports to funders to make it look like we had spent grant money that, in various situations, we either: hadn’t spent, didn’t know whether we’d spent it or not, or may have spent on things that the grant hadn’t been given for. Depending on how the specific sums of monies had actually been spent, that was anywhere from illegal to at least a massive breach of the contracts with our funders.
I worked for an EA-adjacent organization and was asked, and witnessed other people being told, to falsify financial reports to funders to make it look like we had spent grant money that, in various situations, we either: hadn’t spent, didn’t know whether we’d spent it or not, or may have spent on things that the grant hadn’t been given for. Depending on how the specific sums of monies had actually been spent, that was anywhere from illegal to at least a massive breach of the contracts with our funders.
- Voluntary human challenge trials - Run a real money prediction market for US citizens - Random compliance stuff that startups don’t always bother with: GDPR, purchased mailing lists, D&I training in california, …
Here are some illegal (or gray-legal) things that I’d consider effectively altruistic though I predict no “EA” org will ever do: - Produce medicine without a patent - Pill-mill prescription-as-a-service for certain medications - Embryo selection or human genome editing for intelligence - Forge college degrees - Sell organs - Sex work earn-to-give - Helping illegal immigration
Aside from animal liberation-style direct action activities, the things that most readily comes to my mind are labor law/employment law.
Hypothetical example: An organization having a team retreat in Mexico, in which they (employees who are not citizens of Mexico and who do not have the legal right to work in Mexico) do some work on their laptops. This seems very minor to me, and the risk of local tax authorities coming after some people doing a few hours of work on laptops while hanging out in their Airbnb seems miniscule. But it is something that employees travelling internationally for a team retreat should probably be aware of.
Similar issues would arise with a nomadic team, that moves around from country to country.
However, I don’t view this as a major concern within the EA community. I’m responding more so to the idea of “are there any laws EA orgs might ask their employees to break,” rather than the idea of “which of these are concerns worth bothering about.”
Can we add “ask their employees to break the law” to this
A gripe I have with EA is that it is not radical enough. The american civil rights movement of 1950-1960s was very effective and altruistic, even though it’s members were arrested, and it’s leaders were wiretapped by the FBI and assassinated in suspicious ways. Or consider the stonewall riots.
More contemporarily, I think Uber is good for the world counterfactually. It’s good that Nakamoto made bitcoin. It’s good that Snowden leaked the NSA stuff. (probably, I’m less sure about the impact of these examples.)
Most crime is bad, and most altruistic crime is ineffective or counterproductive. But not all.
Do you have examples of laws EA orgs might ask their employees to break?
Edited to clarify that my experiences were all with the same organization.
Some personal examples:
I worked for an EA-adjacent organization and was repeatedly asked, and witnessed co-workers being asked, to use campaign donation data to solicit people for political and charitable donations. This is illegal[1]. My employer openly stated they knew it was illegal, but said that it was fine because “everyone does it and we need the money”. I was also asked, and witnessed other people being told, to falsify financial reports to funders to make it look like we had spent grant money that, in various situations, we either: hadn’t spent, didn’t know whether we’d spent it or not, or may have spent on things that the grant hadn’t been given for. Depending on how the specific sums of monies had actually been spent, that was anywhere from illegal to at least a massive breach of the contracts with our funders.
https://www.fec.gov/updates/sale-or-use-contributor-information/
Wtf?! This is extremely concerning.
- Voluntary human challenge trials
- Run a real money prediction market for US citizens
- Random compliance stuff that startups don’t always bother with: GDPR, purchased mailing lists, D&I training in california, …
Here are some illegal (or gray-legal) things that I’d consider effectively altruistic though I predict no “EA” org will ever do:
- Produce medicine without a patent
- Pill-mill prescription-as-a-service for certain medications
- Embryo selection or human genome editing for intelligence
- Forge college degrees
- Sell organs
- Sex work earn-to-give
- Helping illegal immigration
Aside from animal liberation-style direct action activities, the things that most readily comes to my mind are labor law/employment law.
Hypothetical example: An organization having a team retreat in Mexico, in which they (employees who are not citizens of Mexico and who do not have the legal right to work in Mexico) do some work on their laptops. This seems very minor to me, and the risk of local tax authorities coming after some people doing a few hours of work on laptops while hanging out in their Airbnb seems miniscule. But it is something that employees travelling internationally for a team retreat should probably be aware of.
Similar issues would arise with a nomadic team, that moves around from country to country.
However, I don’t view this as a major concern within the EA community. I’m responding more so to the idea of “are there any laws EA orgs might ask their employees to break,” rather than the idea of “which of these are concerns worth bothering about.”