I agree that having a better affordance for this seems important. That said:
I don’t think the management problem is that large: for instance, I have a full-time job and also a number of EA side projects.
There are principal-agent problems involved with having someone else manage your funds, so you might lose some effectiveness going from managing the projects you want to fund yourself to having someone else do it.
Another random note: It might be hard to convince people that this is viable long-term without some kind of endowment (although I’m not sure).
I suspect you are not “really trying” / putting in an exceptional effort into your side projects. Nascent EA projects seem like entrepreneurship in that the low hanging fruit tends to be picked, so they consistently require an exceptional, devoted effort in order to actually make the desired impact. If the person who’s working on an EA project is not devoting their life to it, I would generally expect the project to deliver average or below-average returns.
Basically, I think Ben Todd is right in that EA projects need devoted, exceptional management.
Further, I suspect some of these EA projects could be funded in a way which would generate a return for the fund. Many EA projects could be for-profit—maybe you would require the project to demonstrate a plausible opportunity for profit, at least in the early stages of the fund?
Nascent EA projects seem like entrepreneurship in that the low hanging fruit tends to be picked, so they consistently require an exceptional, devoted effort in order to actually make the desired impact. If the person who’s working on an EA project is not devoting their life to it, I would generally expect the project to deliver average or below-average returns.
I don’t think your analogy holds up, and I don’t think your conclusion is correct.
Five years ago the EA movement didn’t exist. Entrepreneruship has been around for centuries. This year, more businesses will be started than there are effective altruists in the world, probably by a factor of at least 100. I would be incredibly surprised if the low-hanging fruit depletion in EA projects were anywhere near comparable to that in entrepreneurship.
Furthermore, there’s plenty of evidence that non-full-time EA projects can have good returns. Harvard Effective Altruism has produced exceptionally good returns on an investment of less than 10% of its organizers’ productive time (on average) in college. Max Tegmark founded FLI and FQXI with much less than full-time effort (I don’t know precisely how much). I don’t think anyone at CSER is working on it full-time.
Some projects are good ideas and just aren’t big enough to need full-time management.
I suspect you are not “really trying” / putting in an exceptional effort into your side projects.
Obviously I can’t actually defend myself from this accusation until the results are in, but I think it’s pretty uncharitable based on my track record.
Edit: I changed my mind. I think Harvard EA is probably a great example of low hanging fruit. I don’t know for sure whether someone else would have started it if you hadn’t, certainly not anytime soon, and it probably does make an impact (by increasing the “surface area” of EA).
(old comment which I no longer believe: “My tone came off wrong, didn’t mean to accuse you personally of ineffectiveness in side projects. Maybe you’re an exception—I haven’t been following your projects closely—but in general, I tend to think that it’s really really hard to do a really good job, the kind where one could hope to move the needle on a global scale, unless one is constantly obsessing over the problems.”)
(Historical note: I didn’t actually start HEA, merely took it over after a complete leadership turnover. I do think that without my and John Sturm’s intervention it would have gone defunct though.)
I agree that having a better affordance for this seems important. That said:
I don’t think the management problem is that large: for instance, I have a full-time job and also a number of EA side projects.
There are principal-agent problems involved with having someone else manage your funds, so you might lose some effectiveness going from managing the projects you want to fund yourself to having someone else do it.
Another random note: It might be hard to convince people that this is viable long-term without some kind of endowment (although I’m not sure).
I suspect you are not “really trying” / putting in an exceptional effort into your side projects. Nascent EA projects seem like entrepreneurship in that the low hanging fruit tends to be picked, so they consistently require an exceptional, devoted effort in order to actually make the desired impact. If the person who’s working on an EA project is not devoting their life to it, I would generally expect the project to deliver average or below-average returns.
Basically, I think Ben Todd is right in that EA projects need devoted, exceptional management.
Further, I suspect some of these EA projects could be funded in a way which would generate a return for the fund. Many EA projects could be for-profit—maybe you would require the project to demonstrate a plausible opportunity for profit, at least in the early stages of the fund?
I don’t think your analogy holds up, and I don’t think your conclusion is correct.
Five years ago the EA movement didn’t exist. Entrepreneruship has been around for centuries. This year, more businesses will be started than there are effective altruists in the world, probably by a factor of at least 100. I would be incredibly surprised if the low-hanging fruit depletion in EA projects were anywhere near comparable to that in entrepreneurship.
Furthermore, there’s plenty of evidence that non-full-time EA projects can have good returns. Harvard Effective Altruism has produced exceptionally good returns on an investment of less than 10% of its organizers’ productive time (on average) in college. Max Tegmark founded FLI and FQXI with much less than full-time effort (I don’t know precisely how much). I don’t think anyone at CSER is working on it full-time.
Some projects are good ideas and just aren’t big enough to need full-time management.
Obviously I can’t actually defend myself from this accusation until the results are in, but I think it’s pretty uncharitable based on my track record.
Ok, fair enough.
Edit: I changed my mind. I think Harvard EA is probably a great example of low hanging fruit. I don’t know for sure whether someone else would have started it if you hadn’t, certainly not anytime soon, and it probably does make an impact (by increasing the “surface area” of EA).
(old comment which I no longer believe: “My tone came off wrong, didn’t mean to accuse you personally of ineffectiveness in side projects. Maybe you’re an exception—I haven’t been following your projects closely—but in general, I tend to think that it’s really really hard to do a really good job, the kind where one could hope to move the needle on a global scale, unless one is constantly obsessing over the problems.”)
(Historical note: I didn’t actually start HEA, merely took it over after a complete leadership turnover. I do think that without my and John Sturm’s intervention it would have gone defunct though.)