Another potential intervention could be to split up existing organisations into more organisations. I can’t think of an organisation where this would be obviously suitable so am not advocating for this happening right now, but I think it would make sense for organisations to split as they grow further in the future.
I explicitly argued for this here, albeit mainly on the grounds that it gives better fidelity of feedback, thus allowing for better competition. My current views, tentatively:
CEA has substantially too many (and too unrelated) responsibilities.
I’m less clear about 80k and Founders Pledge, who have the next widest remits, but who each have a clearer unifying theme running through their projects.
I’m also very worried about 5 trustees having theoretical authority over all the orgs within effective ventures, which collectively constitute basically the whole ‘movement’ part of ‘the EA movement’. There’s a case that the legal upside of this is so high that it outweighs the risks, which I discussed in a thread starting here with Peter Wildeford, but after his most recent response as well as Brendan_Wong’s comment, I still have the impression that this case is not very robust, and that healthier alternative paths exist.
In each of the above discussions I’ve generally been quite downvoted, so perhaps I should take that as evidence that my views are wrong—but in the subsequent discussions I’ve never felt like the points I raised had been adequately resolved.
There are also potentially other options to manage the five-trustee problem.
If EVF is basically supposed to be a fiscal sponsor-like entity that makes the trains run on time and supports (rather than dictate to) its constituent organizations, it’s not clear why people like Will MacAskill need to be on the board at all (or why it is the highest and best use of their time). The problem could be mitigated by expanding the board to seven, nine, or 11 members and by choosing people who do not have loads of “soft power” in the community for most of the seats.
I am not sure about UK law, but on the US end, you can have a nonprofit corporation whose board is elected by members (and you can define members however you want, it doesn’t have to be open enrollment). Those members could even be other EA organizations if desired. So if the costs of splitting up EVF were thought too high, adding a layer of members (maybe 50-100?) whose sole purpose would basically be to re-elect (or remove) board members as necessary would at least provide some protection against the concentration of control.
I explicitly argued for this here, albeit mainly on the grounds that it gives better fidelity of feedback, thus allowing for better competition. My current views, tentatively:
CEA has substantially too many (and too unrelated) responsibilities.
I’m less clear about 80k and Founders Pledge, who have the next widest remits, but who each have a clearer unifying theme running through their projects.
I’m also very worried about 5 trustees having theoretical authority over all the orgs within effective ventures, which collectively constitute basically the whole ‘movement’ part of ‘the EA movement’. There’s a case that the legal upside of this is so high that it outweighs the risks, which I discussed in a thread starting here with Peter Wildeford, but after his most recent response as well as Brendan_Wong’s comment, I still have the impression that this case is not very robust, and that healthier alternative paths exist.
In each of the above discussions I’ve generally been quite downvoted, so perhaps I should take that as evidence that my views are wrong—but in the subsequent discussions I’ve never felt like the points I raised had been adequately resolved.
There are also potentially other options to manage the five-trustee problem.
If EVF is basically supposed to be a fiscal sponsor-like entity that makes the trains run on time and supports (rather than dictate to) its constituent organizations, it’s not clear why people like Will MacAskill need to be on the board at all (or why it is the highest and best use of their time). The problem could be mitigated by expanding the board to seven, nine, or 11 members and by choosing people who do not have loads of “soft power” in the community for most of the seats.
I am not sure about UK law, but on the US end, you can have a nonprofit corporation whose board is elected by members (and you can define members however you want, it doesn’t have to be open enrollment). Those members could even be other EA organizations if desired. So if the costs of splitting up EVF were thought too high, adding a layer of members (maybe 50-100?) whose sole purpose would basically be to re-elect (or remove) board members as necessary would at least provide some protection against the concentration of control.