I think that an honest impact evaluation of the EA movement would include the harm caused to customers through FTX’s collapse.
Agreed. However:
In welfare terms alone, the impact of FTX’s collapse on it’s customers seems plausibly comparable to some of the impact win’s of the movement to date. I.e. of the order of $1bn in lost funds.
Are you talking about welfare terms or financial terms? Because $1bn in lost savings of FTX customers seems very different in welfare terms to $1bn spent on bed-nets etc. I think there are strong reasons FTX shouldn’t have acted the way it did, but suggesting these two things are comparable in welfare terms because they are similar in financial terms seems like an error to me.
Yeah I agree, I just mean that $1bn in funds lost to customers across the world is plausibly comparable in welfare terms to other wins on that list. E.g. dividing by 10 to account for differences in income of those affected, it would be around the amount attributed to GiveDirectly on the EA impact page.
(without wanting to make a very direct crude comparison, or getting into the details of that)
I’m also pretty hesitant to attempt to make direct crude comparisons - and I’ll say again that I think there are strong reasons FTX shouldn’t have acted as it did in addition to the direct harm to customers—but I’ll just say that I seem to remember 100x or 1000x multipliers being more common than 10x in similar scenarios.
Agreed. However:
Are you talking about welfare terms or financial terms? Because $1bn in lost savings of FTX customers seems very different in welfare terms to $1bn spent on bed-nets etc. I think there are strong reasons FTX shouldn’t have acted the way it did, but suggesting these two things are comparable in welfare terms because they are similar in financial terms seems like an error to me.
Yeah I agree, I just mean that $1bn in funds lost to customers across the world is plausibly comparable in welfare terms to other wins on that list. E.g. dividing by 10 to account for differences in income of those affected, it would be around the amount attributed to GiveDirectly on the EA impact page.
(without wanting to make a very direct crude comparison, or getting into the details of that)
Okay yes, they may well be.
I’m also pretty hesitant to attempt to make direct crude comparisons - and I’ll say again that I think there are strong reasons FTX shouldn’t have acted as it did in addition to the direct harm to customers—but I’ll just say that I seem to remember 100x or 1000x multipliers being more common than 10x in similar scenarios.