I guess I wouldn’t recommend the donor lottery to people who wouldn’t be happy entering a regular lottery for their charitable giving (but I would usually recommend them to be happy with that regular lottery!).
Btw, I’m now understanding your suggestions as not really alternatives to the donor lottery, since I don’t think you buy into its premises, but alternatives to e.g. EA Funds.
(In support of the premise of respecting individual autonomy about where to allocate money: I think that making requests to pool money in a way that rich donors expect to lose control would risk making EA pattern match at a surface level to a scam, and might drive people away. For a more extreme version of this, imagine someone claiming that as soon as you’ve decided to donate some money you should send it all to the One True EA Collective fund, so that it can be fairly distributed, and it would be a weird propagation of wealth to allow rich people to take any time to think about where to give their money; whether or not you think an optimal taxation system would equalise wealth much more, I think it’s fairly clear that the extreme bid that everyone pool donations would be destructive because it would put off donors.
I guess I wouldn’t recommend the donor lottery to people who wouldn’t be happy entering a regular lottery for their charitable giving
Strong +1.
If I won a donor lottery, I would consider myself to have no obligation whatsoever towards the other lottery participants, and I think many other lottery participants feel the same way. So it’s potentially quite bad if some participants are thinking of me as an “allocator” of their money. To the extent there is ambiguity in the current setup, it seems important to try to eliminate that.
Interesting! I would feel I had been quasirandomly selected to allocate our shared pool of donations—and would definitely feel some obligation/responsibility.
As evidence that other people feel the same way, I would point to the extensive research and write-ups that previously selected allocators have done. A key explanation for why they’ve done that is a sense of obligation/responsibility for the group.
I don’t think the research is much evidence here. The whole point of the donor lottery is that the winner can justify doing a lot more research. This would be the case even if they hated the other entrants.
You’re right that they wouldn’t necessarily have to share that research, but many people enjoy posting on the forum anyway. Previously Jonas has been at pains to clarify that such reports are not required.
Your policy seems reasonable. Although I wonder if the analogy with a regular lottery might risk confusing people. When one thinks of “entering a regular lottery for charitable giving”, one might think of additional money—money that counterfactually wouldn’t have gone to charity. But that’s not true of donor lotteries—there is no additional money.
On your second point: “making requests to pool money in a way that rich donors expect to lose control” describes the EA Funds, which I don’t think are a scam. In fact, the EA funds pool money in such a way that donors are certain to lose control.
I guess I wouldn’t recommend the donor lottery to people who wouldn’t be happy entering a regular lottery for their charitable giving (but I would usually recommend them to be happy with that regular lottery!).
Btw, I’m now understanding your suggestions as not really alternatives to the donor lottery, since I don’t think you buy into its premises, but alternatives to e.g. EA Funds.
(In support of the premise of respecting individual autonomy about where to allocate money: I think that making requests to pool money in a way that rich donors expect to lose control would risk making EA pattern match at a surface level to a scam, and might drive people away. For a more extreme version of this, imagine someone claiming that as soon as you’ve decided to donate some money you should send it all to the One True EA Collective fund, so that it can be fairly distributed, and it would be a weird propagation of wealth to allow rich people to take any time to think about where to give their money; whether or not you think an optimal taxation system would equalise wealth much more, I think it’s fairly clear that the extreme bid that everyone pool donations would be destructive because it would put off donors.
Strong +1.
If I won a donor lottery, I would consider myself to have no obligation whatsoever towards the other lottery participants, and I think many other lottery participants feel the same way. So it’s potentially quite bad if some participants are thinking of me as an “allocator” of their money. To the extent there is ambiguity in the current setup, it seems important to try to eliminate that.
Interesting! I would feel I had been quasirandomly selected to allocate our shared pool of donations—and would definitely feel some obligation/responsibility.
As evidence that other people feel the same way, I would point to the extensive research and write-ups that previously selected allocators have done. A key explanation for why they’ve done that is a sense of obligation/responsibility for the group.
I don’t think the research is much evidence here. The whole point of the donor lottery is that the winner can justify doing a lot more research. This would be the case even if they hated the other entrants.
You’re right that they wouldn’t necessarily have to share that research, but many people enjoy posting on the forum anyway. Previously Jonas has been at pains to clarify that such reports are not required.
Your policy seems reasonable. Although I wonder if the analogy with a regular lottery might risk confusing people. When one thinks of “entering a regular lottery for charitable giving”, one might think of additional money—money that counterfactually wouldn’t have gone to charity. But that’s not true of donor lotteries—there is no additional money.
On your second point: “making requests to pool money in a way that rich donors expect to lose control” describes the EA Funds, which I don’t think are a scam. In fact, the EA funds pool money in such a way that donors are certain to lose control.