Thanks, I thought you (or your friend) had some interesting points.
With regard the ’80k is a central planner’, I think it’s important to bear in mind that economists don’t object to planning per se. It is good that individual firms perform their own planning; what matters is that:
Firms have the right incentives.
The price mechanism provides signals between firms, that also aid intra-firm decision making via shadow pricing.
Planning occurs at the right scale—firms are under optimization pressure to be neither too small nor too large.
All of which are of course largely absent from the charity sector.
I think 80k is not subject to this critique insomuchas they direct a relatively small fraction of total resources. They’re more similar to a single firm, which has a view on an under-addressed market niche, than a socialist planner trying to solve for everything in general equilibrium. Firms often persue plans without direct price signals (e.g. developing a new product for which no market or price currently exists), and I would analogize 80k to this in some regards.
Where I do think you could make this criticism would be with regard the ‘planning’ of the EA movement. To the extent you think that they have over-emphased applying to EA groups (or at least failing to communicate adequately their nuance on the issue) this looks like a classic case of central planners massively over-producing one good and under-producing another, with no price mechanism to equilbriate supply and demand.
Thanks, I thought you (or your friend) had some interesting points.
With regard the ’80k is a central planner’, I think it’s important to bear in mind that economists don’t object to planning per se. It is good that individual firms perform their own planning; what matters is that:
Firms have the right incentives.
The price mechanism provides signals between firms, that also aid intra-firm decision making via shadow pricing.
Planning occurs at the right scale—firms are under optimization pressure to be neither too small nor too large.
All of which are of course largely absent from the charity sector.
I think 80k is not subject to this critique insomuchas they direct a relatively small fraction of total resources. They’re more similar to a single firm, which has a view on an under-addressed market niche, than a socialist planner trying to solve for everything in general equilibrium. Firms often persue plans without direct price signals (e.g. developing a new product for which no market or price currently exists), and I would analogize 80k to this in some regards.
Where I do think you could make this criticism would be with regard the ‘planning’ of the EA movement. To the extent you think that they have over-emphased applying to EA groups (or at least failing to communicate adequately their nuance on the issue) this looks like a classic case of central planners massively over-producing one good and under-producing another, with no price mechanism to equilbriate supply and demand.