Thanks for raising these points Seth. I agree that the burden of proof is higher than what we currently have. This paper and the companies that some of us are building are just the start of proving that this might someday happen.
I think it’s critical to note that guiding companies are basically for-profits. There’s nothing distinguishing them from for-profits except that the profits go to charities and that the investors are philanthropists buying out companies or funding new guiding company initiatives.
The good news is that there’s one large successful case with Newman’s Own, who have donated about 570 million USD to charities and give away all of their profits. There’s more smaller projects that are successful and donated millions, but nothing that I know of that’s close to Newman’s . I see one big difference between Newman’s Own and the other initiatives that are less successful: money.
I hired a research intern to validate that and he’s now drafting up his thesis on the economic sustainability of this business model (I can share it here once it’s done), and the main conclusion is that the issue with this is money. If you have someone like Paul Newman funding your guiding company there’s no reason it can’t be big, and that turns out to be true, because Newman’s Own is a multi-billion dollar company in a very competitive space.If the wealthiest philanthropists put their weight behind this and “invest” in the next best guiding companies, I don’t see why these companies cannot be the biggest in the world. With the money you can hire the best team, and the best teams build the biggest companies. Currently, the infrastructure (venture capital, stock markets, etc.) are lacking for guiding companies, but these can be built. This will take a long time.
To answer your other questions, I have no evidence that any Fortune 500 company tried this, but I don’t think that kind of initiative would be public. You could argue that Warren Buffet, who intends to give away almost all of his wealth, is buying and investing into companies to generate more profits that he can give away to charities. But that’s indirect. Why hasn’t he bought a company and turned it into a guiding company? Twitter and EM are an interesting example as well. Maybe EM would use Twitter to fund his next EA endeavor (e.g. backing up humanity to another galaxy). Would Twitter be a guiding company in that case?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I think that I should have specified ‘shareholder-corporate-governance-structure for-profit’ rather than just ‘for-profit’ 😃 and once we get to that level of granularity, maybe it is plausible that alternatives haven’t abounded simply because of a lack of imagination!
Newman’s is indeed a nice counter-example.
And FWIW, I am a coworker of Jasper’s at Global Income Coin, and we’re trying to do something exactly like what you propose but with currency...so I really hope it’s viable!!
Regarding the burden of proof… I would think that such a burden is a function of the purpose that it serves. In the criminal justice system, we require a very high burden of proof, “beyond a reasonable doubt”, because of the enormous cost of a false positive: depriving an innocent person of life and/or liberty. In the civil context, a mere preponderance (greater than 50%) as if it is more likely than not that one has violated another’s rights and harmed them, they should be compensated commensurately, even though there may still be a significant chance that we are wrong.
Regarding the burden of proof here, in considering whether and to what degree one should support a project, one should consider the probability associated with different outcomes and the utility associated with said outcomes. This is why even if you are very skeptical of Guided Consumption, supporting it, especially at early stages, is justified.
I am interested in learning more about GIC and will very soon be taking a look at the project. I love the idea of global UBI and very much want to work toward a world in which everyone has a chance toward living a life of dignity and having a chance at his or her dreams. Perhaps there are some opportunities for collaboration here!
Thanks for raising these points Seth. I agree that the burden of proof is higher than what we currently have. This paper and the companies that some of us are building are just the start of proving that this might someday happen.
I think it’s critical to note that guiding companies are basically for-profits. There’s nothing distinguishing them from for-profits except that the profits go to charities and that the investors are philanthropists buying out companies or funding new guiding company initiatives.
The good news is that there’s one large successful case with Newman’s Own, who have donated about 570 million USD to charities and give away all of their profits. There’s more smaller projects that are successful and donated millions, but nothing that I know of that’s close to Newman’s . I see one big difference between Newman’s Own and the other initiatives that are less successful: money.
I hired a research intern to validate that and he’s now drafting up his thesis on the economic sustainability of this business model (I can share it here once it’s done), and the main conclusion is that the issue with this is money. If you have someone like Paul Newman funding your guiding company there’s no reason it can’t be big, and that turns out to be true, because Newman’s Own is a multi-billion dollar company in a very competitive space. If the wealthiest philanthropists put their weight behind this and “invest” in the next best guiding companies, I don’t see why these companies cannot be the biggest in the world. With the money you can hire the best team, and the best teams build the biggest companies. Currently, the infrastructure (venture capital, stock markets, etc.) are lacking for guiding companies, but these can be built. This will take a long time.
To answer your other questions, I have no evidence that any Fortune 500 company tried this, but I don’t think that kind of initiative would be public. You could argue that Warren Buffet, who intends to give away almost all of his wealth, is buying and investing into companies to generate more profits that he can give away to charities. But that’s indirect. Why hasn’t he bought a company and turned it into a guiding company? Twitter and EM are an interesting example as well. Maybe EM would use Twitter to fund his next EA endeavor (e.g. backing up humanity to another galaxy). Would Twitter be a guiding company in that case?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply—I think that I should have specified ‘shareholder-corporate-governance-structure for-profit’ rather than just ‘for-profit’ 😃 and once we get to that level of granularity, maybe it is plausible that alternatives haven’t abounded simply because of a lack of imagination!
Newman’s is indeed a nice counter-example.
And FWIW, I am a coworker of Jasper’s at Global Income Coin, and we’re trying to do something exactly like what you propose but with currency...so I really hope it’s viable!!
Regarding the burden of proof… I would think that such a burden is a function of the purpose that it serves. In the criminal justice system, we require a very high burden of proof, “beyond a reasonable doubt”, because of the enormous cost of a false positive: depriving an innocent person of life and/or liberty. In the civil context, a mere preponderance (greater than 50%) as if it is more likely than not that one has violated another’s rights and harmed them, they should be compensated commensurately, even though there may still be a significant chance that we are wrong.
Regarding the burden of proof here, in considering whether and to what degree one should support a project, one should consider the probability associated with different outcomes and the utility associated with said outcomes. This is why even if you are very skeptical of Guided Consumption, supporting it, especially at early stages, is justified.
I am interested in learning more about GIC and will very soon be taking a look at the project. I love the idea of global UBI and very much want to work toward a world in which everyone has a chance toward living a life of dignity and having a chance at his or her dreams. Perhaps there are some opportunities for collaboration here!