In most cases I don’t see a compelling reason to fund an individual rather than an organization. I’m also worried about what kind of message this sends. To be crass, it makes EA look like a circlejerk.
The fear is, put bluntly that this is another way to turn EA people away from focusing on rigourously evidence backed projects for the poor to funding and supporting the lives of rich white people who they are internet friends with to work on speculative projects with no evidence backing.
So long as the amounts and numbers remain fairly small, I think that some kind of speculative VC style funding of people or projects in the EA space is fine. But if people did start to make a career out of gratipay—I think a lot more skepticism would be needed.
There are over 1k communities on Gratipay, many doing very arguably less directly important things. This isn’t just money for anyone, it’s supposed to be for projects done by people who haven’t set up official nonprofits (very few people have done this). It also does work for organizations, such as those online.
In most cases I don’t see a compelling reason to fund an individual rather than an organization.
I don’t see the difference between funding individuals and organisations, since you can treat individuals as one-person organisations with a narrower range of projects, and by funding organisations you’re ultimately funding individuals. Some of the things produced by .impact members, which I believe are mostly done by individuals or small groups, compare quite well with those produced by organisations.
Lila, see my comment above. Also notice the current Status quo is, as AlasdairGives mentioned, rich white people who are receiving the money through institutions, which sometimes have to pay other rich white people fees and other costs, people who are not doing EA work. Overall my best guess is that donating to institutions is about twice worse than donating to individuals in terms of cost per employee and task. It could be more.
It is important that at least one or two institutions remain affiliated with high status entities. But we no longer need to guarantee this. With Singer on LYCS, Musk and Freeman suporting Superintelligence related NGOs, FHI at Oxford and CSER and FLI burgeoning, we have solved the status question almost to satisfaction. Signalling is not our problem, efficiency is. And 90k can pay one person within institutions, and three or more outside institutions. As long as the feedback and trust mechanisms are good, the next marginal dollar should go to direct donations to individuals. Furthermore since those dollars are donations, and are not conditional on any work, they can be obtained by those who are not currently in their country of citizenship, which enormously facilitates moving for those whose efforts are better allocated elsewhere.
My concern is that feedback and trust mechanisms aren’t good. Even the best of us I think would struggle to produce quality work without a boss and coworkers and deadlines. If organizations are actually just using gratipay to pay their employees without taxes, there are some legal concerns. People don’t take kindly to allegations of tax-dodging, and if something like this were to get out, it would probably hurt donations.
In most cases I don’t see a compelling reason to fund an individual rather than an organization. I’m also worried about what kind of message this sends. To be crass, it makes EA look like a circlejerk.
The fear is, put bluntly that this is another way to turn EA people away from focusing on rigourously evidence backed projects for the poor to funding and supporting the lives of rich white people who they are internet friends with to work on speculative projects with no evidence backing.
So long as the amounts and numbers remain fairly small, I think that some kind of speculative VC style funding of people or projects in the EA space is fine. But if people did start to make a career out of gratipay—I think a lot more skepticism would be needed.
There are over 1k communities on Gratipay, many doing very arguably less directly important things. This isn’t just money for anyone, it’s supposed to be for projects done by people who haven’t set up official nonprofits (very few people have done this). It also does work for organizations, such as those online.
I don’t see the difference between funding individuals and organisations, since you can treat individuals as one-person organisations with a narrower range of projects, and by funding organisations you’re ultimately funding individuals. Some of the things produced by .impact members, which I believe are mostly done by individuals or small groups, compare quite well with those produced by organisations.
Lila, see my comment above. Also notice the current Status quo is, as AlasdairGives mentioned, rich white people who are receiving the money through institutions, which sometimes have to pay other rich white people fees and other costs, people who are not doing EA work. Overall my best guess is that donating to institutions is about twice worse than donating to individuals in terms of cost per employee and task. It could be more.
It is important that at least one or two institutions remain affiliated with high status entities. But we no longer need to guarantee this. With Singer on LYCS, Musk and Freeman suporting Superintelligence related NGOs, FHI at Oxford and CSER and FLI burgeoning, we have solved the status question almost to satisfaction. Signalling is not our problem, efficiency is. And 90k can pay one person within institutions, and three or more outside institutions. As long as the feedback and trust mechanisms are good, the next marginal dollar should go to direct donations to individuals. Furthermore since those dollars are donations, and are not conditional on any work, they can be obtained by those who are not currently in their country of citizenship, which enormously facilitates moving for those whose efforts are better allocated elsewhere.
My concern is that feedback and trust mechanisms aren’t good. Even the best of us I think would struggle to produce quality work without a boss and coworkers and deadlines. If organizations are actually just using gratipay to pay their employees without taxes, there are some legal concerns. People don’t take kindly to allegations of tax-dodging, and if something like this were to get out, it would probably hurt donations.