Some half baked worries about ‘EA has loads of money now’
We have loads of money now. But none of it is in my bank account.
There’s a lot of money in EA right now.
This money is not evenly distributed. A small number of people have influence over a very large amount of money.
Everyone else doesn’t have this money. But they can apply to get some of this money through eg. grants, prizes or jobs.
Money is nice
Getting a slice of EA money is good because:
Money means you can buy things and things are nice and even sometimes necessary (like luxuries or necessities, respectively)
Getting money enables you to work on things you actually think are meaningful and important (eg .EA stuff)
Getting money is validating. It means that sensible smart expert people have looked at you and your plans, and think they are valuable.
This packs a lot of things together, and means that getting prizes, grants, jobs, money can feel very important
Money rich time poor
The people who do have a lot of money don’t have a lot of time, and will have to do pretty shallow assessments for determining who gets the money (or at least this is my strong suspicion).
There’s a big difference between whether something is valuable on a quick look, and whether it’s valuable after an in depth look.
It sucks pretty hard to be rejected for applications for EA money (see getting a slice of EA money is good)
It sucks really pretty hard if it seems like you haven’t been assessed thoroughly.
This can lead to bad things probably
This could mean:
People optimise for applications that look good on a shallow assessment (eg. buzzwords, signalling) than on a deep assessment (eg. deep knowledge of stuff)
People apply for funding for things/ do things that they think will get funded (eg. things of a list of things) rather than what they think is actually valuable
Basically this is a principal agent problem probably, or at least something like that. Alice (funders) wants Bob (EAs) to clean her house (do valuable projects). And Bob (EAs) really wants money (money). But Alice (funders) has poor eyesight (doesn’t have much time) and so can’t tell easily between a clean house (good project) and a dirty house (bad project).
I think I got a bit carried away with the above example, but the point is that if we’re not careful it’s gonna be messy.
Also
In general, large inequalities of money, influence, status, access to information seem kinda bad. And it seems like there are some pretty big inequalities in EA rn.
One perhaps opposite concern I have about this: having lots of money dispersed by grantmakers means you’re less like a market economy, and more like a communist economy (except rich, and the central planners are just giving you cash). But this is bad, because it’s better to live in a market economy—you have a healthier relationship to your money because you earned it (as opposed to “well I guess I just asked for this money and now I have it so I hope I’m not squandering it in someone else’s eyes”), and the constraints you feel in seem more real rather than “why aren’t the money fairies giving me stuff”.
I share your concerns; what would you recommend doing about it though? One initiative that may come in handy here is the increased focus on getting “regular people” to do grantmaking work, which at least helps spread resources around somewhat. Not sure there’s anything we can do to stop the general bad incentives of acting for the sake of money rather than altruism. For that, we just need to hope most members of the community have strong virtues, which tbh I think we’re pretty good about.
Some half baked worries about ‘EA has loads of money now’
We have loads of money now. But none of it is in my bank account.
There’s a lot of money in EA right now.
This money is not evenly distributed. A small number of people have influence over a very large amount of money.
Everyone else doesn’t have this money. But they can apply to get some of this money through eg. grants, prizes or jobs.
Money is nice
Getting a slice of EA money is good because:
Money means you can buy things and things are nice and even sometimes necessary (like luxuries or necessities, respectively)
Getting money enables you to work on things you actually think are meaningful and important (eg .EA stuff)
Getting money is validating. It means that sensible smart expert people have looked at you and your plans, and think they are valuable.
This packs a lot of things together, and means that getting prizes, grants, jobs, money can feel very important
Money rich time poor
The people who do have a lot of money don’t have a lot of time, and will have to do pretty shallow assessments for determining who gets the money (or at least this is my strong suspicion).
There’s a big difference between whether something is valuable on a quick look, and whether it’s valuable after an in depth look.
It sucks pretty hard to be rejected for applications for EA money (see getting a slice of EA money is good)
It sucks really pretty hard if it seems like you haven’t been assessed thoroughly.
This can lead to bad things probably
This could mean:
People optimise for applications that look good on a shallow assessment (eg. buzzwords, signalling) than on a deep assessment (eg. deep knowledge of stuff)
People apply for funding for things/ do things that they think will get funded (eg. things of a list of things) rather than what they think is actually valuable
Basically this is a principal agent problem probably, or at least something like that. Alice (funders) wants Bob (EAs) to clean her house (do valuable projects). And Bob (EAs) really wants money (money). But Alice (funders) has poor eyesight (doesn’t have much time) and so can’t tell easily between a clean house (good project) and a dirty house (bad project).
I think I got a bit carried away with the above example, but the point is that if we’re not careful it’s gonna be messy.
Also
In general, large inequalities of money, influence, status, access to information seem kinda bad. And it seems like there are some pretty big inequalities in EA rn.
One perhaps opposite concern I have about this: having lots of money dispersed by grantmakers means you’re less like a market economy, and more like a communist economy (except rich, and the central planners are just giving you cash). But this is bad, because it’s better to live in a market economy—you have a healthier relationship to your money because you earned it (as opposed to “well I guess I just asked for this money and now I have it so I hope I’m not squandering it in someone else’s eyes”), and the constraints you feel in seem more real rather than “why aren’t the money fairies giving me stuff”.
I share your concerns; what would you recommend doing about it though? One initiative that may come in handy here is the increased focus on getting “regular people” to do grantmaking work, which at least helps spread resources around somewhat. Not sure there’s anything we can do to stop the general bad incentives of acting for the sake of money rather than altruism. For that, we just need to hope most members of the community have strong virtues, which tbh I think we’re pretty good about.