Also, one potential EA-focused topic on billionaire funding is the particular risks posed by certain “meta” funding. Some of the benefits of that funding accrue in part to the benefit of insiders—most people like going to fancy conferences in $15MM manor houses—with the idea that the spending will ultimately achieve more for EA’s goals than spending the money on direct work would. The benefits of much meta funding are too diffuse and indirect to be captured by GiveWell-style analyses or to be readily subject to evaluation by non-insiders. I’m not sure if other charitable movements pay so much attention to meta, but at least none I’m aware of do so as explicitly.
I suggest that there is a particular potential problem with billionaire funding of certain sorts of meta work that does not exist with billionaire funding of direct work (e.g., bednets, AI safety fellowships, etc.) I speculate that most billionaires lack motivation to attempt to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of meta work—it’s too complex, and each individual spend is pretty small in the billionaire mind. Of course, the billionaire may be relying on delegates to evaluate all of their grantees anyway. But the potential problem is that the billionaire is relying on insiders to evaluate the effectiveness of the meta work, and insiders may have a bias in favor of that work.
I don’t fund meta work (with my donations as a public-sector attorney not in EA...) as a general rule because I do not feel qualified to assess its value. But if I were a billionaire, I would probably require a “community co-pay” before giving to certain sorts of meta work. For example, I might only match funds (up to a certain point) that small/medium donors contributed specifically for conferences. Since money is fungible, I’d be using the community’s willingness to pay for this expense—rather than donate more to effective charities—as an information signal about how valuable the conferences actually were. And with the community’s skin in the game, I’d have more confidence in their ability/capacity to police whether conference money was being spent wisely than in my own. Such a practice would also encourage what we might call intra-EA democracy—the decision about how much to fund conferences no longer depends predominately on my judgment but significantly depends on the judgment of a number of rank-and-file EAers as well. I would submit that is a feature, not a bug.
Ah right, good point! I’ll try to focus more on meta funding. You’re definitely right to be suspicious of this (hard to monitor; people have bad incentives; looks like we’re spending an awful lot on it now). I’ll see what I can say about this, and please do keep thinking about this if you have more thoughts. I like your suggestion of a co-pay.
Also, one potential EA-focused topic on billionaire funding is the particular risks posed by certain “meta” funding. Some of the benefits of that funding accrue in part to the benefit of insiders—most people like going to fancy conferences in $15MM manor houses—with the idea that the spending will ultimately achieve more for EA’s goals than spending the money on direct work would. The benefits of much meta funding are too diffuse and indirect to be captured by GiveWell-style analyses or to be readily subject to evaluation by non-insiders. I’m not sure if other charitable movements pay so much attention to meta, but at least none I’m aware of do so as explicitly.
I suggest that there is a particular potential problem with billionaire funding of certain sorts of meta work that does not exist with billionaire funding of direct work (e.g., bednets, AI safety fellowships, etc.) I speculate that most billionaires lack motivation to attempt to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of meta work—it’s too complex, and each individual spend is pretty small in the billionaire mind. Of course, the billionaire may be relying on delegates to evaluate all of their grantees anyway. But the potential problem is that the billionaire is relying on insiders to evaluate the effectiveness of the meta work, and insiders may have a bias in favor of that work.
I don’t fund meta work (with my donations as a public-sector attorney not in EA...) as a general rule because I do not feel qualified to assess its value. But if I were a billionaire, I would probably require a “community co-pay” before giving to certain sorts of meta work. For example, I might only match funds (up to a certain point) that small/medium donors contributed specifically for conferences. Since money is fungible, I’d be using the community’s willingness to pay for this expense—rather than donate more to effective charities—as an information signal about how valuable the conferences actually were. And with the community’s skin in the game, I’d have more confidence in their ability/capacity to police whether conference money was being spent wisely than in my own. Such a practice would also encourage what we might call intra-EA democracy—the decision about how much to fund conferences no longer depends predominately on my judgment but significantly depends on the judgment of a number of rank-and-file EAers as well. I would submit that is a feature, not a bug.
Ah right, good point! I’ll try to focus more on meta funding. You’re definitely right to be suspicious of this (hard to monitor; people have bad incentives; looks like we’re spending an awful lot on it now). I’ll see what I can say about this, and please do keep thinking about this if you have more thoughts. I like your suggestion of a co-pay.