I agree with the last sentence of this comment very much.
But I suspect there are ways to work around this in most instances and to do informed, forward-looking work to improve the ability of the community to avoid something like this happening in the future. I want to think about this a lot more, and I hope others will be doing the same, but one way to do this would be to work with the consensus factual record that is developed, both in the court record and the media (with the latter often getting the former wrong, which is a whole other source of confusion and complication). It won’t necessarily cover every nuance, but it will help smart folks do good work without asking anyone potentially involved to make statements outside of the consensus factual record. It’s not perfect, but it’s not nothing.
To be clear, this is VERY off-the-cuff musing, not intended to be a comprehensive response to a very serious problem. This is a topic that I think is super critical to do some hard work on in the near term.
I am confident that the community can still do good work to mitigate risks of future situations. I’m just skeptical about the extent to which people/organizations who have significant legal exposure to the FTX situation should be involved in making those decisions. I suppose whatever decisions were made could be revised 5-7 years down the road when everyone could speak freely.
That raises the question of how to get buy-in from the affected people/organizations. Although I’m generally skeptical of funders using their power too heavily, this may be the sort of thing that should be coming in part from major funders. Most grants come with strings, including strings relating to risk management and governance issues.
I’m not opposed to funders dictating appropriate risk management and governance conditions on their grants, although they should consult with non-conflicted members of the community before establishing such a practice. Although I’m a small-potatoes donor, it is really important to me that my donations go to the intended purposes rather than paying for consequences of bad governance. (Not saying that will happen in this case, but it is a risk.) I think it’s reasonable for other donors to have that expectation as well.
I agree with the last sentence of this comment very much.
But I suspect there are ways to work around this in most instances and to do informed, forward-looking work to improve the ability of the community to avoid something like this happening in the future. I want to think about this a lot more, and I hope others will be doing the same, but one way to do this would be to work with the consensus factual record that is developed, both in the court record and the media (with the latter often getting the former wrong, which is a whole other source of confusion and complication). It won’t necessarily cover every nuance, but it will help smart folks do good work without asking anyone potentially involved to make statements outside of the consensus factual record. It’s not perfect, but it’s not nothing.
To be clear, this is VERY off-the-cuff musing, not intended to be a comprehensive response to a very serious problem. This is a topic that I think is super critical to do some hard work on in the near term.
I am confident that the community can still do good work to mitigate risks of future situations. I’m just skeptical about the extent to which people/organizations who have significant legal exposure to the FTX situation should be involved in making those decisions. I suppose whatever decisions were made could be revised 5-7 years down the road when everyone could speak freely.
That raises the question of how to get buy-in from the affected people/organizations. Although I’m generally skeptical of funders using their power too heavily, this may be the sort of thing that should be coming in part from major funders. Most grants come with strings, including strings relating to risk management and governance issues.
I’m not opposed to funders dictating appropriate risk management and governance conditions on their grants, although they should consult with non-conflicted members of the community before establishing such a practice. Although I’m a small-potatoes donor, it is really important to me that my donations go to the intended purposes rather than paying for consequences of bad governance. (Not saying that will happen in this case, but it is a risk.) I think it’s reasonable for other donors to have that expectation as well.