I’ll oblige others who don’t want the WSJ op-ed to get more attention by only responsible to the article in this comment thread. I don’t expect specifically trait-feign or any other person to respond to this comment, though it’d be appreciated if anyone can provide relevant information.
FTX bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena and lots of umpire and referee uniforms. Since May, he has been bailing out failing crypto firms
This is the first I’ve read of this. This doesn’t sound good or effective at face value. It’s being used to make EA look bad. That doesn’t mean the attempt has succeeded. Others have commented about how many bogus assumptions in this op-ed are easy to debunk. It’s also written in a sensational way that makes this second claim not sound too serious.
Surely SBF has some argument for why he has been, if the characterization is accurate, bailing out failing crypto firms. They could be poorly reasoned arguments for why it’s a good idea. Bailing out these failing crypto firms may end up being what was a big, foreseeable mistake. Whether SBF’s giving really is effective matters more than only one op-ed spins it as ineffective. Knowing the reasons and evidence is what matters.
Assuming for the sake of argument that so many of SBF’s and FTX’s giving or investments turn out to be very bad bets, it’s not hard for the EA community to make clear that the EA community at large neither advised nor endorsed such choices. Nobody would say buying the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena was one of EA’s top recommendations for what FTX should do with that money.
The EA community has already begun making distinctions like that clear. A few of the most upvoted articles of 2022 so far have been ones critical of FTX’s giving approach/methodology, or the prospect of EA community getting particularly involved with SBF’s political plays. Even given assumptions of such a bad scenario, which could easily be false anyway, a future scenario like this with EA having a PR team or whatever seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to deal with.
And Mr. Bankman-Fried’s various entities, along with Cari Tuna and others, have put up about $19 million for a future California ballot measure, the California Pandemic Early Detection and Prevention Act, which would add a 0.75% tax on incomes over $5 million to raise up to $15 billion over 10 years. Catch that? Someone else pays. Effective, but not exactly selfless.
It’s the classic progressive playbook: Raise taxes to fund their pet projects but not yours or mine. I don’t care if altruists spend their own money trying to prevent future risks from robot invasions or green nanotech goo, but they should stop asking American taxpayers to waste money on their quirky concerns.
The author isn’t a grifter only for doing a job but he is kind of a hack in that it’s evident he is pandering to a particular “own the libs” readership he has in mind.
Politically progressive or liberal multi-millionaires or billionaires are far from the only ones who advocate raising taxes or even back campaigns that will raise taxes.
There are a lot of billionaires who’ve advocated their own taxes being raised. Warren Buffet has. Elon Musk has said stuff about how he doesn’t want to pay higher taxes because he doesn’t trust the government to spend the effectively but he’d support it more if the government were to spend the money more effectively, e.g., on high-impact existential risk reduction. Even some conservative billionaires are in favour of the government expanding in a least some ways even if they don’t want to have to pay higher taxes for it.
The author puts almost no effort into an argument for why not even billionaires have a right to support a campaign to raise taxes on other billionaires.
Who he is pandering too are readers who are themselves probably not super-wealthy either. He refers to “American taxpayers” as if it’s taxpayers in general as opposed to the very small minority o them that earn more than $5 million per year.
The author conflates how some x-risk scenarios superficially sound like silly science fiction with pandemic preparedness being silly. Before the pandemic, most people would think that’s ridiculous. After the pandemic, it could be even most conservatives in the USA who’d think that’s ridiculous.
The last couple paragraphs are a couple random quotes out of context critical of some aspects of EA. (Other claims made in the article have been commented on by others and I’ve got nothing else to add.)
There seems to me to be a fallacy here that assumes every action SBF takes needs to be justifiable on its first order EA merits.
The various stakes FTX have taken in crypto companies during this downturn are obviously not done in lieu of donations—they are business decisions, presumably done with the intention of making more money, as part of the process of making FTX a success. Whether they are good decisions in this light is hard for me to say, but I’d be inclined to defer to FTX here.
I was thinking through such a possibility descriptively, and how the EA community might respond, without trying to prescribe the EA community in a real-world scenario. I didn’t indicate that well, though, so please pardon me for the error.
To clarify, given the assumptions that criticisms of SBF’s or FTX’s investments or donations might be used to attack EA as a movement by association, and the EA community also had some responsibility to distance itself from those efforts, it wouldn’t be that hard to do so. I personally disagree with the second assumption.
I’m of the opinion the EA community has no such responsibility but it seems at least some others do.
SBF seems to have made some mistakes with his recent forays into politics but they don’t strike me to have been as bad as at least a significant minority of the EA community believes. My opinion is that the need some felt for the EA community to distance itself from SBF’s political activities was excessive.
The various stakes FTX have taken in crypto companies during this downturn are obviously not done in lieu of donations—they are business decisions, presumably done with the intention of making more money, as part of the process of making FTX a success. Whether they are good decisions in this light is hard for me to say, but I’d be inclined to defer to FTX here.
I agree with all of this. There are plenty of companies that have taken long(er)-term bets like the one FTX is making that have turned out to be among the best business decisions of the 21st century. Facebook, Amazon and companies Elon Musk has bought were not profitable for almost a decade. They were marred by criticisms and predictions of how they were always on the brink of imminent collapse. That was all bogus.
It’s worth keeping survivorship bias in mind and the fact that some bets made like this wound up as catastrophic business decisions. Yet it’s not justified to assume by default FTX’s investments in this way will end up as bad rather than good decisions. That’s especially true in the absence of more information. The author hasn’t provided any such information and is not likely to have access to such information either.
It seems like more pandering. I’m guessing the author is the kind who would’ve maligned Musk when he was a Democrat but now because Musk is a Republican defend decisions he might have criticized before.
I’ll oblige others who don’t want the WSJ op-ed to get more attention by only responsible to the article in this comment thread. I don’t expect specifically trait-feign or any other person to respond to this comment, though it’d be appreciated if anyone can provide relevant information.
This is the first I’ve read of this. This doesn’t sound good or effective at face value. It’s being used to make EA look bad. That doesn’t mean the attempt has succeeded. Others have commented about how many bogus assumptions in this op-ed are easy to debunk. It’s also written in a sensational way that makes this second claim not sound too serious.
Surely SBF has some argument for why he has been, if the characterization is accurate, bailing out failing crypto firms. They could be poorly reasoned arguments for why it’s a good idea. Bailing out these failing crypto firms may end up being what was a big, foreseeable mistake. Whether SBF’s giving really is effective matters more than only one op-ed spins it as ineffective. Knowing the reasons and evidence is what matters.
Assuming for the sake of argument that so many of SBF’s and FTX’s giving or investments turn out to be very bad bets, it’s not hard for the EA community to make clear that the EA community at large neither advised nor endorsed such choices. Nobody would say buying the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena was one of EA’s top recommendations for what FTX should do with that money.
The EA community has already begun making distinctions like that clear. A few of the most upvoted articles of 2022 so far have been ones critical of FTX’s giving approach/methodology, or the prospect of EA community getting particularly involved with SBF’s political plays. Even given assumptions of such a bad scenario, which could easily be false anyway, a future scenario like this with EA having a PR team or whatever seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to deal with.
The author isn’t a grifter only for doing a job but he is kind of a hack in that it’s evident he is pandering to a particular “own the libs” readership he has in mind.
Politically progressive or liberal multi-millionaires or billionaires are far from the only ones who advocate raising taxes or even back campaigns that will raise taxes.
There are a lot of billionaires who’ve advocated their own taxes being raised. Warren Buffet has. Elon Musk has said stuff about how he doesn’t want to pay higher taxes because he doesn’t trust the government to spend the effectively but he’d support it more if the government were to spend the money more effectively, e.g., on high-impact existential risk reduction. Even some conservative billionaires are in favour of the government expanding in a least some ways even if they don’t want to have to pay higher taxes for it.
The author puts almost no effort into an argument for why not even billionaires have a right to support a campaign to raise taxes on other billionaires.
Who he is pandering too are readers who are themselves probably not super-wealthy either. He refers to “American taxpayers” as if it’s taxpayers in general as opposed to the very small minority o them that earn more than $5 million per year.
The author conflates how some x-risk scenarios superficially sound like silly science fiction with pandemic preparedness being silly. Before the pandemic, most people would think that’s ridiculous. After the pandemic, it could be even most conservatives in the USA who’d think that’s ridiculous.
The last couple paragraphs are a couple random quotes out of context critical of some aspects of EA. (Other claims made in the article have been commented on by others and I’ve got nothing else to add.)
There seems to me to be a fallacy here that assumes every action SBF takes needs to be justifiable on its first order EA merits.
The various stakes FTX have taken in crypto companies during this downturn are obviously not done in lieu of donations—they are business decisions, presumably done with the intention of making more money, as part of the process of making FTX a success. Whether they are good decisions in this light is hard for me to say, but I’d be inclined to defer to FTX here.
I was thinking through such a possibility descriptively, and how the EA community might respond, without trying to prescribe the EA community in a real-world scenario. I didn’t indicate that well, though, so please pardon me for the error.
To clarify, given the assumptions that criticisms of SBF’s or FTX’s investments or donations might be used to attack EA as a movement by association, and the EA community also had some responsibility to distance itself from those efforts, it wouldn’t be that hard to do so. I personally disagree with the second assumption.
I’m of the opinion the EA community has no such responsibility but it seems at least some others do.
SBF seems to have made some mistakes with his recent forays into politics but they don’t strike me to have been as bad as at least a significant minority of the EA community believes. My opinion is that the need some felt for the EA community to distance itself from SBF’s political activities was excessive.
I agree with all of this. There are plenty of companies that have taken long(er)-term bets like the one FTX is making that have turned out to be among the best business decisions of the 21st century. Facebook, Amazon and companies Elon Musk has bought were not profitable for almost a decade. They were marred by criticisms and predictions of how they were always on the brink of imminent collapse. That was all bogus.
It’s worth keeping survivorship bias in mind and the fact that some bets made like this wound up as catastrophic business decisions. Yet it’s not justified to assume by default FTX’s investments in this way will end up as bad rather than good decisions. That’s especially true in the absence of more information. The author hasn’t provided any such information and is not likely to have access to such information either.
It seems like more pandering. I’m guessing the author is the kind who would’ve maligned Musk when he was a Democrat but now because Musk is a Republican defend decisions he might have criticized before.