Hey, I wrote the article you refer to. I only intend to partially reimburse people who donated money to EA-related causes. Most problems you describe apply to a safety net for all effective altruists, which would be much more difficult. I’ll quote a comment of mine:
By focusing exclusively on reimbursing donors in financial trouble, we avoid opening a can of worms. First of all, the risk of fraud is much lower. If EAs can only get back half of what they gave away, there is no way to use the fund to make money, unless they control a GiveWell-recommended charity. Second, we do not have to judge whether people are EA-aligned. Third, people cannot take advantage of the fund and, perhaps more importantly, people will not have to worry other people are taking advantage of the fund.
To expand on the last point, if we ever decide to reimburse a donation because someone’s second car broke down, that might annoy some people with a different idea of what constitutes an emergency, but at least they know that person donated at least twice the amount needed to fix the car. Now, if we handed out fix-your-second-car money to people who never donated anything to charity, I’d predict riots.
Also, coupling the two promotes donations. People who would normally find parting with substantial amounts of money scary have the assurance that they can always knock on our door.
I believe this covers all points you raised, but let me know if I missed anything. Just to reiterate, my hypothetical charity wouldn’t make a judgment on whether applicants are still effective altruists if they need money.
The top comment on my article:
This seems like the type of infrastructure that should be experimented with on a small scale rather than heavily debated
I liked your post a lot too, and I think it would be a good starting point precisely because it would be simpler and easier to avoid corruption by creating a safety net with a fixed group of members (people who had submitted evidence of donations) and capped payouts (50% of their total donation amount, or etc), rather than having a charity-style organization that evaluates applications from anyone, like EA Funds.
Mormon/Amish/etc social insurance through church works well because there is a pretty clear, pretty hard-to-fake signal of who’s a community member and who’s not (ie, do you spend every sunday in church or not). Normal insurance companies create a clear distinction between members and nonmembers by requiring everyone to pay a monthly premium. The EA and rationalist communities will probably always be more amorphous and fuzzy than a typical Amish group, but if we just required that everyone pays a monthly premium then it’s unclear how we could do any better than existing insurance companies. So I like the idea of deciding membership based on proof of past charitable donations to EA causes.
I also agree that a service like this (allowing people to “get their donations back” from the community pool if they unexpectedly fell on hard times) might encourage people to donate more or take on more risks in the first place, which would be good for EA overall.
I think it would be good to start experimenting with the service described in your post. Over time, if successful, the insurance pool could try to branch out into other more advanced services—perhaps helping people make risky but high-expected-value career moves by offering them some kind of insurance or support in case their ambitious career move fails. Or doing the kind of community-assistance grantmaking that Ozzie is exploring here.
The biggest wins probably come from finding more good ways to support early-career people facing precarious situations while just getting into EA, exactly like Linch’s story above. The “get back your proven past donations” approach won’t work as well for people in those situations since most of them won’t have made many EA donations yet. But hopefully we could try to build up to that over time somehow.
I agree that your proposal gets around most (maybe all?) of the issues I mentioned. However, your proposal focuses on earning-to-givers who have already given a fair bit, this seems to be tackling a minority of the problem (maybe 20%?). Maybe this is a good place to begin. I feel like I haven’t met many people in this specific camp, but maybe there are more out there.
Do you agree with this?
I’m happy to see it on a small scale. That said, the existing discussion/debate doesn’t seem like all too much to me. I also feel like there could be some easy wins for research, like doing some investigation into the questions I linked above.
I’d expect 1-8 weeks of investigation would be the best next step. (Note that “investigation” could mean “interviewing a bunch of people to see what they might want”)
I agree that your proposal gets around most (maybe all?) of the issues I mentioned.
Ah, that’s where we went wrong. I assumed you would have mentioned that if you thought so.
However, your proposal focuses on earning-to-givers who have already given a fair bit, this seems to be tackling a minority of the problem (maybe 20%?).
I agree, and it is quite challenging to determine the size of that minority. If anyone knows anyone who has been in this situation, please send me a message.
Hey, I wrote the article you refer to. I only intend to partially reimburse people who donated money to EA-related causes. Most problems you describe apply to a safety net for all effective altruists, which would be much more difficult. I’ll quote a comment of mine:
I believe this covers all points you raised, but let me know if I missed anything. Just to reiterate, my hypothetical charity wouldn’t make a judgment on whether applicants are still effective altruists if they need money.
The top comment on my article:
Do you agree with this?
I liked your post a lot too, and I think it would be a good starting point precisely because it would be simpler and easier to avoid corruption by creating a safety net with a fixed group of members (people who had submitted evidence of donations) and capped payouts (50% of their total donation amount, or etc), rather than having a charity-style organization that evaluates applications from anyone, like EA Funds.
Mormon/Amish/etc social insurance through church works well because there is a pretty clear, pretty hard-to-fake signal of who’s a community member and who’s not (ie, do you spend every sunday in church or not). Normal insurance companies create a clear distinction between members and nonmembers by requiring everyone to pay a monthly premium. The EA and rationalist communities will probably always be more amorphous and fuzzy than a typical Amish group, but if we just required that everyone pays a monthly premium then it’s unclear how we could do any better than existing insurance companies. So I like the idea of deciding membership based on proof of past charitable donations to EA causes.
I also agree that a service like this (allowing people to “get their donations back” from the community pool if they unexpectedly fell on hard times) might encourage people to donate more or take on more risks in the first place, which would be good for EA overall.
I think it would be good to start experimenting with the service described in your post. Over time, if successful, the insurance pool could try to branch out into other more advanced services—perhaps helping people make risky but high-expected-value career moves by offering them some kind of insurance or support in case their ambitious career move fails. Or doing the kind of community-assistance grantmaking that Ozzie is exploring here.
The biggest wins probably come from finding more good ways to support early-career people facing precarious situations while just getting into EA, exactly like Linch’s story above. The “get back your proven past donations” approach won’t work as well for people in those situations since most of them won’t have made many EA donations yet. But hopefully we could try to build up to that over time somehow.
(Just noting general agreement with this)
I agree that your proposal gets around most (maybe all?) of the issues I mentioned. However, your proposal focuses on earning-to-givers who have already given a fair bit, this seems to be tackling a minority of the problem (maybe 20%?). Maybe this is a good place to begin. I feel like I haven’t met many people in this specific camp, but maybe there are more out there.
I’m happy to see it on a small scale. That said, the existing discussion/debate doesn’t seem like all too much to me. I also feel like there could be some easy wins for research, like doing some investigation into the questions I linked above.
I’d expect 1-8 weeks of investigation would be the best next step. (Note that “investigation” could mean “interviewing a bunch of people to see what they might want”)
Ah, that’s where we went wrong. I assumed you would have mentioned that if you thought so.
I agree, and it is quite challenging to determine the size of that minority. If anyone knows anyone who has been in this situation, please send me a message.
Will do. No one comes to mind now, but if someone does, I’ll let you know.
(Also, I’m sure others reading this with ideas should send them to Bob)