I canât speak to the letter of the law, but there are obviously good reasons for CEA to distribute the best books that have been written on EA (which certainly include Willâs books), and to have Will as a keynote speaker. So the law would clearly be messed up if it prohibited this: it would effectively mean that charities cannot include relevant âthought leadersâ amongst their trustees. In such a case, I would think any sensible person should agree to the need to reform the idiotic law, rather than zealously enforce it.
But hopefully the law is more sensible than the authors of this post suggest.
Let me separately register that I think it reflects poorly on the authors of the post that they didnât pause to acknowledge this commonsense point. Zealous legalism is pretty unpleasant to be around, and I would hate for this sort of thing (more witch-hunt than whistleblowing, IMO) to become a standard part of EA culture.
Whistleblowers should try to expose wrongdoing, not legalistic âgotchasâ. Headline references to âbreaking the lawâ strongly implicate that one is talking about serious, morally justified laws (like against murder, fraud, etc.). But I recall reading that there are so many obscure and arbitrary laws on the books that probably anyone has unwitting broken dozens of them without ever realizing it. So if youâre going to go after people for doing nothing wrong but for making themselves vulnerable to legalistic coercion, I think itâs important to be clear on this distinction.
At least in the US, these rules are reasonable and exist for a reasonâsee my top-level post for an explanation of how non-EA organizations have done shady stuff with buying an insiderâs books. Although I donât like the tone of the original post, I also donât think it is appropriate to imply that rules against private gain for charitable trustees are âobscure and arbitraryââmaterial on that topic is, or at least should be, in Being a Trustee/âDirector 101.
My read of the article is that it is alleging incompetence and/âor lack of regard for laws rather than alleging wrongdoing. Iâm a trustee of a number of UK charities myself and the Charity Commission sends all trustees basic information on manging conflicts of interest and data protection. They are by no means âobscure and arbitraryâ and I think we as a community need to be extra careful to comply with the letter and spirit of every law given the recent FTX events.
There are many laws we would contest, but the job of organizational leaders include awareness of the laws pertaining to their activities and staying on the right side of them. If those laws are bad, then campaigning to change them is reasonableâignoring them is not.
Furthermore itâs far from clear thereâs anything wrong with these laws, let alone that theyâre âidoiticâ. They exist to prevent all manner of scams, tax frauds and ways for self-serving ways for charity trustees to benefit at taxpayersâ expense. One of the lessons from FTXgate (actively promoted by MacAskill) was supposed to be that EA organisations that consider themselves above the law for the greater good are extremely dangerous.
It is literally impossible for a charity to follow the law as you have described it, because doing any good whatsoever under your own name opens you up to claims that you have benefited in some material sense,whether that be financially or professionally or reputationally. Charities are well-known to employ people and directly pay them for services rendered, so without being a UK lawyer I donât know what kind of additional context is required for such a case to be prosecutable in practice, but itâs certainly a nonzero amount. Granted this sort of completely unpragmatic interpretation of the law, you are probably breaking similar laws yourself, because there is simply too much law to support following a laymanâs interpretation of all of it.
This is a reality of the world you live in -the one with dozens of countries with hundreds of thousands of pages of law on the books, many designed explicitly to give as much discretion to prosecutors as possibleâand so this âattitudeâ you describe (where people remain willing to do ethical things that prosecutors will not actually prosecute them for) is the only way to live. That is of course unless youâre willing to single out particularly high profile organizationsâthen you can pretty much accuse anybody of breaking the law in some country or another.
I canât speak to the letter of the law, but there are obviously good reasons for CEA to distribute the best books that have been written on EA (which certainly include Willâs books), and to have Will as a keynote speaker. So the law would clearly be messed up if it prohibited this: it would effectively mean that charities cannot include relevant âthought leadersâ amongst their trustees. In such a case, I would think any sensible person should agree to the need to reform the idiotic law, rather than zealously enforce it.
But hopefully the law is more sensible than the authors of this post suggest.
Let me separately register that I think it reflects poorly on the authors of the post that they didnât pause to acknowledge this commonsense point. Zealous legalism is pretty unpleasant to be around, and I would hate for this sort of thing (more witch-hunt than whistleblowing, IMO) to become a standard part of EA culture.
Whistleblowers should try to expose wrongdoing, not legalistic âgotchasâ. Headline references to âbreaking the lawâ strongly implicate that one is talking about serious, morally justified laws (like against murder, fraud, etc.). But I recall reading that there are so many obscure and arbitrary laws on the books that probably anyone has unwitting broken dozens of them without ever realizing it. So if youâre going to go after people for doing nothing wrong but for making themselves vulnerable to legalistic coercion, I think itâs important to be clear on this distinction.
At least in the US, these rules are reasonable and exist for a reasonâsee my top-level post for an explanation of how non-EA organizations have done shady stuff with buying an insiderâs books. Although I donât like the tone of the original post, I also donât think it is appropriate to imply that rules against private gain for charitable trustees are âobscure and arbitraryââmaterial on that topic is, or at least should be, in Being a Trustee/âDirector 101.
My read of the article is that it is alleging incompetence and/âor lack of regard for laws rather than alleging wrongdoing. Iâm a trustee of a number of UK charities myself and the Charity Commission sends all trustees basic information on manging conflicts of interest and data protection. They are by no means âobscure and arbitraryâ and I think we as a community need to be extra careful to comply with the letter and spirit of every law given the recent FTX events.
This seems like an incredible attitude.
There are many laws we would contest, but the job of organizational leaders include awareness of the laws pertaining to their activities and staying on the right side of them. If those laws are bad, then campaigning to change them is reasonableâignoring them is not.
Furthermore itâs far from clear thereâs anything wrong with these laws, let alone that theyâre âidoiticâ. They exist to prevent all manner of scams, tax frauds and ways for self-serving ways for charity trustees to benefit at taxpayersâ expense. One of the lessons from FTXgate (actively promoted by MacAskill) was supposed to be that EA organisations that consider themselves above the law for the greater good are extremely dangerous.
It is literally impossible for a charity to follow the law as you have described it, because doing any good whatsoever under your own name opens you up to claims that you have benefited in some material sense,whether that be financially or professionally or reputationally. Charities are well-known to employ people and directly pay them for services rendered, so without being a UK lawyer I donât know what kind of additional context is required for such a case to be prosecutable in practice, but itâs certainly a nonzero amount. Granted this sort of completely unpragmatic interpretation of the law, you are probably breaking similar laws yourself, because there is simply too much law to support following a laymanâs interpretation of all of it.
This is a reality of the world you live in -the one with dozens of countries with hundreds of thousands of pages of law on the books, many designed explicitly to give as much discretion to prosecutors as possibleâand so this âattitudeâ you describe (where people remain willing to do ethical things that prosecutors will not actually prosecute them for) is the only way to live. That is of course unless youâre willing to single out particularly high profile organizationsâthen you can pretty much accuse anybody of breaking the law in some country or another.