Megaprojects are generally poorly executed, over budget, and over time, so am I correct in taking the “megaproject” designation as really an anti-endorsement of all these activities?
Do you specifically object to the term megaproject, or rather to the idea of launching larger organizations and projects that could potentially absorb a lot of money?
If it’s the latter, the case for megaprojects is that they are bigger bets, with which funders could have an impact using larger sums of money, i.e., ~1-2 order of magnitudes bigger than current large longtermist grants. It is generally understood that EA has a funding overhang, which is even more true if you buy into longtermism, given that there are few obvious investment opportunities in longtermism.
I agree that many large-scale projects often have cost and time overruns (I enjoyed this EconTalk episode with Bent Flyvberg on the reasons for this). But, if we believe that a non-negligible number of megaprojects do work out, it seems to be an area we should explore.
Maybe it’d be a good idea to collect a list of past megaprojects that worked out well, without massive cost-overruns. Reflecting on this briefly, I think of the Manhattan Project, prestigious universities (Oxbridge, LMU, Harvard), and public transport projects like the TGV .
Megaprojects are generally poorly executed, over budget, and over time, so am I correct in taking the “megaproject” designation as really an anti-endorsement of all these activities?
Do you specifically object to the term megaproject, or rather to the idea of launching larger organizations and projects that could potentially absorb a lot of money?
If it’s the latter, the case for megaprojects is that they are bigger bets, with which funders could have an impact using larger sums of money, i.e., ~1-2 order of magnitudes bigger than current large longtermist grants. It is generally understood that EA has a funding overhang, which is even more true if you buy into longtermism, given that there are few obvious investment opportunities in longtermism.
I agree that many large-scale projects often have cost and time overruns (I enjoyed this EconTalk episode with Bent Flyvberg on the reasons for this). But, if we believe that a non-negligible number of megaprojects do work out, it seems to be an area we should explore.
Maybe it’d be a good idea to collect a list of past megaprojects that worked out well, without massive cost-overruns. Reflecting on this briefly, I think of the Manhattan Project, prestigious universities (Oxbridge, LMU, Harvard), and public transport projects like the TGV .
Strong-downvoted for unhelpful sarcasm.