I think the honor system is not super scalable in the long run. There’s always a small portion of the population who are jerks. If telling people you are an “official EA” means something, then there well be an incentive to fake this. I would like to see GWWC work towards eventually doing donation verification.
I also think receiving a title from someone else is significantly more meaningful than bestowing it upon yourself. One complaint I’ve heard about Google’s promotion process is that you have to nominate yourself, which works against people who have humbler dispositions. For some reason this blog post I read recently also comes to mind. If you are giving 10% of your income to effective charities, or even 1%, I think there should be an organization that says “no, you really are being a good person, please take this token of our gratitude on behalf of those you’re helping”.
For example, if you spend your resources—time and money—convincing others to give effectively, that could mean you’re doing quite a bit more good in the long run than contributing yourself.
Of course. I’m in favor of there being a broad range of merit badges one could earn in this thought experiment.
Ok, you convinced me, I updated toward your position of the benefits of having an external source of bestowing a title. Not sure if GWWC is the best source for it, but that’s a downstream question.
I would like to see GWWC work towards eventually doing donation verification.
One thing that gets closer to this is that we now have a Trust through which people can donate to our recommended charities, which means we have a more direct sense of how much people are donating. (It also has other important benefits, like donors being able to get tax deductions on charities that aren’t registered in the UK.) At the moment this is only a UK registered charity, but we’re hoping to broaden the process to other countries.
I think the honor system is not super scalable in the long run. There’s always a small portion of the population who are jerks. If telling people you are an “official EA” means something, then there well be an incentive to fake this. I would like to see GWWC work towards eventually doing donation verification.
I also think receiving a title from someone else is significantly more meaningful than bestowing it upon yourself. One complaint I’ve heard about Google’s promotion process is that you have to nominate yourself, which works against people who have humbler dispositions. For some reason this blog post I read recently also comes to mind. If you are giving 10% of your income to effective charities, or even 1%, I think there should be an organization that says “no, you really are being a good person, please take this token of our gratitude on behalf of those you’re helping”.
Of course. I’m in favor of there being a broad range of merit badges one could earn in this thought experiment.
Ok, you convinced me, I updated toward your position of the benefits of having an external source of bestowing a title. Not sure if GWWC is the best source for it, but that’s a downstream question.
One thing that gets closer to this is that we now have a Trust through which people can donate to our recommended charities, which means we have a more direct sense of how much people are donating. (It also has other important benefits, like donors being able to get tax deductions on charities that aren’t registered in the UK.) At the moment this is only a UK registered charity, but we’re hoping to broaden the process to other countries.