Very interesting concepts! I have one comment and one contact offering which may be helpful in adding a new perspective to your core assumptions (primarily that systemic solutions, such as empowering the next generation of African economics students to help change legislation, would indeed be effective altruism):
I performed a broad and rather unrigorous quantitative overview of the strategic qualities of the top charities of GiveWell’s top ten (OpenPhil, which is a major pioneer of bit-based giving, donates the most to GiveWell’s suggestions), GiveWell’s ‘ineffective’ charities (charities deemed not cost-effective or evidence-based enough) and Charity Entrepreneurship’s incubated charities to determine what strategic qualities are most utilised by the highest-impact charities. What I found was that qualities relating to hit-based principles (primarily that of prioritising high reward, high risk interventions such as innovations and systemic solutions) didn’t align with the high-impact charities and in fact the ‘ineffective’ charities aligned slightly more with the qualities of hit-based principles. The explanation I found most compelling was that the complexity necessary for high risk and high reward interventions (such as systemic wherein the results are fairly unclear) to success not only bumped up the costs considerably but also the resistance from donors to continue donating due to the complexity obscuring the direct effect of the charity (‘how can we know it was helping the African economists which helped improve development? There’s many other changes since then which could also have contributed’). And though there are a few statistical methods to try and tease out approximate benefit, systemic interventions may always be marred by unclear impacts, unforeseeable obstacles and undue resistance from donors and the system being changed. My documentation for this qualitative overview can be found here: https://6559c6fb-82b8-43c6-8296-70e9946338cc.filesusr.com/ugd/ed2a7c_e6005590c87341b1ac2e1d13d861d4d1.pdf with page 6 being the colour-coded summary spreadsheet.
The explanation above was mostly galvanised by the social innovator Andrew Benedict-Nelson (https://albnelson.com). Andrew’s explanation was rooted in a history of successful systemic change from within the private sector such as Carnegie & Rockefella spending their private wealth to fund, among other creative means, medical conferences designed to increase the scientific approach within the medical industry. Andrew’s suggestion was then to tie hit-based giving in with the private sector especially due to the private sector’s openness to high risk, high reward investments. If you’d like me to connect you to pick his brain, I’d be happy to!
Very interesting concepts! I have one comment and one contact offering which may be helpful in adding a new perspective to your core assumptions (primarily that systemic solutions, such as empowering the next generation of African economics students to help change legislation, would indeed be effective altruism):
I performed a broad and rather unrigorous quantitative overview of the strategic qualities of the top charities of GiveWell’s top ten (OpenPhil, which is a major pioneer of bit-based giving, donates the most to GiveWell’s suggestions), GiveWell’s ‘ineffective’ charities (charities deemed not cost-effective or evidence-based enough) and Charity Entrepreneurship’s incubated charities to determine what strategic qualities are most utilised by the highest-impact charities. What I found was that qualities relating to hit-based principles (primarily that of prioritising high reward, high risk interventions such as innovations and systemic solutions) didn’t align with the high-impact charities and in fact the ‘ineffective’ charities aligned slightly more with the qualities of hit-based principles. The explanation I found most compelling was that the complexity necessary for high risk and high reward interventions (such as systemic wherein the results are fairly unclear) to success not only bumped up the costs considerably but also the resistance from donors to continue donating due to the complexity obscuring the direct effect of the charity (‘how can we know it was helping the African economists which helped improve development? There’s many other changes since then which could also have contributed’). And though there are a few statistical methods to try and tease out approximate benefit, systemic interventions may always be marred by unclear impacts, unforeseeable obstacles and undue resistance from donors and the system being changed. My documentation for this qualitative overview can be found here: https://6559c6fb-82b8-43c6-8296-70e9946338cc.filesusr.com/ugd/ed2a7c_e6005590c87341b1ac2e1d13d861d4d1.pdf with page 6 being the colour-coded summary spreadsheet.
The explanation above was mostly galvanised by the social innovator Andrew Benedict-Nelson (https://albnelson.com). Andrew’s explanation was rooted in a history of successful systemic change from within the private sector such as Carnegie & Rockefella spending their private wealth to fund, among other creative means, medical conferences designed to increase the scientific approach within the medical industry. Andrew’s suggestion was then to tie hit-based giving in with the private sector especially due to the private sector’s openness to high risk, high reward investments. If you’d like me to connect you to pick his brain, I’d be happy to!