“The EA community has little awareness of their privilege.”
This strikes me as straightforwardly untrue, unless you are holding the community to a standard which nobody anywhere meets. The EA community exists largely because individuals recognised their outsized (i.e. privileged) position to do good in the world, given their relative access to resources compared to e.g. those in poverty and non-human animals, and strove to use that privilege for good.
That EA doesn’t, e.g. make it as easy for you to go to EA conferences as it is for a Western citizen is not because EA doesn’t know that some people have difficulty travelling. It is because doing that costs resources that have been allocated to something else. It might be a mistake not to use those resources to help you travel to a conference vs whatever the opportunity cost of that decision would be, but that is a very different question, I think.
Hey Charles, thanks for reading and for your comment—I appreciate it. I totally agree with you that EA is based on people realising their privilege. This is why I’m in EA. Perhaps I should have been clear when I argued this. This conclusion comes from the previous two premises:
P1: It’s hard to get EA jobs, most EA jobs accept unpaid volunteers and some don’t pay a living wage.
P2: It’s hard to get involved in the movement generally due to locations of EA Hubs and conferences mostly being in the Western countries.
(added) and
P3: Multiple EA organisations and individuals offer low wages, hire without a diverse pool of candidates, and don’t pay for trial tasks.
P4: In the world, the majority of people cannot afford to work for free and their job is their main source of income.
To elaborate even further, EA community’s high use of volunteer labor shows that a lot of EAs don’t relate to the average person in the world who is a couple of paychecks away from being homeless (doesn’t have a large secuty net). Because EA was founded by people in Western countries, most people can’t relate to what it’s like not to be based in these countries—not being able to participate fully in these events. For example, most people in EA that I spoke to about me not being able to get a visa were surprised that this is even an issue and many people who organise EA-related events have made plans to make them more accessible to people from more countries.
I also agree with opportunity cost argument and it’s worth calculating. That’s why I propose more research to be done on the value of proving equal opportunity to all community members.
Hi Sofia. I agree that orgs should try to avoid relying on volunteer labor if they can, for the reasons you outline. I don’t agree with your explanation for why the status quo is what it is.
I don’t agree that “EA community’s high use of volunteer labor shows that a lot of EAs don’t relate to the average person in the world who is a couple of paychecks away from being homeless” first of all because I’m not clear on how high that use is, and secondly because the orgs who happen to be using volunteer labor may just be financially constrained. Just because there’s a lot of money in EA doesn’t necessarily mean those particular orgs have that money available to spend.
“For example, most people in EA that I spoke to about me not being able to get a visa were surprised that this is even an issue and many people who organise EA-related events have made plans to make them more accessible to people from more countries.”—this seems to support my point? Those organising the events make plans to make them accessible, i.e. are aware of the issue and taking some (though clearly not all possible) steps to mitigate difficulties for attendees.
That many people not involved in organising events don’t know about all the difficulties potential attendees might have doesn’t seem too important to me, though I’m open to being corrected here? It seems a lot to expect everyone to be knowledgeable about this if it’s not directly related to their work.
“The EA community has little awareness of their privilege.”
This strikes me as straightforwardly untrue, unless you are holding the community to a standard which nobody anywhere meets. The EA community exists largely because individuals recognised their outsized (i.e. privileged) position to do good in the world, given their relative access to resources compared to e.g. those in poverty and non-human animals, and strove to use that privilege for good.
That EA doesn’t, e.g. make it as easy for you to go to EA conferences as it is for a Western citizen is not because EA doesn’t know that some people have difficulty travelling. It is because doing that costs resources that have been allocated to something else. It might be a mistake not to use those resources to help you travel to a conference vs whatever the opportunity cost of that decision would be, but that is a very different question, I think.
Hey Charles, thanks for reading and for your comment—I appreciate it. I totally agree with you that EA is based on people realising their privilege. This is why I’m in EA. Perhaps I should have been clear when I argued this. This conclusion comes from the previous two premises:
P1: It’s hard to get EA jobs, most EA jobs accept unpaid volunteers and some don’t pay a living wage.
P2: It’s hard to get involved in the movement generally due to locations of EA Hubs and conferences mostly being in the Western countries.
(added) and
P3: Multiple EA organisations and individuals offer low wages, hire without a diverse pool of candidates, and don’t pay for trial tasks.
P4: In the world, the majority of people cannot afford to work for free and their job is their main source of income.
To elaborate even further, EA community’s high use of volunteer labor shows that a lot of EAs don’t relate to the average person in the world who is a couple of paychecks away from being homeless (doesn’t have a large secuty net). Because EA was founded by people in Western countries, most people can’t relate to what it’s like not to be based in these countries—not being able to participate fully in these events. For example, most people in EA that I spoke to about me not being able to get a visa were surprised that this is even an issue and many people who organise EA-related events have made plans to make them more accessible to people from more countries.
I also agree with opportunity cost argument and it’s worth calculating. That’s why I propose more research to be done on the value of proving equal opportunity to all community members.
Hi Sofia. I agree that orgs should try to avoid relying on volunteer labor if they can, for the reasons you outline. I don’t agree with your explanation for why the status quo is what it is.
I don’t agree that “EA community’s high use of volunteer labor shows that a lot of EAs don’t relate to the average person in the world who is a couple of paychecks away from being homeless” first of all because I’m not clear on how high that use is, and secondly because the orgs who happen to be using volunteer labor may just be financially constrained. Just because there’s a lot of money in EA doesn’t necessarily mean those particular orgs have that money available to spend.
“For example, most people in EA that I spoke to about me not being able to get a visa were surprised that this is even an issue and many people who organise EA-related events have made plans to make them more accessible to people from more countries.”—this seems to support my point? Those organising the events make plans to make them accessible, i.e. are aware of the issue and taking some (though clearly not all possible) steps to mitigate difficulties for attendees.
That many people not involved in organising events don’t know about all the difficulties potential attendees might have doesn’t seem too important to me, though I’m open to being corrected here? It seems a lot to expect everyone to be knowledgeable about this if it’s not directly related to their work.