A very nitpicky comment, but maybe it does point towards something about something: “What if every person in low-income countries were cash-transferred one years’ wage?”
There is a lot of money in the EA space, but at most 5 percent of the sort of money that would be required for doing that (quick google of ‘how many people live in low income countries’ tells me there are 700 million people in countries with a per capita income below roughly 1000 usd a year, so your suggestion would have a 700 billion dollar bill. No individual, including Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos has more than a quarter of that amount of money, and while very rich, the big EA funders are no where near that rich). Also, of course, give directly is actually giving people in low income countries the equivalent of a year’s wage to let them figure out what they want to do with the money. Of course they are operating on a small enough scale that is affordable within the funding constraints of the community.
I don’t know, the on-topic thing that I would maybe say is that it is important to have a variety of people working in the community, people with a range of skills and experiences (ie we want to have some people who have an intuitive feel for big economic numbers and how they relate to each other—but it is not at all important for everyone, or even most people to have that awareness). But at the same time, not everyone is in a place to be part of the analytic research oriented part of the EA community, and I simply don’t think that decision making will become better at achieving the values I care about if the decision making process is spread out.
(But of course the counter point is that decision makers who ignore the voices of the people they are claiming to help often do more harm than good, and usually are maximizing something they care about, which is true).
Also, and I’m not sure how relevant this is, but I think it is likely that part of the reason why X-risks is the area of the community that is closest to being fully funded is because it is the cause area that people can care about for purely selfish reasons—ie spending enough on X-risk reduction is more of a coordination problem than an altruism problem.
No individual, including Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos has more than a quarter of that amount of money
But governments do. Which, while being about a hypothetical, does demonstrate a good reason for EA to try to transition away from relying on individuals instead of governments.
Peter Singer has done the math, and it is possible to reduce by half global hunger and extreme poverty, with modest numbers (old article, but I just found it):
A very nitpicky comment, but maybe it does point towards something about something: “What if every person in low-income countries were cash-transferred one years’ wage?”
There is a lot of money in the EA space, but at most 5 percent of the sort of money that would be required for doing that (quick google of ‘how many people live in low income countries’ tells me there are 700 million people in countries with a per capita income below roughly 1000 usd a year, so your suggestion would have a 700 billion dollar bill. No individual, including Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos has more than a quarter of that amount of money, and while very rich, the big EA funders are no where near that rich). Also, of course, give directly is actually giving people in low income countries the equivalent of a year’s wage to let them figure out what they want to do with the money. Of course they are operating on a small enough scale that is affordable within the funding constraints of the community.
I don’t know, the on-topic thing that I would maybe say is that it is important to have a variety of people working in the community, people with a range of skills and experiences (ie we want to have some people who have an intuitive feel for big economic numbers and how they relate to each other—but it is not at all important for everyone, or even most people to have that awareness). But at the same time, not everyone is in a place to be part of the analytic research oriented part of the EA community, and I simply don’t think that decision making will become better at achieving the values I care about if the decision making process is spread out.
(But of course the counter point is that decision makers who ignore the voices of the people they are claiming to help often do more harm than good, and usually are maximizing something they care about, which is true).
Also, and I’m not sure how relevant this is, but I think it is likely that part of the reason why X-risks is the area of the community that is closest to being fully funded is because it is the cause area that people can care about for purely selfish reasons—ie spending enough on X-risk reduction is more of a coordination problem than an altruism problem.
But governments do. Which, while being about a hypothetical, does demonstrate a good reason for EA to try to transition away from relying on individuals instead of governments.
Peter Singer has done the math, and it is possible to reduce by half global hunger and extreme poverty, with modest numbers (old article, but I just found it):
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/magazine/17charity.t.html