I agree it’s not intuitive when you put it that way, but I think it makes sense:
Imagine a strange world where the highest impact thing to do is to turn this magical crank. Also forget about meta opportunities—there are only two possible roles: turning the crank yourself (direct work) or funding the salaries of people who turn the crank (earning to give).
Forgetting a moment about psychological constraints and thinking only about pure impact, you ought to turn the crank yourself, because the more people turning the crank the more impact there is, and earning money itself doesn’t turn any cranks.
However, the people turning the crank need to not starve to death, and they’re requesting a frugal $25K/year to fund their lifestyles.
Currently there’s $0 in this crank movement (two different puns intended), so we need an ETG person to fund some salaries.
Now imagine that the highest salary you can get is $50K/yr—you take $25K/year for yourself and can fund one person full-time turning the crank. So for every one person turning the crank, you need one person ETG, or else nothing would happen. The next person to join the crank movement will do ETG, the person after that to join will turn the crank directly, and so on.
Now imagine that someone gets a superjob and can earn $50M/yr—they also take $25K/year for themselves, but they have $49,975,000 left over for donations; enough to fund 1999 people to turn the crank. Now the next 1999 people to join should turn the crank directly, because we don’t need any more money. None of the next 1999 people should earn to give.
When earning to give was worse, we needed more people doing it. When it got better, we needed much less people doing it. Thus, the better earning to give is, the less you should do it, generally speaking.
Thanks Peter, I agree that your insight about “when it’s worse more people should do it” is correct and your analogy is helpful.
But what really confuses me is the specific example I quoted where you are looking at what an AMF staff person does versus what an E2G person does. It seems like in both cases you are comparing “donation opportunity”, yet you are choosing the one which is worse.
An AMF staff person is like a crank turner in my example—it doesn’t matter how much donation opportunity you create if there’s no one there to fulfill it.
I think you are agreeing with me? We shouldn’t be comparing the output of the “crank”, but instead be looking at what it takes to turn the crank. Therefore we shouldn’t compare 2.5 M to 9.5 K, instead we should compare the salary of someone at AMF to 9.5 K.
I agree it’s not intuitive when you put it that way, but I think it makes sense:
Imagine a strange world where the highest impact thing to do is to turn this magical crank. Also forget about meta opportunities—there are only two possible roles: turning the crank yourself (direct work) or funding the salaries of people who turn the crank (earning to give).
Forgetting a moment about psychological constraints and thinking only about pure impact, you ought to turn the crank yourself, because the more people turning the crank the more impact there is, and earning money itself doesn’t turn any cranks.
However, the people turning the crank need to not starve to death, and they’re requesting a frugal $25K/year to fund their lifestyles.
Currently there’s $0 in this crank movement (two different puns intended), so we need an ETG person to fund some salaries.
Now imagine that the highest salary you can get is $50K/yr—you take $25K/year for yourself and can fund one person full-time turning the crank. So for every one person turning the crank, you need one person ETG, or else nothing would happen. The next person to join the crank movement will do ETG, the person after that to join will turn the crank directly, and so on.
Now imagine that someone gets a superjob and can earn $50M/yr—they also take $25K/year for themselves, but they have $49,975,000 left over for donations; enough to fund 1999 people to turn the crank. Now the next 1999 people to join should turn the crank directly, because we don’t need any more money. None of the next 1999 people should earn to give.
When earning to give was worse, we needed more people doing it. When it got better, we needed much less people doing it. Thus, the better earning to give is, the less you should do it, generally speaking.
Does that make sense?
Thanks Peter, I agree that your insight about “when it’s worse more people should do it” is correct and your analogy is helpful.
But what really confuses me is the specific example I quoted where you are looking at what an AMF staff person does versus what an E2G person does. It seems like in both cases you are comparing “donation opportunity”, yet you are choosing the one which is worse.
An AMF staff person is like a crank turner in my example—it doesn’t matter how much donation opportunity you create if there’s no one there to fulfill it.
I think you are agreeing with me? We shouldn’t be comparing the output of the “crank”, but instead be looking at what it takes to turn the crank. Therefore we shouldn’t compare 2.5 M to 9.5 K, instead we should compare the salary of someone at AMF to 9.5 K.