I am wary of the claims about the weight of evidence here. The studies you link to are correlational. The obvious problem is that foundation ownership is not random. Foundations are most likely to set up companies in capital intensive industries (this is found by one of your studies), where their longtermism is an advantage in terms of investing more in the future. Guided Consumption is focused on consumer goods which is a completely different ballgame.
I don’t have a problem with any of your other arguments, but motivated reasoning should not make us overstate the value of these studies.
Think it does suggest, at the very least, that firms capitalized by charitable equity don’t have a governance disadvantage.
I do think the explanations for a causal relationship between FOF (foundation-owned firm) and increased performance makes senses though, particularly better motivation to work harder/smarter if it’s for a worthy cause and ability to focus on the long term.
I get the skepticism for the probability of Guided Consumption taking over the economy (charities receiving 5%+ global net profits) in absolute terms being super high (though that is my belief and position). What is pretty baffling to me is position that efforts to advance firms with popular effective charities (such as charities in Global Health and Development spaces) in the equity position are not extremely high EV. Getting such firms out there in economic contexts that make sense and making the public aware of the ability to help charities by buying stuff they would already is intuitively a clear path to high impact. Sure, maybe it won’t work, but it definitely merits exploration.
Awesome to hear… I’m gonna be launching an agent-centered post on Guided Consumption Theory in probably a week and a half. I’ll focus on the motivations of two main groups, Altruistic Agents , who are fine bearing costs and are interested in maximizing impact and Economic Discriminators, who want to do good when it’s low cost, no cost, or negative cost. Basically it’s super high value for AAs to create environments for EDs to discriminate in favor of charities.
I agree with that. We mentioned in this post that the research might have a risk of sampling bias, but if others also think we weigh this evidence too heavily, we will address that in the text.
I would like to note that Guided Consumption is not only focused on consumer goods, but we think that’s a good segment to test this in, but we believe other segments are very much possible too (any company can be a Guided Company, although it will make more sense in some areas more than others).
I believe a focus on longtermism is a good strategy in any company (also consumer goods), and with lower short-term pressures in the absence of ROI investors, Guiding Companies are uniquely suited to use that to their advantage.
I am wary of the claims about the weight of evidence here. The studies you link to are correlational. The obvious problem is that foundation ownership is not random. Foundations are most likely to set up companies in capital intensive industries (this is found by one of your studies), where their longtermism is an advantage in terms of investing more in the future. Guided Consumption is focused on consumer goods which is a completely different ballgame.
I don’t have a problem with any of your other arguments, but motivated reasoning should not make us overstate the value of these studies.
I take your point.
Think it does suggest, at the very least, that firms capitalized by charitable equity don’t have a governance disadvantage.
I do think the explanations for a causal relationship between FOF (foundation-owned firm) and increased performance makes senses though, particularly better motivation to work harder/smarter if it’s for a worthy cause and ability to focus on the long term.
I get the skepticism for the probability of Guided Consumption taking over the economy (charities receiving 5%+ global net profits) in absolute terms being super high (though that is my belief and position). What is pretty baffling to me is position that efforts to advance firms with popular effective charities (such as charities in Global Health and Development spaces) in the equity position are not extremely high EV. Getting such firms out there in economic contexts that make sense and making the public aware of the ability to help charities by buying stuff they would already is intuitively a clear path to high impact. Sure, maybe it won’t work, but it definitely merits exploration.
I agree that it’s probably high EV! I just think we should focus on the good conceptual arguments for that instead of shaky evidence.
Awesome to hear… I’m gonna be launching an agent-centered post on Guided Consumption Theory in probably a week and a half. I’ll focus on the motivations of two main groups, Altruistic Agents , who are fine bearing costs and are interested in maximizing impact and Economic Discriminators, who want to do good when it’s low cost, no cost, or negative cost. Basically it’s super high value for AAs to create environments for EDs to discriminate in favor of charities.
I agree with that. We mentioned in this post that the research might have a risk of sampling bias, but if others also think we weigh this evidence too heavily, we will address that in the text.
I would like to note that Guided Consumption is not only focused on consumer goods, but we think that’s a good segment to test this in, but we believe other segments are very much possible too (any company can be a Guided Company, although it will make more sense in some areas more than others).
I believe a focus on longtermism is a good strategy in any company (also consumer goods), and with lower short-term pressures in the absence of ROI investors, Guiding Companies are uniquely suited to use that to their advantage.