I think the reasoning is that people are irrationally offput from spending small amounts of money, and in particular offput from getting VAs to finish projects. In addition, there’s high and offputting overhead for first getting set up with VAs, which we’ve had to handle anyway.
Of course, people could afford to pay these small sums themselves, and I’m very sensitive to concerns about donating to the global rich rather than GiveDirectly. Indeed I think a lot of spending in the EA movement broadly conceived is misplaced on these grounds, ultimately gets focused on helping those globally rich people, and does less good than GiveDirectly. But I think this particular .impact spending, which is after all especially small, is worth trying.
Indeed I think a lot of spending in the EA movement broadly conceived is misplaced on these grounds, ultimately gets focused on helping those globally rich people, and does less good than GiveDirectly.
Here’s how I replied:
I think the reasoning is that people are irrationally offput from spending small amounts of money, and in particular offput from getting VAs to finish projects. In addition, there’s high and offputting overhead for first getting set up with VAs, which we’ve had to handle anyway.
Of course, people could afford to pay these small sums themselves, and I’m very sensitive to concerns about donating to the global rich rather than GiveDirectly. Indeed I think a lot of spending in the EA movement broadly conceived is misplaced on these grounds, ultimately gets focused on helping those globally rich people, and does less good than GiveDirectly. But I think this particular .impact spending, which is after all especially small, is worth trying.
Do you want to elaborate on this?
Not really ;)