It’s unclear how demanding this promise is—I find it to be considerably more vague than the GWWC 10% Pledge in terms of how much sacrifice is expected, but let’s assume for the time being that it is ~equally demanding as the 10% Pledge. It’s taken many years and FTEs to get GWWC to ~10,000 pledgers, a rate of progress which makes me think that gaining promisers would be considerably more difficult than your model assumes.
It’s true that there is a theoretical “benefit to those who join the promise” in that they obtain the ability to ask other promisers for material resources. However, for those who currently have enough food, water, peace, and shelter, there is zero marginal benefit to pledging now as one could always defer pledging until one had a need. One could perhaps get around this with an open season and a registry (e.g., people can only promise from Jan 1 to Jan 15 of each year, or else they can’t claim the promise until the next year)? But even then, this system needs a balance between people who have excess resources and people who need basic resources, or ~everyone will likely get frustrated and give up. I’m not sure you’d get that.
The idea of closed communities of promisers in the postscript is interesting, although there would be awkwardness about who is allowed / not allowed into the group, whether people would be screened on various underwriting criteria, and so on.
Thanks very much for all these great hypotheses. I think there is a reasonable chance that these effects will be true, but also that we don’t have strong evidence for any of them yet. I’ve split your comment into the following hypotheses, and tests that can be run to determine whether they are true:
Hypothesis 1: Spread rate will be similar to GWWC 10% pledge, at 10,000 members over 15 years of activity. GWWC currently have 15 employees, with a time averaged number of c. 10 employees. This puts the spread rate per employee at around 0.2 promisers per day, compared to the model’s current estimate of 3. This would lower the QALYs per dollar from 915 to 123. Test for hypothesis 1: monitor the spread rate per employee
Hypothesis 2: People gaming the system by becoming aware of the promise, but only taking the promise once they are in need, will be a significant effect. Test A for hypothesis 2: Employees record interactions with potential promisers and indicate what proportion of them seem likely to engage in this behaviour Test B for hypothesis 2: Monitor the spread rate by employees and by promisers directly, ignoring this intermediate variable
Hypothesis 3: There will be an overwhelming number of promisers without access to food, water, peace and shelter, which will lead to a high defection rate (above the 0.5% per day predicted in the model) Test A for hypothesis 3: Record the defection rate from the promise by running trials Test B for hypothesis 3: Observe the ratio of promisers who are able to give and promisers who are making requests for support
If you or anybody else would be interested in supporting the running any of these tests, please let me know.
It’s unclear how demanding this promise is—I find it to be considerably more vague than the GWWC 10% Pledge in terms of how much sacrifice is expected, but let’s assume for the time being that it is ~equally demanding as the 10% Pledge. It’s taken many years and FTEs to get GWWC to ~10,000 pledgers, a rate of progress which makes me think that gaining promisers would be considerably more difficult than your model assumes.
It’s true that there is a theoretical “benefit to those who join the promise” in that they obtain the ability to ask other promisers for material resources. However, for those who currently have enough food, water, peace, and shelter, there is zero marginal benefit to pledging now as one could always defer pledging until one had a need. One could perhaps get around this with an open season and a registry (e.g., people can only promise from Jan 1 to Jan 15 of each year, or else they can’t claim the promise until the next year)? But even then, this system needs a balance between people who have excess resources and people who need basic resources, or ~everyone will likely get frustrated and give up. I’m not sure you’d get that.
The idea of closed communities of promisers in the postscript is interesting, although there would be awkwardness about who is allowed / not allowed into the group, whether people would be screened on various underwriting criteria, and so on.
Thanks very much for all these great hypotheses. I think there is a reasonable chance that these effects will be true, but also that we don’t have strong evidence for any of them yet. I’ve split your comment into the following hypotheses, and tests that can be run to determine whether they are true:
Hypothesis 1: Spread rate will be similar to GWWC 10% pledge, at 10,000 members over 15 years of activity. GWWC currently have 15 employees, with a time averaged number of c. 10 employees. This puts the spread rate per employee at around 0.2 promisers per day, compared to the model’s current estimate of 3. This would lower the QALYs per dollar from 915 to 123.
Test for hypothesis 1: monitor the spread rate per employee
Hypothesis 2: People gaming the system by becoming aware of the promise, but only taking the promise once they are in need, will be a significant effect.
Test A for hypothesis 2: Employees record interactions with potential promisers and indicate what proportion of them seem likely to engage in this behaviour
Test B for hypothesis 2: Monitor the spread rate by employees and by promisers directly, ignoring this intermediate variable
Hypothesis 3: There will be an overwhelming number of promisers without access to food, water, peace and shelter, which will lead to a high defection rate (above the 0.5% per day predicted in the model)
Test A for hypothesis 3: Record the defection rate from the promise by running trials
Test B for hypothesis 3: Observe the ratio of promisers who are able to give and promisers who are making requests for support
If you or anybody else would be interested in supporting the running any of these tests, please let me know.