I’d be interested in hearing arguments for why a hub in a low-cost country would be better than a new hub in a developed country with more potential EAs (e.g. Australia, the East Coast).
Primarily much lower property and living costs, meaning people can live there for less (= more donations, longer runways for startups, lower expenses for researchers, etc) while still retaining high quality of living and being around interesting people. Hubs in higher cost countries would likely be valuable as well, but they cater to a different group of people, would require higher initial investment for a comparable property, and generally have stricter visa requirements.
It’s funny that people forget how cheap most of the U.S. is. In a town near where I live, a Victorian mansion with >40 rooms was for sale for $500K. And it comes with all the benefits of living in a developed country...
nods, a hub in a low-cost part of a developed country is also worth considering, but I think it’d still be significantly higher cost than a low cost country (food, assistance, and building), and has the disadvantage of being significantly less visa friendly (the US in particular puts major hurdles in the way of non-US citizens). The really low cost locations in the US are also likely to be less attractive locations, in terms of access to major cities and environment.
I also think that being in a developed country may be less of an advantage than some people are imagining, because I expect the internal and online interactions to be much more significant than local interactions once we’re outside existing hubs and other high-cost areas.
I think despite these considerations it’s worth exploring and also a potentially high value project, but it’s not something I’m drawn towards.
It’s not sufficient reason to think that low-cost hubs are higher value than additional high-cost hubs, but it is (I think) sufficient reason to think that whether or not EAs are working towards more hubs in higher cost countries, it would still be good to also be moving towards having at least one low-cost hub.
I have greater personal interest in low cost hubs, and I suspect that getting the first low-cost hub will be unusually high value (for reasons in some of the discussions on facebook/in person which I will write up properly at some point), so that’s what I’m focusing on here. I do not intend to crowd out or compete with efforts towards more high-cost locations, I see those as having a quite different set of benefits which I’m not very confident in my ability to evaluate the impact of (since it depends massively on locations I don’t know at all well, unlike the low-cost one which would attract people from across the globe). I would be happy to disambiguate by using a different name if the people working towards high-cost hubs want “New EA Hub”.
I’d be interested in hearing arguments for why a hub in a low-cost country would be better than a new hub in a developed country with more potential EAs (e.g. Australia, the East Coast).
Primarily much lower property and living costs, meaning people can live there for less (= more donations, longer runways for startups, lower expenses for researchers, etc) while still retaining high quality of living and being around interesting people. Hubs in higher cost countries would likely be valuable as well, but they cater to a different group of people, would require higher initial investment for a comparable property, and generally have stricter visa requirements.
It’s funny that people forget how cheap most of the U.S. is. In a town near where I live, a Victorian mansion with >40 rooms was for sale for $500K. And it comes with all the benefits of living in a developed country...
nods, a hub in a low-cost part of a developed country is also worth considering, but I think it’d still be significantly higher cost than a low cost country (food, assistance, and building), and has the disadvantage of being significantly less visa friendly (the US in particular puts major hurdles in the way of non-US citizens). The really low cost locations in the US are also likely to be less attractive locations, in terms of access to major cities and environment.
I also think that being in a developed country may be less of an advantage than some people are imagining, because I expect the internal and online interactions to be much more significant than local interactions once we’re outside existing hubs and other high-cost areas.
I think despite these considerations it’s worth exploring and also a potentially high value project, but it’s not something I’m drawn towards.
I don’t think this counts as sufficient reason. You need to list all of the (major) pro-and-con-considerations and weigh them up against each other in order to show that a low-cost EA hub is better than another one in a developed country.
Evan’s comments below are interesting, though.
It’s not sufficient reason to think that low-cost hubs are higher value than additional high-cost hubs, but it is (I think) sufficient reason to think that whether or not EAs are working towards more hubs in higher cost countries, it would still be good to also be moving towards having at least one low-cost hub.
I have greater personal interest in low cost hubs, and I suspect that getting the first low-cost hub will be unusually high value (for reasons in some of the discussions on facebook/in person which I will write up properly at some point), so that’s what I’m focusing on here. I do not intend to crowd out or compete with efforts towards more high-cost locations, I see those as having a quite different set of benefits which I’m not very confident in my ability to evaluate the impact of (since it depends massively on locations I don’t know at all well, unlike the low-cost one which would attract people from across the globe). I would be happy to disambiguate by using a different name if the people working towards high-cost hubs want “New EA Hub”.
I suspect these don’t trade off against each other meaningfully.