I’ve just made a similar comment to Ryan. The central bits are more like natural monopolies. If you’re running a farmers’ market, you just want one venue that everyone comes to each market day, etc. The various stallholders and customers could set up a new market down the road, but it would be a huge pain and it’s not something any individual wants to do.
Regarding 80k, they were originally set up to tell people about careers, then moved to advertising EA more broadly. That’s a central function and in the market analogy, they were advertising the market, as a whole, to new customers and were sort of a ‘market catalogue’. 80k then switched to promoting a subset of causes (i.e. products), specifically longtermism. I wasn’t then, and still am not, wild about this for reasons I hope my post provides: it’s perverse to have multiple organisations fulfilling the same function, in this case advertising the EA market, so when they switched to longtermism, it meant they left a gap that wasn’t easy to fill. I understand that they wanted to promote particular causes, but hopefully they would appreciate that it meant they were aiding a sub-section of the community, and the remaining less-served subsections would feel disappointed by this. I think someone should be acting as a general advertiser for EA—perhaps a sort of public broadcast role, like the BBC has in the UK—and 80k would have been the obvious people to fulfil that role. Back to the farmers market analogy, if I sell apples, and the market advertiser decides to stop advertising fruit in its catalogue (or puts it in tiny pictures at the back), it puts the fruit sellers at a relative disadvantage.
As far as 80k, I think there are two dimensions here. First, I don’t think “someone should be acting as a general advertiser for EA” implies that a particular organization must advertise for all of EA if it chooses to advertise at all. If no advertising organization existed, and then someone decided to advertise specific causes and/or to specific populations, I don’t think anyone else would have standing to complain. That is, I wouldn’t agree that it is generally “perverse to have multiple organisations fulfilling the” function of advertising.
The second dimension is that 80k pivoted to primarily promoting longtermism, leaving “a gap that wasn’t easy to fill” because it had been a general advertiser. I agree that posed a challenge. On the other hand, I think it’s also problematic to tell an organization that if it decides to undertake a role on behalf of the whole community, it is locked into that role for life—no matter what strategic direction its donors, leadership, and staff may feel is best down the road.
It’s not clear what role donors play in the market metaphor; perhaps they are orange and apple farmers? If it turned out that orange farmers [donors interested in longtermism] were paying for the most of the advertising, and orange vendors were doing most of the labor, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the advertising agency to announce a pivot. Telling orange farmers that they have to pay for a bunch of apple advocacy as the price of promoting oranges is going to reduce their willingness to pay for any advertising at all.
So what do we do when an organization was performing a role for the entire community but no longer wishes to do that? I think there has to be clear notice, a transition period, and a fair opportunity for the apple farmers/vendors to stand up their own organization to hawk apples. In other words, I think the community as a whole has a reasonable expectation that a broad service provider (whose role is not a natural monopoly by its nature) will continue to service the broader community in the short-to-medium run, and will carry out a transition fairly before disengaging in the medium-to-long run.
I’ve just made a similar comment to Ryan. The central bits are more like natural monopolies. If you’re running a farmers’ market, you just want one venue that everyone comes to each market day, etc. The various stallholders and customers could set up a new market down the road, but it would be a huge pain and it’s not something any individual wants to do.
Regarding 80k, they were originally set up to tell people about careers, then moved to advertising EA more broadly. That’s a central function and in the market analogy, they were advertising the market, as a whole, to new customers and were sort of a ‘market catalogue’. 80k then switched to promoting a subset of causes (i.e. products), specifically longtermism. I wasn’t then, and still am not, wild about this for reasons I hope my post provides: it’s perverse to have multiple organisations fulfilling the same function, in this case advertising the EA market, so when they switched to longtermism, it meant they left a gap that wasn’t easy to fill. I understand that they wanted to promote particular causes, but hopefully they would appreciate that it meant they were aiding a sub-section of the community, and the remaining less-served subsections would feel disappointed by this. I think someone should be acting as a general advertiser for EA—perhaps a sort of public broadcast role, like the BBC has in the UK—and 80k would have been the obvious people to fulfil that role. Back to the farmers market analogy, if I sell apples, and the market advertiser decides to stop advertising fruit in its catalogue (or puts it in tiny pictures at the back), it puts the fruit sellers at a relative disadvantage.
As far as 80k, I think there are two dimensions here. First, I don’t think “someone should be acting as a general advertiser for EA” implies that a particular organization must advertise for all of EA if it chooses to advertise at all. If no advertising organization existed, and then someone decided to advertise specific causes and/or to specific populations, I don’t think anyone else would have standing to complain. That is, I wouldn’t agree that it is generally “perverse to have multiple organisations fulfilling the” function of advertising.
The second dimension is that 80k pivoted to primarily promoting longtermism, leaving “a gap that wasn’t easy to fill” because it had been a general advertiser. I agree that posed a challenge. On the other hand, I think it’s also problematic to tell an organization that if it decides to undertake a role on behalf of the whole community, it is locked into that role for life—no matter what strategic direction its donors, leadership, and staff may feel is best down the road.
It’s not clear what role donors play in the market metaphor; perhaps they are orange and apple farmers? If it turned out that orange farmers [donors interested in longtermism] were paying for the most of the advertising, and orange vendors were doing most of the labor, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the advertising agency to announce a pivot. Telling orange farmers that they have to pay for a bunch of apple advocacy as the price of promoting oranges is going to reduce their willingness to pay for any advertising at all.
So what do we do when an organization was performing a role for the entire community but no longer wishes to do that? I think there has to be clear notice, a transition period, and a fair opportunity for the apple farmers/vendors to stand up their own organization to hawk apples. In other words, I think the community as a whole has a reasonable expectation that a broad service provider (whose role is not a natural monopoly by its nature) will continue to service the broader community in the short-to-medium run, and will carry out a transition fairly before disengaging in the medium-to-long run.