Although I understand why you wanted to keep the discussion at a high level, I think various community-management functions are different in ways that affect the strength of your argument here.
Certain functions should not, for various reasons, be duplicated. There probably should be only one Forum. It would generally be a bad idea for multiple organizations to try launching an EA group at a given university. Moreover, although funding for these kinds of functions is both essential and appreciated, the community often provides much or most of the value itself—imagine a Forum without people “donating” their time to write and comment. The market metaphor works best for these types of functions, and the argument that market administrators should be both impartial and accountable to the community is strongest here. Using the Internet as a metaphor, Internet service providers that control the Internet backbone would be in this category, as would the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The analogy seems weaker for organizations like 80K. While 80K is in the business of promoting the sale of oranges, its existence doesn’t meaningfully impede the ability of apple lovers to create a new organization (maybe −193.15C?) to promote the sale of apples. That 80K exists, and −193.15C doesn’t, is primarily a function of donor preferences. Organizations of this type seem more like market participants than market regulators/controllers. I’d also put charity evaluators in this category. With the Internet metaphor, most websites would fall into this category.
Functions like organizing EAGs fall somewhere in the middle. Conditional upon me winning the lottery, there’s nothing stopping me from creating my own conference series. But conferences do involve network effects, so it’s not accurate to say that the existence of EAGs does not meaningful impair my ability to start up my own series. I’d probably need to offer partial travel grants and post pictures of upscale meals . . . or something to overcome CEA’s built-in network advantage here. Likewise, one could view the value created by EAGs as resulting from a more even mix of organizational/donor and community contributions than the Forum or 80K. So running global conferences is like running Facebook or Twitter in the Internet metaphor.
It’s possible that CEA’s current functions should be split between two organizations, one of which takes what one might call a market-coordinating or infrastructure role,[1] and the other of which is more like a market participant with a specific viewpoint. Conditional on it being a good idea for any organization to be seen as “speaking” for EA, it should be the infrastructure organization. I would prefer that the infrastructure organization adopt policies to prevent too much financial dependence on one donor.
As far as community governance of infrastructure—much (but not all) of the past discussion about how to define the community for governance purposes (such as the linked comment from Dustin Moskovitz) has been in the context of funding allocation. Many of the challenges with community definition would be significantly attentuated in the context of community governance. Moreover, given that a major purpose of community institutions is to empower and equip members of the community to effectively do good, there are good reasons to think those members would be well-suited to selecting leaders who effectively accomplished that purpose.
Although I use the term “infrastructure,” tasks like technical development (as opposed to moderation or policy development) of the Forum could be handled by either organization.
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.
Although I understand why you wanted to keep the discussion at a high level, I think various community-management functions are different in ways that affect the strength of your argument here.
Certain functions should not, for various reasons, be duplicated. There probably should be only one Forum. It would generally be a bad idea for multiple organizations to try launching an EA group at a given university. Moreover, although funding for these kinds of functions is both essential and appreciated, the community often provides much or most of the value itself—imagine a Forum without people “donating” their time to write and comment. The market metaphor works best for these types of functions, and the argument that market administrators should be both impartial and accountable to the community is strongest here. Using the Internet as a metaphor, Internet service providers that control the Internet backbone would be in this category, as would the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The analogy seems weaker for organizations like 80K. While 80K is in the business of promoting the sale of oranges, its existence doesn’t meaningfully impede the ability of apple lovers to create a new organization (maybe −193.15C?) to promote the sale of apples. That 80K exists, and −193.15C doesn’t, is primarily a function of donor preferences. Organizations of this type seem more like market participants than market regulators/controllers. I’d also put charity evaluators in this category. With the Internet metaphor, most websites would fall into this category.
Functions like organizing EAGs fall somewhere in the middle. Conditional upon me winning the lottery, there’s nothing stopping me from creating my own conference series. But conferences do involve network effects, so it’s not accurate to say that the existence of EAGs does not meaningful impair my ability to start up my own series. I’d probably need to offer partial travel grants and post pictures of upscale meals . . . or something to overcome CEA’s built-in network advantage here. Likewise, one could view the value created by EAGs as resulting from a more even mix of organizational/donor and community contributions than the Forum or 80K. So running global conferences is like running Facebook or Twitter in the Internet metaphor.
It’s possible that CEA’s current functions should be split between two organizations, one of which takes what one might call a market-coordinating or infrastructure role,[1] and the other of which is more like a market participant with a specific viewpoint. Conditional on it being a good idea for any organization to be seen as “speaking” for EA, it should be the infrastructure organization. I would prefer that the infrastructure organization adopt policies to prevent too much financial dependence on one donor.
As far as community governance of infrastructure—much (but not all) of the past discussion about how to define the community for governance purposes (such as the linked comment from Dustin Moskovitz) has been in the context of funding allocation. Many of the challenges with community definition would be significantly attentuated in the context of community governance. Moreover, given that a major purpose of community institutions is to empower and equip members of the community to effectively do good, there are good reasons to think those members would be well-suited to selecting leaders who effectively accomplished that purpose.
Although I use the term “infrastructure,” tasks like technical development (as opposed to moderation or policy development) of the Forum could be handled by either organization.
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.