Hey Jeroen! I personally would love to see the argument for your idea that CEA should publicly defend expenses over $500k.
I can imagine that the disagree votes can be pretty encouraging, but consider the ‘overall karma’ was positive, I think people (including myself) would be interested in seeing your reasoning—even if they (initially) disagree.
When I read your initial comment, my thoughts were “Yes! Wait, actually no. Maybe? What would be the difficulties?”. So I’d love to see a post elaborating on the ideas you’ve already thought up.
Part of what the idea needs—and was impossible for Jeroen to say in the context of Nathan’s post due to the length limit—is a ramp-up plan and limiting principles to prevent it from becoming more burdensome than it is worth. So it’s not realistic to implement this in a single year. As far as limiting principles: once there has been an explanation for “we spent X on the community health team and here’s a explanation why,” we should not expect another public explanation unless that funding line significantly changes (or perhaps all significant line items come up for re-explanation at 5-10 year intervals). Or perhaps there should be a first-stage listing of expenses, with the time/resources spent to publish a detailed rationale for most of them only if enough stakeholders request that in a poll.
The “detailed expected value calculation” may be a bit much for certain expenses. I realize it is heretical to say so, but not all organization expenses are subject to rigorous cost/benefit analyses.
Hey Jeroen! I personally would love to see the argument for your idea that CEA should publicly defend expenses over $500k.
I can imagine that the disagree votes can be pretty encouraging, but consider the ‘overall karma’ was positive, I think people (including myself) would be interested in seeing your reasoning—even if they (initially) disagree.
When I read your initial comment, my thoughts were “Yes! Wait, actually no. Maybe? What would be the difficulties?”. So I’d love to see a post elaborating on the ideas you’ve already thought up.
Part of what the idea needs—and was impossible for Jeroen to say in the context of Nathan’s post due to the length limit—is a ramp-up plan and limiting principles to prevent it from becoming more burdensome than it is worth. So it’s not realistic to implement this in a single year. As far as limiting principles: once there has been an explanation for “we spent X on the community health team and here’s a explanation why,” we should not expect another public explanation unless that funding line significantly changes (or perhaps all significant line items come up for re-explanation at 5-10 year intervals). Or perhaps there should be a first-stage listing of expenses, with the time/resources spent to publish a detailed rationale for most of them only if enough stakeholders request that in a poll.
The “detailed expected value calculation” may be a bit much for certain expenses. I realize it is heretical to say so, but not all organization expenses are subject to rigorous cost/benefit analyses.