I haven’t made this point publicly yet but as a throwaway comment I’ll say that early on it was clear to me over a decade ago we should be incubating billionaires, though I also got pwned by the earn-to-give meme for a while after that.
Right now, they focus on persuading entrepreneurs to donate their exit profits to effective charities. But what about the reverse: convincing EAs to become entrepreneurs?
Feels like it was a mistake to tell people to change their strategy if it can be reversed by a single donor having issues. All the emphasis on “we’re not funding constrained” may have done long term harm by reducing future donations from a wider pool of people.
The question of to what extent more effective altruists should return to earning to give during the last year as the value of companies like Meta and FTX has declined has me pondering whether that’s worthwhile, given how nobody in EA seems to know how to spend well way more money per year on multiple EA causes.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about how there has been a lot of mixed messaging about what to do about AI alignment. There has been an increased urgency to onboard new talent, and launch and expand projects, yet there is an apparently growing consensus that almost everything everyone is doing is either pointless or making things worse. Setbacks the clean meat industry faces have been mounting during the last couple years. There aren’t clear or obvious ways to make significant progress on overcoming those setbacks mainly by throwing more money at them in some way.
I’m not as familiar with how much room for more funding before diminishing marginal returns are hit for other priority areas for EA. I expect that other than a few clear-cut cases like maybe some of Givewell’s top recommended charities, there isn’t a strong sense of how to spend well more money per year than a lot of causes are already receiving from the EA community.
It’s one thing for smaller numbers of people returning to give to know the best targets for increased marginal funding that might fall through after the decline of FTX. It seems like it might be shortsighted to send droves of people rushing back into earning to give when there wouldn’t be any consensus for what interventions they should earning to give to.
I wonder if it has something to do with interest rates. While the rates were low, the situation was “people constrained” and funding was plentiful. Now that the rates are high, capital becomes more of an issue.
Both low interest rates and high valuations for more speculative financial assets are a reflection of more demand for financial assets than supply. They are both functions of the overall level of savings in the economy, which is the source of demand for financial assets. Demographics, globalization, and inequality drove a 40 year boom in the aggregate level of savings that peaked during the pandemic. This era is now over, largely because of changes in demographics and globalization, but also because of a need for more physical investment in the real economy (energy, housing, etc). This physical investment will need to come from the more limited pool of aggregate savings, leaving less for financial assets. I have written several longer papers on this if you would like to discuss further.
Back to earning the give I guess, I’ll see you guys at the McKinsey office
Or better yet, at Y Combinator.
Yeah while we’re here, can we focus more on start ups than high paying jobs this time https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JXDi8tL6uoKPhg4uw/earning-to-give-should-have-focused-more-on-entrepreneurship
I haven’t made this point publicly yet but as a throwaway comment I’ll say that early on it was clear to me over a decade ago we should be incubating billionaires, though I also got pwned by the earn-to-give meme for a while after that.
Sounds like a job for Founders Pledge.
Right now, they focus on persuading entrepreneurs to donate their exit profits to effective charities. But what about the reverse: convincing EAs to become entrepreneurs?
Feels like it was a mistake to tell people to change their strategy if it can be reversed by a single donor having issues. All the emphasis on “we’re not funding constrained” may have done long term harm by reducing future donations from a wider pool of people.
It’s not just a single donor, tech stocks have been down across the board in 2022.
The question of to what extent more effective altruists should return to earning to give during the last year as the value of companies like Meta and FTX has declined has me pondering whether that’s worthwhile, given how nobody in EA seems to know how to spend well way more money per year on multiple EA causes.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about how there has been a lot of mixed messaging about what to do about AI alignment. There has been an increased urgency to onboard new talent, and launch and expand projects, yet there is an apparently growing consensus that almost everything everyone is doing is either pointless or making things worse. Setbacks the clean meat industry faces have been mounting during the last couple years. There aren’t clear or obvious ways to make significant progress on overcoming those setbacks mainly by throwing more money at them in some way.
I’m not as familiar with how much room for more funding before diminishing marginal returns are hit for other priority areas for EA. I expect that other than a few clear-cut cases like maybe some of Givewell’s top recommended charities, there isn’t a strong sense of how to spend well more money per year than a lot of causes are already receiving from the EA community.
It’s one thing for smaller numbers of people returning to give to know the best targets for increased marginal funding that might fall through after the decline of FTX. It seems like it might be shortsighted to send droves of people rushing back into earning to give when there wouldn’t be any consensus for what interventions they should earning to give to.
FYI that this comment appeared in the The Economist’s last edition.
I wonder if it has something to do with interest rates. While the rates were low, the situation was “people constrained” and funding was plentiful. Now that the rates are high, capital becomes more of an issue.
Both low interest rates and high valuations for more speculative financial assets are a reflection of more demand for financial assets than supply. They are both functions of the overall level of savings in the economy, which is the source of demand for financial assets. Demographics, globalization, and inequality drove a 40 year boom in the aggregate level of savings that peaked during the pandemic. This era is now over, largely because of changes in demographics and globalization, but also because of a need for more physical investment in the real economy (energy, housing, etc). This physical investment will need to come from the more limited pool of aggregate savings, leaving less for financial assets. I have written several longer papers on this if you would like to discuss further.
Yeah good point, would be interested to hear from people who understand this stuff