I’m a bit confused about the claim that the bottleneck is ways to deploy funding rather than funding itself.
In global poverty and health cause areas for example, there are highly scalable EA-endorsed interventions like insecticide treated bed nets, deworming and cash transfers, and there are still plenty of people with malaria, children to deworm, and folks below the poverty line who could receive cash transfers. As far as I’m aware, AMF, Deworm the World / SCI and GiveDirectly could deploy more funds, and to the extent that they needed to hire more people to do so, I hypothesise they would be able to easily given that, as I understand it, there is a lot of competition to get jobs at organisations like these. What am I missing?
Hi Aidan, the short answer is that global poverty seems the most funding constrained of the EA causes. The skill bottlenecks are most severe in longtermism and meta e.g. at the top of the ‘implications section’ I said:
The existence of a funding overhang within meta and longtermist causes created a bottleneck for the skills needed to deploy EA funds, especially in ways that are hard for people who don’t deeply identify with the mindset.
That said, I still thinking global poverty is ‘talent constrained’ in the sense that:
If you can design something that’s several-fold more cost-effective than GiveDirectly and moderately scalable, you have a good shot of getting a lot of funding. Global poverty is only highly funding constrained at the GiveDirectly level of cost-effectiveness.
I think people can often have a greater impact on global poverty via research, working at top non-profits, advocacy, policy etc. rather than via earning to give.
Thank you for your response! Makes sense. I’m not 100% convinced on the last point, but a few of your articles and 80k podcast appearances have definitely shifted me from thinking that E2G is unambiguously the best way for me to maximise the amount of near-term suffering I can abate, to thinking that direct work is a real contender. So thanks!!
Hi there!
I’m a bit confused about the claim that the bottleneck is ways to deploy funding rather than funding itself.
In global poverty and health cause areas for example, there are highly scalable EA-endorsed interventions like insecticide treated bed nets, deworming and cash transfers, and there are still plenty of people with malaria, children to deworm, and folks below the poverty line who could receive cash transfers. As far as I’m aware, AMF, Deworm the World / SCI and GiveDirectly could deploy more funds, and to the extent that they needed to hire more people to do so, I hypothesise they would be able to easily given that, as I understand it, there is a lot of competition to get jobs at organisations like these. What am I missing?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Aidan, the short answer is that global poverty seems the most funding constrained of the EA causes. The skill bottlenecks are most severe in longtermism and meta e.g. at the top of the ‘implications section’ I said:
That said, I still thinking global poverty is ‘talent constrained’ in the sense that:
If you can design something that’s several-fold more cost-effective than GiveDirectly and moderately scalable, you have a good shot of getting a lot of funding. Global poverty is only highly funding constrained at the GiveDirectly level of cost-effectiveness.
I think people can often have a greater impact on global poverty via research, working at top non-profits, advocacy, policy etc. rather than via earning to give.
Thank you for your response! Makes sense. I’m not 100% convinced on the last point, but a few of your articles and 80k podcast appearances have definitely shifted me from thinking that E2G is unambiguously the best way for me to maximise the amount of near-term suffering I can abate, to thinking that direct work is a real contender. So thanks!!