An extra thought is that this seems like a positive update on the cost-effectiveness of past meta work.
Here’s a rough and probably overoptimistic back of the envelope to illustrate the idea:
I’d guess that maybe $50m was spent on formal movement building efforts in 2020. This is intended to include things like OP & GiveWell’s spending on staff, most of FHI and MIRI, plus all of the explicit movement building orgs like CEA and 80k. If that started at 0 in 2010, then it might add up to $250m over the decade (assuming straight line growth).
If the average cost of employing someone was $50k, that would imply about 5000 person-years of work were invested.
Let’s assume that formal movement building efforts receive 1⁄3 of the credit for resources raised (with the other 2⁄3 going to informal efforts like personal connections and to the original founders).
Then, the formal efforts have ‘raised’ $15bn and 146,000 person-years (assuming 20yr per person & growth of 7300 people).
So that’s an average return of 60 dollars per 1 dollar in, and 29 person years per 1 year in. You also get a lot of research thrown in for free.
Individual projects will vary a lot, but that’s a nice base rate!
An extra thought is that this seems like a positive update on the cost-effectiveness of past meta work.
Here’s a rough and probably overoptimistic back of the envelope to illustrate the idea:
I’d guess that maybe $50m was spent on formal movement building efforts in 2020. This is intended to include things like OP & GiveWell’s spending on staff, most of FHI and MIRI, plus all of the explicit movement building orgs like CEA and 80k. If that started at 0 in 2010, then it might add up to $250m over the decade (assuming straight line growth).
If the average cost of employing someone was $50k, that would imply about 5000 person-years of work were invested.
Let’s assume that formal movement building efforts receive 1⁄3 of the credit for resources raised (with the other 2⁄3 going to informal efforts like personal connections and to the original founders).
Then, the formal efforts have ‘raised’ $15bn and 146,000 person-years (assuming 20yr per person & growth of 7300 people).
So that’s an average return of 60 dollars per 1 dollar in, and 29 person years per 1 year in. You also get a lot of research thrown in for free.
Individual projects will vary a lot, but that’s a nice base rate!