Ballot Ready (https://www.ballotready.org/) has useful information for at least some candidates. I don’t know how much of the US they cover.
blonergan
Karma: 169
I’m also sympathetic to the argument, but I think the BOTEC overstates the potential benefit for another reason. If Givewell finds an opportunity to give $100 million per year at an effectiveness of 15x of cash transfers rather than 5x (and assuming there is a large supply of giving opportunities at 5x), I think the benefit is $200 million per year rather than $1 billion. The $100 million spent on the 15x intervention achieves what they could have achieved by spending $300 million on a 5x intervention. Of course, as noted, that is for only one year, so the number over a longer time horizon would be much larger.
Even with that adjustment, and considering the issues raised by David Manheim and other commenters, I find this post quite compelling – thank you for sharing it.
I think the appropriate cost to use for evaluators, applicants, and admins is the opportunity cost of their time. For many such people this would be considerably higher than their wage and outside the ranges used in the model. I don’t know that this would change your conclusion, but it could significantly affect the numbers.
Keeping the set of EA org employees fixed, and paying them more, I think higher salaries have three effects:
EA org employees will donate more. This portion is a sort of regranting mechanism. I would expect such people to be effective regranters, so this feels like a small win.
EA org employees will practice better self-care and invest in things that save them time and allow them to work more. They will be more productive as a result. Given the scarcity of talent, this feels like a big win.
EA org employees will have higher standards of living. This feels like a net loss, given the potential alternative uses of funds.
My intuition is that EA org salaries are low enough, and talent is scarce enough, that (2) probably dominates.
There’s also the consideration of how the set of people working at EA orgs will change.
More people will be willing to work for EA orgs.
The set of people who become willing to work for EA orgs as salaries go up will be different from the people willing to work at lower salaries.
Keeping the set of EA org jobs fixed, the pool of people willing to take those jobs will expand. I would guess with higher salaries the people hired would tend to be more talented, and less “totalising” in their commitment to EA. The former seems good, whereas the latter seems bad for some roles, but perhaps good for others. I think it’s important to recognize that people’s willingness to work for a low salary depends on many factors. In particular, families (parents, spouses, children) can be significant financial resources or burdens. So low salaries are an imperfect way to filter for level of commitment.
And, given the relative scarcity of EA talent vs. funding, making EA org work more attractive (relative to earning to give) seems valuable to me. With higher salaries the number of EA org jobs will tend to expand due to an increased supply of workers, which seems good on the margin.
If we are taking the assumed donor behavior as given, and if the sole objective is maximizing donations to charity, this makes sense. But there is an available option that would be better for both the EA that is earning to give and the charity. The E2Ger could take the $100k job and donate 32%. With even slightly diminishing marginal utility of consumption, the E2Ger would be better off consuming $68k with certainty than having a 80% chance of consuming $45k, a 10% chance of consuming $50k, and a 10% chance of consuming $275k. And the charity would get slightly more in expectation ($32k rather than $31.5k).
In practice, I think there is usually a tradeoff between risk and expected value when choosing among E2G jobs/careers, so choosing riskier options and donating a higher percentage when outcomes are favorable will tend to be the right policy. I’m just not sure that the main argument presented here strengthens the case for doing so.
The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at U Penn has posted a list: https://www.impact.upenn.edu/ukraine-crisis-how-can-i-help/
Thanks for this interesting writeup and discussion!
I think EA movement building attracts people with different levels of commitment to EA. Doing direct work, at least given current salaries, might require most people to forgo 50-90% of their market income. This could mean people doing direct work will have a significant different lifestyle from people in their peer groups, particularly if the people doing direct work have children and do not have partners with high incomes.
People who find EA arguments compelling, but who are not willing to make the lifestyle sacrifice required to do direct work will find earning to give more appealing. Work often does not scale (down) well, so splitting one’s time between working for a market wage and doing direct work will tend not to be optimal.
This would change if direct work paid closer to market wages for different skillsets. More EAs could do direct work, and those who are more committed could donate greater shares of their income. But this could affect the culture within organizations (e.g. if colleagues had very different salaries or donated very different amounts), and lower salaries can serve a selection purpose for roles where the level of commitment to EA might affect job performance.
I’m not suggesting this needs to be in the model, but I think if direct work is an option only for highly committed EAs, it will affect the relative scarcity of labor and capital within the movement.
Thank you for sharing this writeup. What do you see as key differences between FEM’s work and the family planning work that DMI does?
A nonprofit called Noora Health that operates in India and Bangladesh has pivoted to several Covid-related interventions. Given their pre-Covid work, they are positioned well to provide information and to train family members to help care for Covid patients.
I don’t believe it’s accurate to say:
“Sam Bankman Fried has admitted that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are a ponzi scheme”
I don’t think he was talking about Bitcoin specifically or about all cryptocurrencies in that exchange with Matt Levine.
At this point, I think the risk of good projects being terminated if crypto declines further is fairly low, given that current EA spending is a small percentage of EA wealth.
I share your concern about reputation risk from people associating EA with crypto, but that has to be weighed against the benefits (e.g. possible further wealth creation, and opportunities for SBF and others to spread EA ideas).