Looking to advance businesses with charities in the vast majority shareholder position. Check out my TEDx talk for why I believe Profit for Good businesses could be a profound force for good in the world.
Brad Westđ¸
Karma: 2,145
A Linkpost to VinÂcent van der Holstâs TEDx Talk- How Profit for Good BusiÂnesses Can TransÂform PhilanÂthropy and Save Lives â
One quibble with the mode of analysis for taxation. The way to evaluate the impact, positive or negative, of government spending, would be the effect of the spending vs the average counterfactual effect of retention. Thus, for impact analysis, we would not be comparing the utility generated from government spending to the cost-effectiveness of a marginal dollar to a Givewell-endorse charity, but rather the utility generated by the counterfactual retention of the funds by the taxpayer base. In any case, that bar is much easier for government spending to clear.
I could imagine a few things:
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Pledging may have some combination the effect of (a) actually increasing peopleâs lifetime donations to effective charities and (b) causing people to advertise giving they already were going to do. To the extent that a pledge is b rather than a, getting someone to pledge the same amount as you is not double your impact.
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Many of the people who you cause to become pledgers might have become pledgers later, thus you probably just accelerated their pledge, greatly decreasing your actual impact vs if you cause someone to pledge (and this pledge causes them to donate more rather than encompasses donation that would otherwise happen).
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Thereâs a possibility that you could anchor someone to donate less. Potentially someone could see your celebrated 10% pledge and view that as adequate, lowering their donations. Here, there is a risk of harm from the pledge.
All that said, I still think the pledge is an awesome way to promote and normalize effective giving.
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It is really great to know that the pledge allows pledgers to use their judgment as to what organizations qualify as highly-effective organizations. In light of this, I may make a 20% pledge.
We all pay for the governmentâs ability to protect the wealthy by yielding to the government its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In a âstate of natureâ most of those with the skills or luck to accumulate wealth would either enjoy it fleetingly or pay significantly higher costs for its retention than taxes under governments. If a system of law and order enables the lucky to be so much better off regarding their wealth, it strikes me as quite fair that the unlucky should share in the benefits of society as well.
I understand we may not be as far apart on policy, but this is why I bristle at the ânecessary evilâ framing of taxation.
One of the things that moved me away from the libertarian view of all distribution as violence is the notion of government in any form as protecting the wealthy against existences in which there would be much more violence and in which they could not be secure in their wealth and comfort. Essentially, no matter how self-made, oneâs wealth is almost always enabled by a functioning form of government. It seems reasonable for those whom government enables to be very wealthy and comfortable to require some contribution so that others might have minimal comfort or opportunities.
It seems as if the potential of the damages could make the vast majority of defendants âjudgment-proofâ (meaning they lack the assets to satisfy the judgment).
I wonder about the ethics of an organization that had the policy of financially supporting people (post-bankruptcy) who made potentially extremely high EV decisions that were personally financially ruinous.
You have defined socialism here quite broadly, which may be unhelpful to discussing it as it can mean anything between
a. A market-based economy with a significant amount of redistribution from the wealthy to the poor and some business regulations for prosocial reasons.b. A command economy where a centralized government has control over (or attempts to control) almost all aspects of the economy.
In my view, the former may very well be the ideal for developed countries at the moment but I am rather skeptical of the latter.
A point each in addition on the pro/âcon side.
Pro: If a non-EA fills a position and can do the function just as well with less alignment, this frees up the EA for a higher EV use of time. The non-EA, not being as concerned about EV, would, on average, choose a less impactful position, because impact is not as high of a concern.Con: EA positions carry connections, influence, credibility, and other social capital that can allow for impact beyond oneâs direct job duties. To one who is concerned simply with doing their job duties competently, there may be less incentive to otherwise responsibly use their âinsiderâ position to better the world.
I messaged you. Good for you for looking to make a difference and develop your knowledge/âskills.
One way of thinking about the role is how varying degrees of competence correspond with outcomes.
You could imagine a lot of roles have more of a satisficer quality- if a sufficient degree of competence is met, the vast majority of the value possible from that role is met. Higher degrees of excellence would have only marginal value increases; insufficient competence could reduce value dramatically. In such a situation, risk-aversion makes a ton of sense: the potential benefit of getting grand slam placements is very small in relation to the harm caused by an incompetent hire.
On the other hand, you might have roles where the value scales very well with incredible placements. In these situations, finding ways to test possible fit may be very worth it even if there is a risk of wasting resources on bad hires.
Take a Minute to Vote for the Profit for Good SesÂsion at SOCAP Global
Yeah, a lot of interventions/âcauses/âworldviews that have power in EA will have more than adequate resources to do what they are trying to do. This is why, to some extent, âgetting a job at an EA orgâ may not be a particularly high EV move because it is not clear that the counterfactual employee would be worse than you (although, this reasoning is somewhat weakened by the fact that you could ostensibly free an aligned person to do other work, and so on).
Lending your abilities and resources to promising causes/âetc. that do not have power behind them is probably a way that someone of mediocre abilities could have high impact, perhaps much more impact than much more talented people serving well-resourced masters. Of course, the trick here would be identifying what are these âpromisingâ, neglected areas, especially when the lack of attention by the powers that be may be interpreted as a lack of merit.
I had thought a public list that emphasized potential Impact of different interventions and the likely costs associated with discovering the actual impact would be great.
Reading through your articles, I canât help but share your concern especially because of how potentially fragile peopleâs important and impactful altruistic decisions might be.
If my family is making 100k and they are choosing to designate 10% of that annually to effective charities, that represents vacations that are not had, savings that are not made, a few less luxuries, etc. I may be looking for a permission structure to eliminate or reduce my giving. This is probably even more true if I am only considering donation of a significant portion of my income.
Critics of effective giving can help people feel morally justified in abstaining from effective giving, which might be all that they need to maintain the status quo of not giving, or tilt a bit more of their budget to themselves and their families.
SBF likely had mixed motives, in that there was likely at least some degree to which he acted in order to further his own well-being or with partiality toward the well-being of certain entities (such as his parents). The reasoning that you mentioned above (privileging your own interests instrumentally rather than terminally such that you as an agent can perform better) is a fraught manner of thinking with extremely high risk for motivated reasoning. However, I think that it is one that serious altruists need to engage with in good faith. To not do so would imply giving until oneâs welfare was at the global poverty line, which would probably impair one too much as an agent. Of course, Iâm not saying he was engaged in good faith regarding this instrumental privileging argument, but I cannot preclude the possibility.
Regardless, I have been persuaded by everything that I have seen that a significant part of SBFâs motivations were to help advance a world of higher well-being. Of course, from a deontological perspective he did wrong by his dishonest and fraudulent actions. From a consequentialist perspective, the downside risks had such incalculable costs that it was terrible as well.But the sincere desire of his to make the world a better place makes me sympathetic of him in a way that I probably would not be with similarly sentenced other convicts. Given a deterministic or random world, I understand that all convicts are victims too. But I cannot help but feel more for one who was led to their crime by a sincere desire to better the world, than say, to kill their spouse in a fit of rage, or advance themselves financially without any such altruistic motivation.
To clarify, you would sacrifice consistency to achieve a more just result in an individual case, right?
But if there could be consistently applied, just, results, this would be the ideal result...
I donât understand the disagree votes if I am understanding correctly.
Please note that my previous post took the following positions:
1. That SBF did terrible acts that harmed people.2. That it was necessary that he be punished. To the extent that it wasnât implied by the previous comment, I clarify that what he did was illegal (EDIT: which would involve a finding of culpable mental states that would imply that his wrongdoing was no innocent or negligent mistake).
3. The post doesnât even take a position as to whether the 25 years is an appropriate sentence.
All of the preceding is consistent with the proposition that he also acted with the intention of doing what he could to better the world. Like others have commented, his punishment is necessary for general deterrence purposes. However, his genuine altruistic motivations make the fact that he must be punished tragic.
SBF did terrible acts from many different moral viewpoints, including that of consequentialism. In addition to those he directly harmed, he harmed the EA movement.
However, from review of what I have read, it seems as if he acted from a sincere desire to better the world and did so to the best of his (quite poor) judgment. Thus, to me, his punishment is a tragedy, though a necessary one. From a matter of ultimate culpability, I donât know if I would judge him more harshly than the vast majority of people in the developed world: those having the capability to save or dramatically better the lives of people in the developing world, but decline, or those who thoughtlessly contribute to the torture of animals through their participation in the animal product economy.I wish him comfort and hope that he can find a wiser path forward with the remainder of his life.
I agree. I do not view the wealthy in general as an âenemy.â
I agree that the accumulation of wealth often corresponds with the production of social value. It is interesting that you bring up the issue of rent-seeking as a problem but not that a lot of ârent-seekingâ is perfectly legal and is often a component of accumulation of wealth even where part of it would be attributable to socially valuable production.
For instance, I am an attorney who (among other matters) litigates personal injuries and workerâs compensation claims. There is a component of general social value that is produced through my activity: aiding in the resolution of disputes and serving as a helpful piece of a functioning legal system. However, there is also a ârent-seekingâ component of my job, I am looking to transfer wealth or prevent the transferring of wealth from an opponent to my client. The degree of my compensation, or the ability of me to accumulate wealth, corresponds more strongly to my rent-seeking ability than that of my ability to generate general social value (because I am paid by my clients on the basis of being able to resolve disputes on more favorable terms for them, not by the judicial system generally). Thus, in relation to my social value created, I (or rather, the firm that I work for) is likely overcompensated. The same is true in many other extremely lucrative industries, such as finance.