Erusian

Karma: −5

Erusian 19 Nov 2023 8:44 UTC
−2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Brad West’s comment on: Making Trillions for Effective Charities through the Consumer Economy
Your recap of my thoughts is inaccurate and you are confidently unaware of an entire class of organizations. Which fits my model of you not really understanding the subject. It really is strange to see someone so confidently insisting that something that exists does not exist. But so it goes.
Regardless, we are agreed that you cannot be convinced by me. Whether that is because you cannot be convinced by anyone, that is that you’re not acting rationally, or because I do not have the skill to convince you is ultimately unimportant. It’s still a waste of both our times for me to continue. I wish you luck though, I repeat, I think it would be good for you to go learn a bit more before you try this. Of course it’s your life and if you want to go for this then you’re welcome to.

Erusian 19 Nov 2023 4:54 UTC
−2 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: Brad West’s comment on: Making Trillions for Effective Charities through the Consumer Economy
I urge you to think more carefully about the fact that business performance is affected by the choices of economic actors: consumers, prospective employees, other businesses. Small advantages among these members could compound and make it difficult for firms without access to these advantages to compete.
I have thought about it very carefully and long before I read this post. I’ve also pointed you to many people who’ve thought about this for decades and made billions of dollars for charity and have thoughts about this specific approach. I still find you very misguided and suggest you take a few intro to business classes.
I’d suggest that you have the humility to consider that you might not have out-thought all these people. Especially as I can tell you don’t have a lot of experience actually investing in or running businesses.
But I can tell from the tone of this comment that you’re not open to being convinced. So good luck to you!

Erusian 6 Nov 2023 6:30 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 2
on: Making Trillions for Effective Charities through the Consumer Economy
My suggestion is legitimately to go take a few intro courses for business. I think your heart’s in the right place but you clearly need some further training.
> This is because charities are more popular than normal investors
It’s a basic truism that what people say they care about and how they actually make decisions are widely different. There are numerous, numerous case studies where strong survey sentiments didn’t translate into actions. And preference for charity is one of the basic cases you’ll get in an undergrad business course. I also know several companies who tried to advertise with philanthropy all of whom found people cared less about that than the packaging.
> and there is no additional cost to being a charity as opposed to a normal investor.
Of course there is. The additional cost is the foregone return on investment to the people who put up the money. With a for-profit investment I can raise money through promising to return the money with additional amounts. With a charity I can’t.
> Thus, these businesses working for charities, which I call Guiding Companies, could offer goods and services at the same price and of the same quality as ordinary businesses.
No, they couldn’t, because they lack the same mechanisms to raise capital. And the cost of capital affects prices.
> Consequently, the project of creating and making the public aware of these companies-working-for- charities is potentially very high-impact, because these companies could tap into the profits in the broader economy and generate billions of dollars for effective charities.
Aligning corporate incentives and founding companies that serve a social purpose is potentially high impact. But your mistake is how you’re going about it.
> In any case, companies seldom advertise who is profiting on the seller side. Consequently, there is a dimension of difference in the global consumer economy on which almost no sellers compete:: the identity of the entities that benefit from your purchase, often, owners in some form.
This is simply untrue. Corporations frequently advertise who their owners are and are so organized around this there are explicit government laws privileging companies based on who owns the business.
I’d suggest you look at the Social Enterprise movement or the B-Corp trend which have been thinking about this much longer than you have and has actually managed to have some major successes including multiple billion dollar plus companies. Of course, they don’t give to EA but to other charities because they’re not EAs. But they do generate plenty of money for non-profit causes. It also empirically works. If you want I can answer questions about that.