EtG @ Google
GMcGowan
Karma: 475
Cause Area: UK Housing Policy
I’m not sure your points about the average global citizen being homophobic, religious, socialist, etc., actually matter that much when it comes to people deciding where they should allocate funding for existential risk
I vaguely remember reading something about religious people worrying less about extinction, but I don’t remember whether that was just intuition or an actual study. They may also be predisposed to care less about certain kinds of risk, e.g. not worrying about AI as they perceive it to be impossible.
(these are pretty minor points though)
Do you have links to your other writing? Would love to read more of your work.
Two main places this year:
1) My employer gives £8k of matching funds, so I spent that on the GiveWell Maximum Impact Fund. I like this because: a) it gives me something obviously good to recommend to my colleagues to do with their matching. b) I like for some of my donations to go to things which are obviously good. c) I cannot give these funds to non-charities.
2) My other target this year was slightly different. I’ve been funding work around land use/housing policy reform in the UK. Nearing £30k given here so far. Primarily this is due to the arguments outlined in this excellent Founders Pledge report (this article is also a great summary) - so I won’t go over too many of the basic arguments here.
IMO housing policy reform:
Would address a huge problem for the UK economy
Is currently on the government’s agenda in a way that it hasn’t been in years
Has a proposal with a real chance of success—Street Votes - (FAQ) - endorsed by the housing minister
Is underfunded in the UK (in the US Open Phil funds a lot of work)
I’ve been donating to London YIMBY and PricedOutUK so far. Funds are largely being used to write policy papers, with a bit used for running costs/campaigning as well. Neither of these are charities, but I think that tax-deductibility isn’t a must.
I see this cause as an example of “Hits-based” giving. It isn’t at all certain that marginal donations will help get the proposed policy implemented, or that the policy will help once implemented. But the gains are such that a hit would be a big deal. I believe that donations here have the potential for large gains for relatively little money, and so probably meet the “x100″ bar for donations (and maybe the x1000).
I also see this as a case of being an “angel investor”, in that I am supporting very small organisations that may or may not scale up in the future. I’m also developing some connections such that I hopefully can recognise strong opportunities in this area in the future.
I intend to write up my thoughts on this as a cause area as a proper blog post at some point, but feel free to challenge me in the comments 🙂
Edit to add: blog post
Nice, excited to see the $2m block!
If you’re not sure, we suggest that you aim to enter with a 1%-30% chance of winning.
What’s the logic here? Expected value is the same in all cases right?
Can you share who the guarantor is this year?
Good post. If you’re interested, the “Street Votes” idea was developed into a detailed policy paper by another UK think tank, and then proposed to Parliament by some MPs. Shortly afterwards the housing minister was sacked and a new minister appointed, so things could go either way.
Founders Pledge also did a great report on this topic, where they try to estimate the extent of the problem (in the UK) and the benefits of fixing it.
Off topic, but I didn’t realise you’d left Founders Pledge. May I ask what you’re up to now?
That’s true. I just listened to the most recent 80k podcast where they joke about buying up GPUs so it was in my head :)
FWIW my reading of the question is: “What projects could be created, that have the potential to scale to $100m”. I didn’t read it as suggesting funding a megaproject from scratch.
Many EA projects are of the “start a research institute” flavour, and will likely never absorb $100m. I see the post as a plea for projects which could (after starting with smaller amounts and then scaling) absorb these sums of money. Much like Givedirectly wasn’t started with $100m/year budget right away, but has proven itself capable of deploying that much funding.
Out of all the ideas, this seems the most shovel-ready.
MacArthur will (presumably) be letting go of some staff who do nuclear policy work, and would (presumably) be happy to share the organisations they’ve granted to in the past. So you have a ready-made research staff list + grant list.
All (“all” :) ) you need is a foundation and a team to execute on it. Seems like $100 million could actually be deployed pretty rapidly.
Possibly not all of that money would meet EA standards of cost-effectiveness though—indeed MacArthur’s withdrawal provides some evidence that it isn’t cost effective (if we trust their judgement).
Proof of concept for a geoengineering scheme (could be controversial)
Paul’s “message in a bottle” for future civilisations
Buy up scarce resources which are being used for bad things and just sit on them. Like the thing where you buy rainforest to prevent logging. Coal mines, agricultural land used for animals, GPUs?!
Activist investment fund which invests in large companies and then leans on them to change their policies. Examples abound in climate change, but other than that:
Food related companies to stop factory farming
Biotech companies to stop them from doing gain of function or mirror life research
Thanks for the post, I found your thoughts interesting. I’m always glad to see discussions of where people are donating.
In general, it kind of seems like the “point” of the lottery is to do something other than allocate to a capital allocator. The lottery is “meant” to minimise work on selecting a charity to give to, but if you’re happy to give that work to another allocator I feel like it makes less sense?
With that in mind, I have a couple of thoughts for things you might consider:
Lottery again! You could sponsor CEA to do a $1m lottery. If you thought it was worth it for $500k, surely it would be worth it for $1m!
Be quite experimental, give largish grants to multiple young organisations, see how they do, and then direct your ordinary giving toward them in the future. This money can buy access to more organisations, and setup relationships for your future giving.
Do you know of people outside established organisations, in your personal network for example, who could use EA funding? If so, that represents an edge over capital allocators and you could exploit that.
There is a fantastic short story about an EA superman. Quite indulgent but I highly recommend:
There were two words that Superman lived by, and they were “pay me”.
His time was auctioned off in blocks of five minutes. He didn’t need to sleep, so he stopped sleeping, which meant that there were 288 blocks of his time available per day, with ten blocks set aside for administration. It was rare that any of these blocks went for less than a million dollars, which meant that after his first full year in operation as Superman, he made over a hundred billion dollars. If he were a nation, he would have been ranked 63rd, just below Morocco.
Thanks for reading!
I meant investing for a shortish period of time, and retaining control of the funds until I donate. So it would mostly be about deferring the decision for a bit while still getting tax benefits, as opposed to delegating the decision to the trustees of the Long-Term Fund.
I lean towards giving sooner instead of later for “hinginess” reasons. I also think the vast majority of EA resources are already invested in some sense (in human capital, expansion orientated organisations or Open Philanthropy finances).
I do think your fund is a good idea though, I can imagine changing my mind and there are certainly plenty of people who disagree with me!
Ah I see, thanks for clarifying!
I broadly agree that cash management could be improved at many charities, so thanks for this post!
The interest rate for the fiscal year should probably be based on the best available bank account rate. I think that is considerably less than your given interest rates, for example in the UK the best business savings account I could find offered about 0.9%.
This made me more likely to give non tax-deductibily, and gives a useful resource to link to for other people