Milan_Griffes

• Milan_Griffes 4 Apr 2020 22:44 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: technicalities's comment on: (How) Could an AI be­come an in­de­pen­dent eco­nomic agent?

  Fas­ci­nat­ing:

  The ma­jor­ity of IKEA out­lets are con­trol­led by the hold­ing com­pany INGKA Hold­ing, which is owned by the Sticht­ing INGKA Foun­da­tion. The Sticht­ing INGKA Foun­da­tion is one of the largest char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions in the world and is reg­istered in the Nether­lands.

  This com­pli­cated struc­tur­ing helps IKEA min­i­mize its taxes, makes a hos­tile takeover im­pos­si­ble, and per­mits the com­pany to op­er­ate as a non­profit cor­po­ra­tion.

• Milan_Griffes 4 Apr 2020 0:14 UTC

  2 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Sili­con Valley Bank did a good con­fer­ence call on COVID-19 re­lief this week.

• Milan_Griffes 3 Apr 2020 19:13 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Some in­ter­est­ing con­text on this: https://​​www.bloomberg.com/​​opinion/​​ar­ti­cles/​​2020-04-03/​​small-busi­ness-bailout-makes-banks-nervous

• Milan_Griffes 3 Apr 2020 19:02 UTC

  1 point

  on: A cause can be too neglected

  Thanks for this! Well-writ­ten and an im­por­tant point.

  This dy­namic is prob­a­bly at play for psychedelics: Whether or not psychedelics are an EA cause area

• Milan_Griffes 3 Apr 2020 18:58 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Derek's comment on: What posts do you want some­one to write?

  I hadn’t, thanks!

• Milan_Griffes 3 Apr 2020 16:25 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford's comment on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Yeah, I’d be pretty sur­prised if any rep­utable foun­da­tions were tak­ing own­er­ship stake when they make grants. (Be­cause that’d be an in­vest­ment, not a dona­tion.)

• Milan_Griffes 2 Apr 2020 22:10 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford's comment on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Ought’s ac­coun­tants (who’ve taken a close look at the CARES Act) con­firmed that the “af­fili­a­tion test” is de­ter­mined by own­er­ship, so it shouldn’t be an is­sue for non­prof­its so long as the org isn’t owned by its donors.

• Milan_Griffes 2 Apr 2020 20:14 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Milan_Griffes's comment on: Covid-19 Re­sponse Fund

  Could also be cool to ad­minister a coro­n­avirus prize in­de­pen­dent from Emer­gent Ven­tures, try­ing to get more ex­pected im­pact than Tyler.

• Milan_Griffes 2 Apr 2020 19:30 UTC

  2 points

  on: Covid-19 Re­sponse Fund

  In­crease Emer­gent Ven­tures’ pool for coro­n­avirus prizes? https://​​marginalrev­olu­tion.com/​​marginalrev­olu­tion/​​2020/​​03/​​1-mil­lion-plus-in-emer­gent-ven­tures-prizes-for-coro­n­avirus-work.html

  Prob­a­bly high-lev­er­age.

• Milan_Griffes 2 Apr 2020 18:03 UTC

  4 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Looks like the big banks have been push­ing back about ad­minis­ter­ing these loans: https://​​www.reuters.com/​​ar­ti­cle/​​us-health-coro­n­avirus-stim­u­lus-banks-exc-idUSKBN21K075

  https://​​www.poli­tico.com/​​news/​​2020/​​04/​​02/​​banks-small-busi­ness-lend­ing-pro­gram-launch-161106

• Milan_Griffes 2 Apr 2020 2:10 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford's comment on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  This dis­cus­sion of which VC-backed star­tups are in­el­i­gible makes me think most non­prof­its will be el­i­gible: https://​​in­tro.in­die.vc/​​vcbacked-companies

  Not defini­tive though.

• Milan_Griffes 2 Apr 2020 2:08 UTC

  2 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  This guide is also good: https://​​in­tro.in­die.vc/​​sba

• Milan_Griffes 1 Apr 2020 23:59 UTC

  4 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  As long as the num­ber of full-time equiv­a­lent (FTE) em­ploy­ees at the end of this eight week pe­riod matches the num­ber of FTE you had be­fore (ei­ther calcu­lated an av­er­age monthly FTEs dur­ing Feb-Jun 2019 or av­er­age monthly FTEs in Jan + Feb 2020), your loan will be for­given. It can also be par­tially for­given in pro­por­tion to your re­duc­tion in FTEs.

  
  

  This phras­ing is am­bigu­ous as to what would hap­pen to loan for­give­ness if a firm in­creased the num­ber of full-time em­ploy­ees dur­ing the loan pe­riod.

  A friend’s firm asked me about this so I poked into it a bit. Hav­ing done that, I’m ~80% sure that in­creas­ing head­count dur­ing the loan pe­riod wouldn’t af­fect loan for­give­ness.

  From the statute text:

  In Gen­eral.—The amount of loan for­give­ness un­der this sec­tion shall be re­duced, but not in­creased, by mul­ti­ply­ing the amount de­scribed in sub­sec­tion (b) by the quo­tient ob­tained by di­vid­ing—

  the av­er­age num­ber of full-time equiv­a­lent em­ploy­ees per month em­ployed by
  the el­i­gible re­cip­i­ent dur­ing the cov­ered pe­riod; by

  at the elec­tion of the bor­rower—

  the av­er­age num­ber of full-time equiv­a­lent em­ploy­ees per month em­ployed by
  the el­i­gible re­cip­i­ent dur­ing the pe­riod be­gin­ning on Fe­bru­ary 15, 2019 and end­ing
  on June 30, 2019; or

  the av­er­age num­ber of full-time equiv­a­lent em­ploy­ees per month em­ployed by
  the el­i­gible re­cip­i­ent dur­ing the pe­riod be­gin­ning on Jan­uary 1, 2020 and end­ing on
  Fe­bru­ary 29, 2020;

  
  

  (For­mat­ting isn’t perfect be­cause le­gal for­mat­ting doesn’t play nice with EA Fo­rum for­mat­ting.)

• Milan_Griffes 1 Apr 2020 18:54 UTC

  5 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  WaPo’s FAQ about the pro­gram seems pretty good.

  Q: Can the loan even­tu­ally be for­given?

  Yes. The pro­gram in­cludes loan for­give­ness cov­er­ing costs for the first eight weeks of the loan for com­pa­nies able to keep em­ploy­ees on pay­roll or con­tinue pay­ing bills through­out the coro­n­avirus crisis.

  The amount of loan for­give­ness will in­clude pay­roll costs for in­di­vi­d­u­als be­low $100,000 in an­nual in­come, mort­gage and rent obli­ga­tions, in­clud­ing in­ter­est and util­ity pay­ments. If an em­ployee is above a $100,000 an­nual salary, the first $100,000 will be fac­tored into the com­pany’s loan for­give­ness to­tal but any amount above that will not. As of Wed­nes­day morn­ing the SBA had not de­cided whether benefits will fac­tor into that cap.

  The to­tal amount of for­give­ness will be re­duced if your work­force is drawn down through at­tri­tion or if wages are re­duced. If you are forced to lay off em­ploy­ees be­cause of eco­nomic con­di­tions, you may be able to pre­serve some of your loan guaran­tee by hiring them back.

• Milan_Griffes 1 Apr 2020 18:28 UTC

  4 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Fred Wil­son points out the lan­guage of the act may pre­vent VC-backed star­tups from ac­cess­ing the funds, be­cause they are “af­fili­ated” with or­ga­ni­za­tions such that the to­tal size of the af­fili­a­tion is >500 em­ploy­ees: https://​​avc.com/​​2020/​​03/​​star­tups-and-sba-loans/​​

  (This is be­cause tak­ing VC in­vest­ment “af­fili­ates” the startup with ev­ery other org the VC has funded.)

  Has any­one looked into whether there might be an analo­gous con­cern for non­prof­its who re­ceive dona­tions from foun­da­tions that have a lot of grantees, e.g. Open Phil?

• Milan_Griffes 1 Apr 2020 18:25 UTC

  4 points

  on: US Non-Profit? Get Free* Money From the Gov on 3 Apr!

  Full text of the loan-for­give­ness part of the statute: https://​​writ­ing.kemitchell.com/​​2020/​​03/​​31/​​CARES-Loan-For­give­ness.html

• Milan_Griffes 31 Mar 2020 21:37 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Khorton's comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism and Free Riding

  Right – when we’re look­ing for ways to im­prove co­or­di­na­tion, we should con­sider in­ter­ven­tions at both the sys­temic level and the in­di­vi­d­ual level.

  It seems ob­vi­ous that there’s a close re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two lev­els. If the causal re­la­tion­ships be­tween lev­els are murky, that im­plies cast­ing a wide net when sur­vey­ing po­ten­tial in­ter­ven­tions. (If we can’t see the causal re­la­tion­ships clearly at the start, we can’t con­fi­dently rule out in­ter­ven­tions on ei­ther level.)

• Milan_Griffes 31 Mar 2020 14:13 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Khorton's comment on: Effec­tive Altru­ism and Free Riding

  In­sti­tu­tional de­ci­sion-mak­ing is the ag­gre­gate of in­di­vi­d­ual de­ci­sion-mak­ing, right?

• Milan_Griffes 31 Mar 2020 1:09 UTC

  2 points

  on: Effec­tive Altru­ism and Free Riding

  Thank you for cre­at­ing this! It’s im­por­tant and ex­tremely well-writ­ten.

  Feels apro­pos to drop a poin­ter to Gabay et al. 2019 – “MDMA In­creases Co­op­er­a­tion and Re­cruit­ment of So­cial Brain Areas When Play­ing Trust­wor­thy Play­ers in an Iter­ated Pri­soner’s Dilemma”

• Milan_Griffes 28 Mar 2020 18:01 UTC

  7 points

  on: What posts do you want some­one to write?

  “Amer­i­can UBI: for and against”

  “A brief his­tory of Rosicru­ci­anism & the In­visi­ble Col­lege”

  “Were al­most all the sign­ers of the Dec­la­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence high-de­gree Freema­sons?”

  “Have malaria case rates gone down in ar­eas where AMF did big bed­net dis­tri­bu­tions?”

  “What is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment and men­tal health? Is there a mar­gin at which fur­ther de­vel­op­ment de­creases men­tal health?”

  “Liter­a­ture re­view: Dun­bar’s num­ber”

  “Why is Rwanda out­perform­ing other Afri­can na­tions?”

  “The longter­mist case for an­i­mal welfare”

  “Philoso­pher-Kings: why wise gov­er­nance is im­por­tant for the longterm fu­ture”

  “Case stud­ies: when has democ­racy out­perform tech­noc­racy? (and vice versa)”

  “Ex­am­in­ing the trade­off be­tween co­or­di­na­tion and co­er­cion”

  “Spiritual prac­tice as an EA cause area”

  “Tools for thought as an EA cause area”

  “Is strong, ubiquitous en­cryp­tion a net pos­i­tive?”

  “How im­por­tant are coral reefs to ocean health? How can they be pro­tected?”

  “What role does the Ama­zon rain­for­est play in reg­u­lat­ing the North Amer­i­can bio­sphere?”

  “What can the US do to pro­tect the Ama­zon from Bol­sonaro?”

  “Can the Sin­ga­porean gov­er­nance model scale?”

  “Is EA com­pla­cent?”

  “Flow-through effects of wide­spread ad­dic­tion”