"Of course, a lot of billionaires are respectable people who don’t commit fraud."
Are you sure?
I'm not an eat-the-rich guy, but my impression is that high-level business is never completely honest. Every time something like FTX or Theranos implodes, I hear comments along the lines of "I knew he was lying, but I always thought it was just small-scale acceptable business lying".
This depends almost entirely on what you count as morally-relevant dishonesty. Mildly-exaggerated marketing ("the last X you'll ever need"), timelines that people learn to distrust (Musk), and using sheer reputation/charisma to act as a coordination point (most(?) businesspeople)... these are all pretty normal in business, they seem to generally not be fraud, and of course "if it succeeds at the end, people call it 'savvy' or 'edgy' instead of 'fraud'". (IIRC the elon musk biography claims that he used money from customer deposits at Tesla to prop up the company in ways that WOULD look fraudulent if he hadn't gotten emergency financing in time.)
TLDR you're right in broad terms, but more details are needed depending on which conclusions you want to draw.
"Using your reputation" or "putting hyperbole in marketing" are imho not strong enough filters that lead to a world state where most high-level businesspeople are missing the parts of the brain that let them feel empathy. This filter could still be going on, but I'd want to see a pretty long blogpost explaining such evidence in detail.
There's a good book called "Lying For Money" by Dan Davies, about the economics of fraud and how it impacts the rest of business. E.g. a big portion of fraud seems to be something like "buy a thing, abuse trust to pay later, and then don't actually pay". EDIT: just noticed, Ozy has a post about this book!
Given the extremely ethically questionable actions commonly taken in e.g. corporate law and management consultancy, isn’t it worth taking seriously the possibility the marginal disutility of a capable EA corporate lawyer or consultant over whoever might take their place were an EA not to get the job might seriously diminish the impact of their earning-to-give? And, setting that aside, don’t medicine and finance and big law and consulting all pose a very serious risk of values drift?
I believe the values-drift thing somewhat, but somebody needs to actually write The Long Blogpost about it before I get that strong an opinion. E.g. if somebody donates regularly, or reads LW/EAF frequently, that alone could counteract the "ew they're becoming normie" factor.
I have been a simple earn-to-giver since 2014, and I have felt a bit abandoned by the movement in the transition to "Direct Impact + Billionaires" pivot. I still kept quietly trucking along, but it did feel bad. It feels nice that my consistent non-fraudulent trucking along is now getting recognition.
This is all true, but also, none of the EA top charities are fully funded right? GiveWell et al might be, but the point of EA is to fund stuff like malaria nets.
> There should be more clear donation options for earning-to-givers that aren’t just GiveWell top charities
Can you expand on this Ozy? My basic stance as someone who's taken the Giving What We Can pledge is that I want to totally delegate the decision of where to give to people who I trust know what they're talking about. I feel like 'more clear donation options' would only muddy the waters for people similar to me. What do you have in your mind and what target audience does this cater for?
Certainly, but a lot of people e.g. are concerned about human extinction more than global poverty, and it makes sense to have more choices for those people.
where I am basically offered a cheeseboard of a few different types of funds. I can donate to one or split my donation between multiple, with some nice sliders to pick how much I want to donate to what. Three of the options are explicitly long-term-focussed. This is what I mean when I say I want to delegate my decision-making to other people - I can pick a vague direction and know the details are being taken care of.
This is what I'm curious about: do you want more than this? How much more? Do you think there are a lot of EAs who fit the description of 'wants more than three longtermism options' but also 'doesn't want to dive into specific charities or funding opportunities'?
"Of course, a lot of billionaires are respectable people who don’t commit fraud."
Are you sure?
I'm not an eat-the-rich guy, but my impression is that high-level business is never completely honest. Every time something like FTX or Theranos implodes, I hear comments along the lines of "I knew he was lying, but I always thought it was just small-scale acceptable business lying".
This depends almost entirely on what you count as morally-relevant dishonesty. Mildly-exaggerated marketing ("the last X you'll ever need"), timelines that people learn to distrust (Musk), and using sheer reputation/charisma to act as a coordination point (most(?) businesspeople)... these are all pretty normal in business, they seem to generally not be fraud, and of course "if it succeeds at the end, people call it 'savvy' or 'edgy' instead of 'fraud'". (IIRC the elon musk biography claims that he used money from customer deposits at Tesla to prop up the company in ways that WOULD look fraudulent if he hadn't gotten emergency financing in time.)
TLDR you're right in broad terms, but more details are needed depending on which conclusions you want to draw.
"Using your reputation" or "putting hyperbole in marketing" are imho not strong enough filters that lead to a world state where most high-level businesspeople are missing the parts of the brain that let them feel empathy. This filter could still be going on, but I'd want to see a pretty long blogpost explaining such evidence in detail.
There's a good book called "Lying For Money" by Dan Davies, about the economics of fraud and how it impacts the rest of business. E.g. a big portion of fraud seems to be something like "buy a thing, abuse trust to pay later, and then don't actually pay". EDIT: just noticed, Ozy has a post about this book!
Given the extremely ethically questionable actions commonly taken in e.g. corporate law and management consultancy, isn’t it worth taking seriously the possibility the marginal disutility of a capable EA corporate lawyer or consultant over whoever might take their place were an EA not to get the job might seriously diminish the impact of their earning-to-give? And, setting that aside, don’t medicine and finance and big law and consulting all pose a very serious risk of values drift?
I believe the values-drift thing somewhat, but somebody needs to actually write The Long Blogpost about it before I get that strong an opinion. E.g. if somebody donates regularly, or reads LW/EAF frequently, that alone could counteract the "ew they're becoming normie" factor.
I have been a simple earn-to-giver since 2014, and I have felt a bit abandoned by the movement in the transition to "Direct Impact + Billionaires" pivot. I still kept quietly trucking along, but it did feel bad. It feels nice that my consistent non-fraudulent trucking along is now getting recognition.
This is all true, but also, none of the EA top charities are fully funded right? GiveWell et al might be, but the point of EA is to fund stuff like malaria nets.
> There should be more clear donation options for earning-to-givers that aren’t just GiveWell top charities
Can you expand on this Ozy? My basic stance as someone who's taken the Giving What We Can pledge is that I want to totally delegate the decision of where to give to people who I trust know what they're talking about. I feel like 'more clear donation options' would only muddy the waters for people similar to me. What do you have in your mind and what target audience does this cater for?
Certainly, but a lot of people e.g. are concerned about human extinction more than global poverty, and it makes sense to have more choices for those people.
If I go on givingwhatwecan.org and add a payment, I get taken to this page:
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/donate/organizations
where I am basically offered a cheeseboard of a few different types of funds. I can donate to one or split my donation between multiple, with some nice sliders to pick how much I want to donate to what. Three of the options are explicitly long-term-focussed. This is what I mean when I say I want to delegate my decision-making to other people - I can pick a vague direction and know the details are being taken care of.
This is what I'm curious about: do you want more than this? How much more? Do you think there are a lot of EAs who fit the description of 'wants more than three longtermism options' but also 'doesn't want to dive into specific charities or funding opportunities'?
This is highly validating of me as an earn-to-give management consultant, so thanks :)