It’s a symmetrical situation. Suppose that A prefers having $1 in his personal luxury budget to having $1 in SIAI, but prefers having $2 in SIAI to having a mere $1 in his personal luxury budget. Suppose that B has the same preferences (regarding his own personal luxury budget, vs SIAI).
Then A and B would each prefer not-donating to donating, but they would each prefer donating-if-their-donation-gets-a-match to not-donating. And so a matching campaign lets them both achieve their preferences.
This is a pretty common situation—for example, lots of people are unwilling to give large amounts now to save lives in the third world, but would totally be willing to give $1k if this would cause all other first worlders to do so, and would thereby prevent all the cheaply preventable deaths. Matching grants are a smaller version of the same.
It’s a symmetrical situation. Suppose that A prefers having $1 in his personal luxury budget to having $1 in SIAI, but prefers having $2 in SIAI to having a mere $1 in his personal luxury budget. Suppose that B has the same preferences (regarding his own personal luxury budget, vs SIAI).
Then A and B would each prefer not-donating to donating, but they would each prefer donating-if-their-donation-gets-a-match to not-donating. And so a matching campaign lets them both achieve their preferences.
This is a pretty common situation—for example, lots of people are unwilling to give large amounts now to save lives in the third world, but would totally be willing to give $1k if this would cause all other first worlders to do so, and would thereby prevent all the cheaply preventable deaths. Matching grants are a smaller version of the same.
It seems like it would be valuable to set up ways for people to make these deals more systematically than through matching grants.
Indeed. It seems to be essentially ‘solving a cooperation problem’.