I love EA as a concept, I’ve proselytized for it, but I’ve never contributed actual money. I feel vaguely ashamed about that last part.
My problem with EA is that it lacks aggression towards its competitors. I think this is a very serious issue, for the following reasons.
The largest altruistic organisations, especially in political developmental aid, seriously suck. Much like religions, they enjoy some immunity from criticism and benefit from lots of goodwill from volunteer workers. That has made them complacent, and they do not seriously compete with each other. They’re intransparent, tribal and too badly managed to be effective. In many cases, they spend more money in the First World than in the Third. They’re typical places for semi-retired politicians and their relatives to get employment, which I’m sure often isn’t technically a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinecure but still doesn’t help the job market at those places. Their financial streams are the opposite of an open market, spread across many nations, and directed by so few deciders that “I’ll make sure you lose funding” can be a credible threat. And fundamentally, what they’re consuming is altruistic impulses that would do more good elsewhere—a grossly unethical business model. That’s my own assessment, but lots of people, especially among those employed there, agree with most or all of these points.
Basically, I just get furious when I see large Amnesty International ads that promise people they can save Raif Badawi with a letter. Because that’s not only almost certainly a conscious lie—what they’re doing with that ad is cleverly solicit donations, much of which will be spent on the next ad campaign. And we know people keep different mental accounts: Whatever Amnesty International leeches out of the people’s altruistic accounts will not be available for much more effective organizations like Deworm the World, which means Amnesty International effectively kills people.
But almost nobody can do something about it. The people inside these organizations benefit from their comparatively cushy jobs and want to keep them—unlike in industry, staying at one of those places for life is not an unrealistic prospect. Towards the outside, they’re very well defended by their intransparency, their relative immunity from criticism (“at least they’re doing something”) and their excellent connections to lots of people in the political and media establishment. Criticisms of specific policies (such as UNICEFs work against international adoption) or specific programmes (such as the Red Cross work on Haiti disaster relief)are occasionally made, but these don’t endanger the swampy ecosystem that is large humanitarian organisations. Obviously there is little to be gained by attacking that.
Except for EA! EA is uniquely positioned to do something about it. It talks about Altruism, and why it should be Effective, anyway—it implicitly already condemns ineffective altruism, and doing so explicitly would be a small step. It is independently funded by its members and can’t be threatened with losing funding. It isn’t afraid people will suddenly stop being altruistic if, say, EuropeAid was rocked by scandal or if Oxfam suffered a collapse of donations after it got wikileaked. In 2011, Holden from GiveWell wrote a blog post on “Mega-Charities” that was quite critical, but still nowhere near hostile enough.
I’m confident a mere 10% increase in effectiveness of the “Mega-Charities” would move more dollars the right way than a doubling of the EA population. And it wouldn’t be hard to do; some investigative reporting can go a long way. But for actual actual investigative work you have to be willing to do some actual damage.
Everybody else has an excuse why they don’t do that. EA doesn’t. And that makes me think they just lack the aggression. Maybe Scott Alexander is right about EA people being super scupulous. Scrupulosity isn’t a fighting stance.
I love EA as a concept, I’ve proselytized for it, but I’ve never contributed actual money. I feel vaguely ashamed about that last part.
My problem with EA is that it lacks aggression towards its competitors. I think this is a very serious issue, for the following reasons.
The largest altruistic organisations, especially in political developmental aid, seriously suck. Much like religions, they enjoy some immunity from criticism and benefit from lots of goodwill from volunteer workers. That has made them complacent, and they do not seriously compete with each other. They’re intransparent, tribal and too badly managed to be effective. In many cases, they spend more money in the First World than in the Third. They’re typical places for semi-retired politicians and their relatives to get employment, which I’m sure often isn’t technically a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinecure but still doesn’t help the job market at those places. Their financial streams are the opposite of an open market, spread across many nations, and directed by so few deciders that “I’ll make sure you lose funding” can be a credible threat. And fundamentally, what they’re consuming is altruistic impulses that would do more good elsewhere—a grossly unethical business model. That’s my own assessment, but lots of people, especially among those employed there, agree with most or all of these points.
Basically, I just get furious when I see large Amnesty International ads that promise people they can save Raif Badawi with a letter. Because that’s not only almost certainly a conscious lie—what they’re doing with that ad is cleverly solicit donations, much of which will be spent on the next ad campaign. And we know people keep different mental accounts: Whatever Amnesty International leeches out of the people’s altruistic accounts will not be available for much more effective organizations like Deworm the World, which means Amnesty International effectively kills people.
But almost nobody can do something about it. The people inside these organizations benefit from their comparatively cushy jobs and want to keep them—unlike in industry, staying at one of those places for life is not an unrealistic prospect. Towards the outside, they’re very well defended by their intransparency, their relative immunity from criticism (“at least they’re doing something”) and their excellent connections to lots of people in the political and media establishment. Criticisms of specific policies (such as UNICEFs work against international adoption) or specific programmes (such as the Red Cross work on Haiti disaster relief)are occasionally made, but these don’t endanger the swampy ecosystem that is large humanitarian organisations. Obviously there is little to be gained by attacking that.
Except for EA! EA is uniquely positioned to do something about it. It talks about Altruism, and why it should be Effective, anyway—it implicitly already condemns ineffective altruism, and doing so explicitly would be a small step. It is independently funded by its members and can’t be threatened with losing funding. It isn’t afraid people will suddenly stop being altruistic if, say, EuropeAid was rocked by scandal or if Oxfam suffered a collapse of donations after it got wikileaked. In 2011, Holden from GiveWell wrote a blog post on “Mega-Charities” that was quite critical, but still nowhere near hostile enough.
I’m confident a mere 10% increase in effectiveness of the “Mega-Charities” would move more dollars the right way than a doubling of the EA population. And it wouldn’t be hard to do; some investigative reporting can go a long way. But for actual actual investigative work you have to be willing to do some actual damage.
Everybody else has an excuse why they don’t do that. EA doesn’t. And that makes me think they just lack the aggression. Maybe Scott Alexander is right about EA people being super scupulous. Scrupulosity isn’t a fighting stance.
Here is an example: How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes.
I linked to that, but fucked up the link syntax so it wasn’t displayed. I’ve reposted the corrected comment.