Even if I am willing to teaching for free, the room costs money; so I would consider it fair if the participants pay for the room (and possibly other material costs, such as food, printed materials, maybe also my travel costs). I may not want to make profit from my spiritual activity, but I do not want to make loss either.
If there is a huge demand for my teachings, I should also consider the fact that if I keep my daily job to pay my bills, and only teach during evenings or weekends (most likely not all evening and all weekends, I also need to take a break, and maybe have duties beyond my job and teaching), I can only teach maybe 10% or 20% as much as if I instead quit my daily job, and charged more money to pay my bills. So even if my motivation is purely altruistic, getting paid might be the right choice, if there are enough people willing to pay the increased price to keep me doing it as a full-time job. (The alternative is that most of those people are sent home: sorry, the room is full. And the room is also full the next day, and the day after that.)
So this is an argument for taking money. It does not say how specifically the money should be taken. Donations (perhaps with a suggestion like “the recommended amount to cover our material costs is X”) might work, though I would suggest asking for 50% more, to compensate for those who won’t donate. Or you might get a millionaire donor (you might want to provide them info such as “paying X would cover our expenses for one year”), in which case you do not need to change the participants.
There is also a valid argument against charging money, which goes like this: There is a tradeoff between optimizing for money and optimizing for the spiritual message. If you lean towards money too much, it will come at an expense of the quality of your teaching. As the Bible says: “You cannot simultaneously optimize for two different utility functions. Maximizing one of them requires sacrificing the other, and vice versa.” (Luke 16:13)
Sounds like the solution is to simply not maximize for money; charge only as much as you must, and otherwise optimize for the message. That is the intuition behind the idea of “just price”. But this is easier said than done, because we are running on corrupted hardware. What is the just price of my lecture?
In case of covering the financial expenses, it seems easy: just collect the bills, and then collect enough money to pay them. But even here, there would be a temptation to choose a more convenient room, a more tasty food, a more convenient form of travel. To print my spiritual teachings in a hardcover color book, instead of some cheap black and white printout (and a freely downloadable PDF as an alternative). Even if I resist the temptation to put a single cent in my pocket, my brain will find a way to extract some other value, along with a convenient excuse why doing so is the right way to run my business… ahem, a non-profit spiritual mission. Until one day I find myself traveling all around the world by plane, living in five-star hotels, eating caviar, and wearing a huge gold watch (hey, I need to know the exact time in order to deliver my spiritual message optimally, and these expensive watches are very precise and reliable, you should really try them). But hey, no money in my pocket, I just live an absurdly luxurious life with all expenses paid by the believers; and I got there step by step.
How much money do I need to pay my bills, that also depends on how large my bills are. Should I take as much as I made at my recent job; perhaps adjusted for inflation? Or should I say “hey, hypothetically I could get a job in a Silicon Valley, or maybe become a CEO of some successful startup, so it is only fair to get a compensation for giving up that”. Or I may simply focus on my living expenses… but they keep growing without limits.
These may be silly examples, but the idea is that there is a slippery slope from here to there, and without a simple rule where to stop, I will be tempted to gradually push further and further, always telling myself that I am a virtuous person, because I am not going as far as I possibly could.
Also, what about advertisement? At the minimum, it would make sense to announce my lectures somehow. Otherwise, how would people know when and where to go? At the far end, there are billboards with my face all over the town (many towns actually), and I am playing an expensive zero-sum game against my fellow billionaire evangelists.
These are the concerns that make “do not take any money, ever” and “only take voluntary donations” seem like the only Schelling points. Even these are not really safe. For example, I may recruit dozens of volunteers, working for free (idealistic students are the best), collecting donations for me all over the town. And if I already have crowds of enthusiastic true believers, I might be tempted to also use some of them sexually.
So… what is the answer here?
I guess, it is “with great power comes great responsibility”, and realizing that having an attractive spiritual message is a great power. There are no best answers. Try to resist as long as you can.
But from the perspective of a “customer”, it is perfectly valid to decide that certain person or organization is already too far on the slippery slope of temptation, and to refuse to engage with them.
Sounds like the solution is to simply not maximize for money; charge only as much as you must, and otherwise optimize for the message.
The problems that come from optimizing for money are largely about sales techniques and marketing. You can charge a lot of money without compromising the message, it’s much easier to compromise it because of sales techniques and marketing.
You probably want to charge enough that you don’t need to use sleazy sales techniques to make ends meet.
Even if I am willing to teaching for free, the room costs money; so I would consider it fair if the participants pay for the room (and possibly other material costs, such as food, printed materials, maybe also my travel costs). I may not want to make profit from my spiritual activity, but I do not want to make loss either.
If there is a huge demand for my teachings, I should also consider the fact that if I keep my daily job to pay my bills, and only teach during evenings or weekends (most likely not all evening and all weekends, I also need to take a break, and maybe have duties beyond my job and teaching), I can only teach maybe 10% or 20% as much as if I instead quit my daily job, and charged more money to pay my bills. So even if my motivation is purely altruistic, getting paid might be the right choice, if there are enough people willing to pay the increased price to keep me doing it as a full-time job. (The alternative is that most of those people are sent home: sorry, the room is full. And the room is also full the next day, and the day after that.)
So this is an argument for taking money. It does not say how specifically the money should be taken. Donations (perhaps with a suggestion like “the recommended amount to cover our material costs is X”) might work, though I would suggest asking for 50% more, to compensate for those who won’t donate. Or you might get a millionaire donor (you might want to provide them info such as “paying X would cover our expenses for one year”), in which case you do not need to change the participants.
There is also a valid argument against charging money, which goes like this: There is a tradeoff between optimizing for money and optimizing for the spiritual message. If you lean towards money too much, it will come at an expense of the quality of your teaching. As the Bible says: “You cannot simultaneously optimize for two different utility functions. Maximizing one of them requires sacrificing the other, and vice versa.” (Luke 16:13)
Sounds like the solution is to simply not maximize for money; charge only as much as you must, and otherwise optimize for the message. That is the intuition behind the idea of “just price”. But this is easier said than done, because we are running on corrupted hardware. What is the just price of my lecture?
In case of covering the financial expenses, it seems easy: just collect the bills, and then collect enough money to pay them. But even here, there would be a temptation to choose a more convenient room, a more tasty food, a more convenient form of travel. To print my spiritual teachings in a hardcover color book, instead of some cheap black and white printout (and a freely downloadable PDF as an alternative). Even if I resist the temptation to put a single cent in my pocket, my brain will find a way to extract some other value, along with a convenient excuse why doing so is the right way to run my business… ahem, a non-profit spiritual mission. Until one day I find myself traveling all around the world by plane, living in five-star hotels, eating caviar, and wearing a huge gold watch (hey, I need to know the exact time in order to deliver my spiritual message optimally, and these expensive watches are very precise and reliable, you should really try them). But hey, no money in my pocket, I just live an absurdly luxurious life with all expenses paid by the believers; and I got there step by step.
How much money do I need to pay my bills, that also depends on how large my bills are. Should I take as much as I made at my recent job; perhaps adjusted for inflation? Or should I say “hey, hypothetically I could get a job in a Silicon Valley, or maybe become a CEO of some successful startup, so it is only fair to get a compensation for giving up that”. Or I may simply focus on my living expenses… but they keep growing without limits.
These may be silly examples, but the idea is that there is a slippery slope from here to there, and without a simple rule where to stop, I will be tempted to gradually push further and further, always telling myself that I am a virtuous person, because I am not going as far as I possibly could.
Also, what about advertisement? At the minimum, it would make sense to announce my lectures somehow. Otherwise, how would people know when and where to go? At the far end, there are billboards with my face all over the town (many towns actually), and I am playing an expensive zero-sum game against my fellow billionaire evangelists.
These are the concerns that make “do not take any money, ever” and “only take voluntary donations” seem like the only Schelling points. Even these are not really safe. For example, I may recruit dozens of volunteers, working for free (idealistic students are the best), collecting donations for me all over the town. And if I already have crowds of enthusiastic true believers, I might be tempted to also use some of them sexually.
So… what is the answer here?
I guess, it is “with great power comes great responsibility”, and realizing that having an attractive spiritual message is a great power. There are no best answers. Try to resist as long as you can.
But from the perspective of a “customer”, it is perfectly valid to decide that certain person or organization is already too far on the slippery slope of temptation, and to refuse to engage with them.
The problems that come from optimizing for money are largely about sales techniques and marketing. You can charge a lot of money without compromising the message, it’s much easier to compromise it because of sales techniques and marketing.
You probably want to charge enough that you don’t need to use sleazy sales techniques to make ends meet.