This is a really cool idea, thanks for taking the initiative!
Personal loans seem like an alternative for people who need couches. A lot of companies that give personal loans do seem sketchy, but I recall stumbling across Upstart a few years ago—it seems kinda cool.
Another alternative/spin on this idea: if the couch needers end up doing really well for themselves some time in the future (eg. their income is in the top 20% of their country), they have to pay the couch provider some amount of money. Whereas if they never reach that point, they don’t have to pay anything. I could see this really helping with vetting, because randoms who are just looking to mooch might not want to get involved. I could also see it really helping with motivating couch providers. I’m not sure though.
Vetting definitely seems like the biggest obstacle here. As opposed to 1) whether people would be willing to offer their couch to someone who has been vetted to their satisfaction, or 2) whether there are actually people out there who would benefit from such couch time. 1 and 2 seem very likely to be true to me (although of course it’s still good to treat them as hypotheses and test them).
The second biggest obstacle I see is spreading the word. People need to know that this exists in order for it to be a thing.
Perhaps what you can do to get off the ground is something like this. You start off building a list of couch needers that either: 1) you know personally and can vouch for, 2) a friend of yours who you trust knows personally and can vouch for, 3) a friend of a friend of yours who you trust knows personally and can vouch for. I’m not sure how many degrees of separation would be optimal, but three sounds like a practical and safe place to start. I’m sure that most of your social network and many LessWrongers would feel comfortable enough with this level of vetting to start volunteering as couch suppliers.
Such an approach relies on people trusting you. I know that I have read enough of your stuff and seen your name pop up enough to trust you. Perhaps this approach can scale with someone else being the “initial node”. For example, maybe there’s a YouTuber who has a ton of followers who have enough trust in them to offer to be couch suppliers. In fact, this could be a great PR tool for people who have some amount of a following on the internet.
Initially the couch needers wouldn’t know this exists, so I think the person acting as the “initial node” would have to reach out to their social network and “manually” find the couch needers. But at scale, it would be nice for couch needers to go to the website and use some sort of search function to see if there are any “initial nodes” that they are close enough to. Something like Facebook’s Graph API would be incredibly useful here. I’m sure other social networks have something similar. But for those who aren’t part of social media, perhaps they could do things like enter names of people they know, enter names of organizations they’ve been a part of, enter where they live, etc.
Be very careful about introducing an expectation to pay. Payment, even contingent future payment, will fundamentally change the nature of the endeavor. People are very motivated by social norms in most situations, but introducing money buys your way out of those norms. The classic treatment of this is is that daycare centers that fine parents for tardiness and making the staff stay late have much more tardiness than those who just disapprove.
To the extent that this practice stays within a community, the community’s own norms are probably sufficient. Besides, many/most hosts would probably prefer guests donate to charity if they end up well-off. Maybe you have some sort of soft norm that guests offer to let their prior hosts direct some of their altruism, but be careful even with that. Everything matters on the margin, and that’s about the upper limit of incentive that won’t meaningfully displace the group norms.
Interesting point. My main thought is that it is a hypothesis to test, and that I don’t feel strongly about how people would react to the contingent future payment. I could definitely see some people being turned off by it, as well as others turned on, but I don’t have a good sense for what the results would be on balance.
This is a really cool idea, thanks for taking the initiative!
Personal loans seem like an alternative for people who need couches. A lot of companies that give personal loans do seem sketchy, but I recall stumbling across Upstart a few years ago—it seems kinda cool.
Another alternative/spin on this idea: if the couch needers end up doing really well for themselves some time in the future (eg. their income is in the top 20% of their country), they have to pay the couch provider some amount of money. Whereas if they never reach that point, they don’t have to pay anything. I could see this really helping with vetting, because randoms who are just looking to mooch might not want to get involved. I could also see it really helping with motivating couch providers. I’m not sure though.
Vetting definitely seems like the biggest obstacle here. As opposed to 1) whether people would be willing to offer their couch to someone who has been vetted to their satisfaction, or 2) whether there are actually people out there who would benefit from such couch time. 1 and 2 seem very likely to be true to me (although of course it’s still good to treat them as hypotheses and test them).
The second biggest obstacle I see is spreading the word. People need to know that this exists in order for it to be a thing.
Perhaps what you can do to get off the ground is something like this. You start off building a list of couch needers that either: 1) you know personally and can vouch for, 2) a friend of yours who you trust knows personally and can vouch for, 3) a friend of a friend of yours who you trust knows personally and can vouch for. I’m not sure how many degrees of separation would be optimal, but three sounds like a practical and safe place to start. I’m sure that most of your social network and many LessWrongers would feel comfortable enough with this level of vetting to start volunteering as couch suppliers.
Such an approach relies on people trusting you. I know that I have read enough of your stuff and seen your name pop up enough to trust you. Perhaps this approach can scale with someone else being the “initial node”. For example, maybe there’s a YouTuber who has a ton of followers who have enough trust in them to offer to be couch suppliers. In fact, this could be a great PR tool for people who have some amount of a following on the internet.
Initially the couch needers wouldn’t know this exists, so I think the person acting as the “initial node” would have to reach out to their social network and “manually” find the couch needers. But at scale, it would be nice for couch needers to go to the website and use some sort of search function to see if there are any “initial nodes” that they are close enough to. Something like Facebook’s Graph API would be incredibly useful here. I’m sure other social networks have something similar. But for those who aren’t part of social media, perhaps they could do things like enter names of people they know, enter names of organizations they’ve been a part of, enter where they live, etc.
Be very careful about introducing an expectation to pay. Payment, even contingent future payment, will fundamentally change the nature of the endeavor. People are very motivated by social norms in most situations, but introducing money buys your way out of those norms. The classic treatment of this is is that daycare centers that fine parents for tardiness and making the staff stay late have much more tardiness than those who just disapprove.
See https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html
To the extent that this practice stays within a community, the community’s own norms are probably sufficient. Besides, many/most hosts would probably prefer guests donate to charity if they end up well-off. Maybe you have some sort of soft norm that guests offer to let their prior hosts direct some of their altruism, but be careful even with that. Everything matters on the margin, and that’s about the upper limit of incentive that won’t meaningfully displace the group norms.
Interesting point. My main thought is that it is a hypothesis to test, and that I don’t feel strongly about how people would react to the contingent future payment. I could definitely see some people being turned off by it, as well as others turned on, but I don’t have a good sense for what the results would be on balance.