If an altruist falls on hard times, they can ask other altruists for help, and those altruists can decide to divert their charitable donations if they consider it worth more to help the altruist. If the altruists are donating to the same charities, it is very likely that restoring the ability to donate for the in-need altruist will more than pay for the donations diverted.
If charitable donations cannot be faked, and an altruist’s report of hard times preventing their charity can be trusted, then this will work to provide a financial buffer based purely on mutual interest.
Only if most altruists in the network fall on hard times does this fail, as there aren’t enough remaining charitable donations to redistribute. A global network of diversely employed altruists would minimize this risk.
Cases where an altruist is permanently knocked out of income (and therefore donation) would lack mutual interest. There would need to be a formal agreement to divert some charity for life to help them out, and this would most likely be separate from the prior network of mutual aid, and count as insurance.
A crowdfunding network is functionally very similar to what I alluded to in my last question:
Can the emergency fund be registered as a charity? What changes would make its charity status unambiguous? For example, should the fund also provide recoupments to effective altruists who did not donate through the fund but donated directly to e.g. GiveWell, but scrutinize those recoupments more?
In a crowdfunding network, the crowdfunders decide for themselves if they consider the situation to be an emergency. In my version, a centralized fund would be the judge. I think the main advantage of my version is that people immediately know which door to knock on if they’re in trouble.
If an altruist falls on hard times, they can ask other altruists for help, and those altruists can decide to divert their charitable donations if they consider it worth more to help the altruist. If the altruists are donating to the same charities, it is very likely that restoring the ability to donate for the in-need altruist will more than pay for the donations diverted.
If charitable donations cannot be faked, and an altruist’s report of hard times preventing their charity can be trusted, then this will work to provide a financial buffer based purely on mutual interest.
Only if most altruists in the network fall on hard times does this fail, as there aren’t enough remaining charitable donations to redistribute. A global network of diversely employed altruists would minimize this risk.
Cases where an altruist is permanently knocked out of income (and therefore donation) would lack mutual interest. There would need to be a formal agreement to divert some charity for life to help them out, and this would most likely be separate from the prior network of mutual aid, and count as insurance.
A crowdfunding network is functionally very similar to what I alluded to in my last question:
In a crowdfunding network, the crowdfunders decide for themselves if they consider the situation to be an emergency. In my version, a centralized fund would be the judge. I think the main advantage of my version is that people immediately know which door to knock on if they’re in trouble.