Practically all of it goes to them or their “associates”—by my reckoning. In 2009 some was burned on travel expenses and accomodation, some was invested - and some was stolen.
Who was actually helped? Countless billions in the distant future—supposedly.
What else should it go to? (Under the assumption that SI’s goals are positive.)
As Larks said above, they are doing thought work: they are not trying to ship vast quantities of food or medical supplies. The product of SI is the output from their researchers, the only way to get more output is to employ more people (modulo improving the output of the current researchers, but that is limited).
So, to recap, this is a proposed part of a list of ways in which the SIAI resembles a cult. It redistribtutes economic resources from the “rank and file” members up the internal heirarchy without much expenditure on outsiders—just like many cults do.
Keeping that in mind: SI has a problem because acting to avoid appearing to exist to give money to the upper ranks means that they can’t pay their researchers. There are three broad classes of solutions to this (that I can see):
Give staff little to no compensation for their work
Use tricky tactics to try to conceal how much money goes to the staff
Try to explain to everyone why such a large proportion of the money goes to the staff
Why was this downvoted instead of responded to? Downvoting people who are simply stating negative impressions of the group doesn’t improve impressions of the group.
About a third in 2009, the last year for which we have handy data.
Practically all of it goes to them or their “associates”—by my reckoning. In 2009 some was burned on travel expenses and accomodation, some was invested - and some was stolen.
Who was actually helped? Countless billions in the distant future—supposedly.
What else should it go to? (Under the assumption that SI’s goals are positive.)
As Larks said above, they are doing thought work: they are not trying to ship vast quantities of food or medical supplies. The product of SI is the output from their researchers, the only way to get more output is to employ more people (modulo improving the output of the current researchers, but that is limited).
So, to recap, this is a proposed part of a list of ways in which the SIAI resembles a cult. It redistribtutes economic resources from the “rank and file” members up the internal heirarchy without much expenditure on outsiders—just like many cults do.
(Eh. Yes, I think I lost track of that a bit.)
Keeping that in mind: SI has a problem because acting to avoid appearing to exist to give money to the upper ranks means that they can’t pay their researchers. There are three broad classes of solutions to this (that I can see):
Give staff little to no compensation for their work
Use tricky tactics to try to conceal how much money goes to the staff
Try to explain to everyone why such a large proportion of the money goes to the staff
All of those seem suboptimal.
Why was this downvoted instead of responded to? Downvoting people who are simply stating negative impressions of the group doesn’t improve impressions of the group.