That and your ideas are very interesting. Am I right in supposing they are inspired by Google’s price matching announcement, or the GWWC price matching announcement on LessWrong month ago?
A few months ago I wanted to donate to Overcoming Bias. To my surpise...they wouldn’t let me. Here is the story they give:
Back in the 1700s, prizes were a fairly common way to reward innovation. … Eventually, though, prizes began to be replaced by grants that awarded money upfront. Some of this was for good reason. As science became more advanced, scientists often needed to buy expensive equipment and hire a staff before having any chance of making a discovery.
But grants also became popular for a less worthy reason: they made life easier for the government bureaucrats who oversaw them and for the scientists who received them. Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University who has studied the history of prizes, points out that they create a lot of uncertainty – about who will receive money and when a government will have to pay it. Grants, on the other hand, allow a patron (and the scientists advising that patron) to choose who gets the money. “Bureaucracies like a steady flow of money, not uncertainty,” said Mr. Hanson, who worked as a physicist at NASA before becoming an economist. “But prizes are often more effective if what you want is scientific progress.” …
These are the two essential advantages of prizes. They pay for nothing but performance, and they ensure that anyone with a good idea — not just the usual experts — can take a crack at a tough problem.
There is traction in the analogues (or identical, in some sense) idea of performance or outcome based funding in australia for welfare, and the US for technology and industry, but grants are overwhelming given out to businesses based on shoddy applications and at a larger scale to lobbyists, based on private information.
I suspect with the ear-marking of taxes, that wouldn’t be necessarily analogues to matching donations. Those taxes could be used to find prizes. Matching prizes, I suspect, would have a very different impact than matching donations since I would suspect that the increasing value of prize increases its marginal prestige per dollar invested into it. As long as the prize is drives behaviour above the median utility driven by prizes, it is probably an altruistic mechanism.
Ear marking could be totally appropriate for such a system. McKinsey published an article on prize philanthropy:
research suggests that three conditions are paramount: a clear objective (for example, one that is measurable and achievable within a reasonable time frame), the availability of a relatively large population of potential problem solvers, and a willingness on the part of participants to bear some of the costs and risks.
That final point, willingness on the part of participants to bear some of the costs and risks is an assessment that private individuals could make. A subset of the the population a government grant administrator might assume is accepting of prize philanthropy could be more or less accepting, and thus inform the tax provider’s judgements on whether to choose prize philanthropy, granting, a particular policy area, whatever. General arguments applying to direct democracy over representative democracy apply, weighted by capital.
According to research australia Australia’s main reason for not privately donating to medical research is that they don’t believe they can afford to give to medical research, that cancer research is the most underfunded and are overwhelmingly keen on the idea of indirect taxation of an additional dollar on medicine prices to fund medical research (97%). However, the majority of Australian Research Council Funding goes to psychology at 64mil, with the next highest ebing public health ad health services at 45mil then biomedical engineering, clinical sciences and neurosciences and around 20mil. Everything else hwversaround the 3 mil or less mark, from opthamology (which I’ve read elsewhere has overwhelming the longest surgical weight list times), nutrition and paediatrics at the lowest funding at 200,000 dollars (and you wonder why nutrition research is so poor, don’t blame dietietics researchers)
MY conclusion is that ear marked taxes could work cause Australians prefer indirect tax. Business in general seems to be supportive of indirect taxation—I saw a rep from the Chamber of Commerce saying we actually need more indirect taxation but less other taxes. With indirect taxation, as its administered by another org, how would it be earmarked? Then again, I’m sure brands could think of a way to strategically differentiate themselves by claiming they will earmark funds on their behalf to cancer research, since it’s popular, for instance. Hopefully it will rationalise medical spending away from psychology, at the very least.
That and your ideas are very interesting. Am I right in supposing they are inspired by Google’s price matching announcement, or the GWWC price matching announcement on LessWrong month ago?
A few months ago I wanted to donate to Overcoming Bias. To my surpise...they wouldn’t let me. Here is the story they give:
But grants also became popular for a less worthy reason: they made life easier for the government bureaucrats who oversaw them and for the scientists who received them. Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University who has studied the history of prizes, points out that they create a lot of uncertainty – about who will receive money and when a government will have to pay it. Grants, on the other hand, allow a patron (and the scientists advising that patron) to choose who gets the money. “Bureaucracies like a steady flow of money, not uncertainty,” said Mr. Hanson, who worked as a physicist at NASA before becoming an economist. “But prizes are often more effective if what you want is scientific progress.” …
See more at OB
There is traction in the analogues (or identical, in some sense) idea of performance or outcome based funding in australia for welfare, and the US for technology and industry, but grants are overwhelming given out to businesses based on shoddy applications and at a larger scale to lobbyists, based on private information.
I suspect with the ear-marking of taxes, that wouldn’t be necessarily analogues to matching donations. Those taxes could be used to find prizes. Matching prizes, I suspect, would have a very different impact than matching donations since I would suspect that the increasing value of prize increases its marginal prestige per dollar invested into it. As long as the prize is drives behaviour above the median utility driven by prizes, it is probably an altruistic mechanism.
Ear marking could be totally appropriate for such a system. McKinsey published an article on prize philanthropy:
That final point, willingness on the part of participants to bear some of the costs and risks is an assessment that private individuals could make. A subset of the the population a government grant administrator might assume is accepting of prize philanthropy could be more or less accepting, and thus inform the tax provider’s judgements on whether to choose prize philanthropy, granting, a particular policy area, whatever. General arguments applying to direct democracy over representative democracy apply, weighted by capital.
According to research australia Australia’s main reason for not privately donating to medical research is that they don’t believe they can afford to give to medical research, that cancer research is the most underfunded and are overwhelmingly keen on the idea of indirect taxation of an additional dollar on medicine prices to fund medical research (97%). However, the majority of Australian Research Council Funding goes to psychology at 64mil, with the next highest ebing public health ad health services at 45mil then biomedical engineering, clinical sciences and neurosciences and around 20mil. Everything else hwversaround the 3 mil or less mark, from opthamology (which I’ve read elsewhere has overwhelming the longest surgical weight list times), nutrition and paediatrics at the lowest funding at 200,000 dollars (and you wonder why nutrition research is so poor, don’t blame dietietics researchers)
MY conclusion is that ear marked taxes could work cause Australians prefer indirect tax. Business in general seems to be supportive of indirect taxation—I saw a rep from the Chamber of Commerce saying we actually need more indirect taxation but less other taxes. With indirect taxation, as its administered by another org, how would it be earmarked? Then again, I’m sure brands could think of a way to strategically differentiate themselves by claiming they will earmark funds on their behalf to cancer research, since it’s popular, for instance. Hopefully it will rationalise medical spending away from psychology, at the very least.
I reckon indirect it’s less risky, appropriate because of the current global economic slump, while driving innovation.
It’s a shame the new MRFF is for grants only, in the bill.