The most obvious solution to me would seem to be to try to target people who have a lot of money and are interested in non-standard or transhumaists technologies. Peter Thiel would be an obvious example.
From the website version, here’s the quote from Merkle that gwern alluded to:
Some Alcor members have wondered why rich Alcor members have not donated more money to Alcor. The major reason is
that rich Alcor members are rich because they know how to manage money, and they know that Alcor traditionally has
managed money poorly. Why give any significant amount of money to an organization that has no fiscal discipline? It will
just spend it, and put itself right back into the same financial hole it’s already in.
As a case in point, consider Alcor’s efforts over the year to create an “endowment fund” to stabilize its operating budget.
These efforts have always ended with Alcor spending the money on various useful activities. These range from research
projects to subsidizing our existing members — raising dues and minimums is a painful thing to do, and the Board is
always reluctant to do this even when the financial data is clear. While each such project is individually worthy and has
merit, collectively the result has been to thwart the effort to create a lasting endowment and leave Alcor in a financially
weak position.
That has never worked before. Incidentally, Ralph Merkle contributed an appendix discussing the endowment and saying something to the effect that rich people will not donate (more than they are already doing so which has kept Alcor afloat these past decades) because they see little return on their donation and that Alcor is not fiscally responsible, but follow his views on not dipping into the endowment and maybe then they will come to trust Alcor more with their money.
What prevents the organization of X number of rich donors, who spend some of their time and money soliciting pledges from other donors for an Alcor endowment, that Alcor only ever sees if it signs a contract to spend the donation on a endowment and nothing else?
Money is fungible. If you distrust Alcor that much, why do you expect Alcor to not, say, immediately cut additional funding to the endowment to a minimum or 0; or run up debts expecting to repay them from the endowment once the period expires—etc. etc. etc. This is a classic principal-agent issue and why people want to signal honesty rather than just signing detailed contracts: there are many ways to cheat or violate the spirit of an agreement.
The most obvious solution to me would seem to be to try to target people who have a lot of money and are interested in non-standard or transhumaists technologies. Peter Thiel would be an obvious example.
From the website version, here’s the quote from Merkle that gwern alluded to:
That has never worked before. Incidentally, Ralph Merkle contributed an appendix discussing the endowment and saying something to the effect that rich people will not donate (more than they are already doing so which has kept Alcor afloat these past decades) because they see little return on their donation and that Alcor is not fiscally responsible, but follow his views on not dipping into the endowment and maybe then they will come to trust Alcor more with their money.
What prevents the organization of X number of rich donors, who spend some of their time and money soliciting pledges from other donors for an Alcor endowment, that Alcor only ever sees if it signs a contract to spend the donation on a endowment and nothing else?
Money is fungible. If you distrust Alcor that much, why do you expect Alcor to not, say, immediately cut additional funding to the endowment to a minimum or 0; or run up debts expecting to repay them from the endowment once the period expires—etc. etc. etc. This is a classic principal-agent issue and why people want to signal honesty rather than just signing detailed contracts: there are many ways to cheat or violate the spirit of an agreement.