“We should put more trust in larger scale organizations who are doing exploring, like GiveWell, and pool our resources.”
I wonder about the notion of scalability, because with any information provider there’s the possible issue of corruption. Is it better to have a large organization which is easy to track? (Goodwill and the Red Cross seem to give their CEOs pretty high salaries, considering that they’re charities.) Or is it better to have a system which is more robust to corruption and tunnel vision due to multiple redundancies? Do larger organizations attract a certain type of social climber? I have no doubt that there are economies of scale. Part of the reason I’m asking these questions is that corruption seems to be a universal human stumbling block, and one that is often inadequately addressed. We project generously and assume that the heads of organizations are “basically like us” and altruistic in their intent. Neither is probably true, as the upper ranks of large organizations tend to collect those who are particularly attracted to climbing the ranks.
“We should put more trust in larger scale organizations who are doing exploring, like GiveWell, and pool our resources.”
I wonder about the notion of scalability, because with any information provider there’s the possible issue of corruption. Is it better to have a large organization which is easy to track? (Goodwill and the Red Cross seem to give their CEOs pretty high salaries, considering that they’re charities.) Or is it better to have a system which is more robust to corruption and tunnel vision due to multiple redundancies? Do larger organizations attract a certain type of social climber? I have no doubt that there are economies of scale. Part of the reason I’m asking these questions is that corruption seems to be a universal human stumbling block, and one that is often inadequately addressed. We project generously and assume that the heads of organizations are “basically like us” and altruistic in their intent. Neither is probably true, as the upper ranks of large organizations tend to collect those who are particularly attracted to climbing the ranks.