Maybe you are right that the lawyers would only see their professional obligation and no ethical problem.

I'm curious where you (or others) think the line might be in similar situations though. At one point do you think a significant fraction of society would think there's a challenging ethical quandary? How about if grantees had already donated their grants to GiveDirectly "earning to give" style and couldn't afford to repay? Or if SBF had just donated everything to GiveDirectly? And what if GiveDirectly had already disbursed all the funds but GiveDirectly's recipients mostly hadn't spent them yet? Do you think still think people would just think "I don't care how unjust the system is that put these people in poverty in the first place. You should obviously take their money and give it back to the (globally) rich."?

These questions are less interesting to me than my original thought because they're not about what actually happened or could happen, but they might make for a thought-provoking piece of short fiction.

Kind of ironic given this recent comment from John!

CEA staff have so much karma that they can tank any comment with a single downvote. Don't think that the agreement vote score is representative of the community's opinion.

I'd love to see a Future Fund grantee publicly pledge that in the absence of a clawback, they'll donate the money to GiveDirectly.

I think that would be a very respectable commitment and the sort of thing an EA might do.

I don't think anyone is obliged to do something like this. But wouldn't it be interesting to watch EAs/the media/the general public wrestle with the ethical quandary that would put FTX in?

It's not often you get the opportunity to confront society with a dilemma quite like this - I bet the discussion would be rather illuminating.

"Value Lock-In: The Hundred Schools of Thought" (What We Owe The Future, Chapter 4)

I'm curious about all the downvotes as I understood Marcus to simply be saying "Building a bunker for some people somewhere should at least be on the table."

Is even this just too toxic an idea in the current political climate? Because if you can't save everyone, you obviously shouldn't save anyone or something like that?

(I know Garrison has given a response below that sounds like an explanation for a downvote, but actually I can't see any disagreement in it.)

I would love this to be brought back!