Appreciate the response. Descriptively, I'm sure you're right about the rationale behind these decisions. I think failing to factor in even the most obvious drivers of quality of lives might be politically more comfortable but has important implications, perhaps even for these specific populations. For example, making adjustments might justify:
1. Moving dollars towards interventions aimed at human capital development (lead removal, (perhaps) deworming).
2.Saving more lives in countries that have regions that are quite poor but have better future prospects.
I'm also skeptical of the idea that generally improving public health on the margin will contribute in any meaningful way to improving institutional quality. I'm not arguing as some libertarians do that doing this hampers the incentive to provide public services. But on the other hand, it's also far from likely that improving public health will improve instituions in the long term. I agree the causation might run both ways but probably much stronger in one direction. (especially since there are all too many examples of places with much better public health but awful institutional quality (Venezuela, Iraq etc come to mind)
Thanks for asking, Julia. Initially, we expect to accept a pretty wide range of people, across both age/experience levels and cause areas as we're exploring how these consultations can be as impactful as possible. Having said that, we intend to use information gathered during this process, along with insights from the community & affiliate orgs around neglected segments/user groups, to inform if and how we ought to specialize.
My update from a case of fraud isn't that money can't be made ethically. This isn't to dismiss the possibility of value drift etc, which we should take even more seriously than we have been.
Having said that , a few things:
In general, my update is from the situation is more : we need money but we also need better ops , more interfacing with the real world, better corporate governance and generally fewer incentuousy lookign orgs.
Given the constraints highlighted above, It seems like a venture builder model (focussed on a specific cause area) may be more effective, wherein the following process is repeated:
(1) Generate plausible venture ideas from existing research within EA orgs
(2) Analyze ideas on two dimensions - (a) Cost benefit Analysis (b) Operational feasibility
(3) Incubate and recruit EA aligned technical and non technical co-founders (who then build their own team)
(4) Tie further funding and possibly bonuses to specific short term milestones
Everything above is of course contingent on the ability to actually generate actionable ideas that pass Step 2(a) in a particular cause area.
Thank you, appreciate it!