We are excited to announce the launch of the Abundance and Growth Fund, which will spend at least $120 million over the next three years to accelerate economic growth and boost scientific and technological progress while lowering the cost of living.
We’re grateful for support from Good Ventures, which has committed $60M, and from the other private individuals who matched them. We’re also grateful for a contribution from Patrick Collison, who helped launch the Progress Studies movement.
We launched the fund because:
- Economic growth has transformed global living standards, and further growth could deliver vast improvements to health and well-being.
- Innovation is a key input to growth; economists and our own researchers estimate that R&D and scientific research have very high social returns.
- We have strong evidence that it’s possible to boost growth and innovation by removing existing constraints; there are many positive examples to point to where alternative systems have enabled faster progress.
- We thought the timing was right. (See below.)
We’ve long been one of the most active philanthropic funders in the pro-abundance and pro-growth movements, particularly in land use reform and innovation policy. We chose this moment to double down because:
- We feel encouraged by the recent rise of the Abundance and Progress Studies movements, which advocate for economic growth and material progress.
- We’ve seen cross-partisan interest in areas like zoning reform, energy permitting, and science policy.
- We learned a lot from launching the Lead Exposure Action Fund, which helped us quickly establish a similar pooled fund for abundance and growth.
See our blog post for more detail on all of these points.
With the launch of the Fund, we’re also launching a search for a program leader to manage it on a permanent basis. They will have significant autonomy in shaping the Fund’s direction and strategy. The application deadline is 3/31. We encourage you to check out the job description and apply yourself, or recommend someone who you think would be a strong candidate.
Sorry, I was unsure how to express that.
I think there are a lot of implicit social agreements at work here. I know that a lot of people in positions in power often don't want to spend much time being questioned or addressing points they find disagreeable.
My impression is that a lot of public statements from major organizations come with expectations like this. But these expectations aren't typically explicit, which I find makes them difficult to reason about.
Historically, I know that many people with power around OP don't seem to engage much with comments on the EA Forum. For example, when I look through Holden's posts, I don't see many comments/responses from him. (with a good exception being this recent post!)
Or see this comment by Dustin Moskovitz:
> I'm not detailing specific decisions for the same reason I want to invest in fewer focus areas: additional information is used as additional attack surface area. The attitude in EA communities is "give an inch, fight a mile". So I'll choose to be less legible instead.
(quote emphasized by me)
It seems like Dustin thinks that EA's fight too much with OP, more than is fair, and therefore Dustin actively chooses to be less legible.
So, what is "fighting"? Is my questioning of the cost-effectiveness me "fighting a mile"? I have no idea.
Perhaps a better way to say, "I'm not sure if I can question this" might be something like, "I'm not sure if me raising this point would significantly frustrate people like Dustin." I'm not expecting him or others at OP to consider potentially-critical information as the kind that should be, say, legally attacked, but I do expect them to dislike a lot of this sort of conversation, and I don't feel like I understand where the lines are.
I don't particularly blame OP / EA leaders for this challenge. More that i think it's the kind of thing that comes out of most extreme power imbalances, and it takes a good deal of work to get around it.