Ok - so if one believes that wild invertebrate lives are net positive, then offsetting with animal welfare interventions means more feed is required, resulting in fewer wild invertebrates (and more deaths from pesticides, but I think this is small compared to the impact on the population of soil invertebrates of farming more land), meaning less utility overall. So this person would prefer an offset that is a scalable way of convincing people to go vegan. Though this may seem contradictory, I think there is a large variation in difficulty of going vegan (taste preferences, opportunity cost of time, impact on health, etc), so it is most effective if the people for whom it is easier to go vegan are exposed to the arguments.
However, if the person thinks that wild invertebrates lives are net negative, they would prefer the animal welfare interventions offset, because not only would that help the farmed animals, but it would also reduce the bad utilities of wild invertebrates lives.

Are you suggesting that all non-vegans offset the impact on wild animals? How does one do that, even if it were agreed that wild animals had net positive lives?

There is huge uncertainty once you consider wild animals - more feed could increase wild animal welfare.

Seaweed is also an important resilient food for global catastrophes - it can be scaled up quickly as it grows even faster if the sun is partially blocked, and it is cost effective.

I've mainly worked at the cause area level, where I think these considerations are less relevant. But I have observed that if people are so enthusiastic about an area that many will volunteer (or take lower salaries), that does make progress in an area easier.

Maybe if the offsetting is convincing people to go vegan. But I think a lot of the offsetting is corporate campaigns to get higher welfare standards. That has much higher leverage than individual actions to eat higher welfare meat. Maybe once all the corporations have reformed, individual actions could start being competitive, but we can re-evaluate then.

About that example: I think you meant to write "at charity B" instead of "at charity A"?

Yes - thank you - fixed!

* Charity C: 1 employee and 10000 volunteers, 10001 impact total. Should the donor really get 10001 impact? To me that feels really off

Very unlikely to be the case in the real world, but if the donor makes the whole chain of events happen, then I think that is the counterfactual impact.

* Charity D: The employee also becomes a volunteer but does the same job. In a way the employee is "donating" their salary and becomes the donor. Should the employee now get "2 impacts"? That again feels off? Are they somehow better than the other volunteer?

Again, if without that person, there would be no impact, I think that's the counterfactual. In general, a volunteer who could manage other volunteers I think would be more valuable.

* Charity E: 100 donors, all donating $1. It's a blind kickstarter campaign and the charity can only do the intervention if they raise 100, otherwise money back, but the donors don't know how many others already donated, so order doesn't matter. In a way each donor should get the full "counterfactual" impact because without each individual donor the fundraise would've failed. But again attributing the same full impact 100 times feels wrong.

Yeah - an even more extreme case would be an election with 100,000,001 votes versus 100,000,000 votes - would all 100,000,001 people get to claim they cast the deciding vote for the election? Perhaps someone who has thought more about this wants to weigh in? @aaronhamlin ?

>A disadvantage of starting with market rate is that the person who would've accepted >the NGO rate might on average pay themselves more because they would more >consciously have to give up money. 

This is implying we are right now tricking people into giving up more than they consciously would. I'm not sure that's what we would want as a movement.

I don't think so-there's an analogy here with opt in versus opt out. You could say that people have a certain preference to be an organ donor and that whether it is opt in or opt out, you should get the same percent of participation of being an organ donor. However, we find that in reality, whether the system is opt in or opt out has a huge impact on the actual participation rate. This is similar for retirement programs.

I think this might vary heavily depending on the focus area. In AI for sure, not sure about the others.

Claude says 98th percentile salary globally is USD48k, and it estimates the median at AI-aligned orgs to be $65k for animals, $85k for global health, meta $85k and AI safety $115k.

I'm aware of the EA unemployment but I'm not sure if we should optimize for EAs working in EA orgs. Shouldn't the best talent or fit win? Especially for hard-to-fill roles like biorisk researchers, AI alignment people, a GiveDirectly country operation manager role, etc. Of course, value alignment shoudl play a part in assessing job match, but I'm not sure willingness to take a low salary is the right selector.

I agree that we should be maximizing overall effectiveness, and that reducing EA "unemployment" should not be a primary goal. However, I do think that there are a lot of well-qualified EAs who have not been able to get an EA job (see here for links).  I think there are social pressures to have EA wages not lower than other nonprofits. As evidenced by some EAs' donating patterns, they are willing to accept lower wages than most. So I think that total effectiveness would be higher with lower wages. Of course it does not apply in all cases.

Either way, all these points are downstream of the main point I'm trying to make: We should take market rate equivalents in cost effectivness calculations so we don't overpromise impact to donors. We can do this and then still decide to only accept candidates that take a 50% pay cut.

I definitely agree with the point that we should be recognizing the contribution of people who work for less money, including volunteers. Unlike Shapely values, counterfactuals can add up to more than 100%. This might be better in the other comment thread about volunteers, but here goes anyway. Let's say we have charity A that does one unit of impact per employee, and charity B that does one unit of impact per employee but each employee also manages volunteers that produce another unit of impact. I think that the counterfactual impact of the donor by funding the salary of the employee at charity B is two units, because without the donor, you would not get any impact. Then I think the counterfactual impact of the volunteers is one unit (because it wouldn't happen without them). Let's assume the employee is paid at market rate and replaceable for this thought experiment. So then we have two units of impact but the counterfactual impact is three units. So obviously Shapely values that must add to 100% you can't give all the impact to the donor. And you can easily come up with more complicated scenarios where this will not work out as cleanly. But I do think it's possible that using volunteers (or lower salaries) can increase the counterfactual impact of the donor.

Edited to switch to charity B.

But the fish only got saved once. It would be nearly impossible to determine who should get credit for how many fish saved. So from a marketing perspective, I think the smart move is to let everyone feel like the hero. 

Though Shapley values of impact have to add up to 100%, counterfactuals can add up to >100%.

Their cost effectiveness was lower than that of their "competitor" because their competitor paid themselves a lower salary.  This is a race to the bottom that is unhealthy for the movement.

There are many EAs would would like to get a job at an EA org, and lower salaries means that more jobs can be offered. So I think EA "unemployment" is a bigger problem for the movement than the people who do have EAs jobs not making enough money.

1. It would attract talent that otherwise would've been inaccessible because that talent wouldn't have been willing to take as big of a sacrifice.

Yes, but I generally think there is talent available in the EA community.

2. It would allow less privileged groups to join the charity world that otherwise just wouldn't have the means to take paycuts like this.

Most salaries at EA orgs are in the top couple percent of the world, so I don't think this is a big issue.

3. It would give employees a tangible measure to estimate how much impact they are having with their job.

Most employees already know the market rate, so they can subtract. And I think most orgs do appreciate their employees for working for less than market rate. But I could see it helping with getting credit for GWWC.

A disadvantage of starting with market rate is that the person who would've accepted the NGO rate might on average pay themselves more because they would more consciously have to give up money. They means a combination of more donor money required and more EA "unemployment", which I think would reduce effectiveness overall.