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ChristianKl comments on Mark Zuckerberg plans to give away 99% of his facebook wealth over his lifetime - Less Wrong
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Yes, pledging future charity donations without specific mechanisms about achieving objectives is part of what the "Giving What We Can Pledge" is about. Applauding people for pledging to give effectively is a key EA value.
What incentives do burocrats at the department of education have in your opinion? In my view those burocrats have incentives to try to centralize educational policy. Otherwise they have incentives to protect the status quo instead of innovating.
Radical innovation seldom happens at the place where people are invested in the status quo. Plurality is very important for society to work well.
If I understanding correctly, he just pledged to donate to himself, in the form of a for-profit company set up in the closest thing to tax haven you can find in the US.
Where is "effective" part? Where is the "giving" part?
They have an incentive to appease the elected officers who put them in that position, who in turn have an incentive to appease their electorate. Not terribly strong incentives, but that's what keeps democracy up and running.
What incentives does a billionaire without accountably to the users of the school system have?
Do you think that an official in the department of eduction get's promotions based on whether what he's doing is prefered by congress? It's likely much more problematic to cross the teachers unions.
I think civil society is an important part of functioning democracy. That means it's good when there are indepent well-founded players who aren't maximizing their profits.
Mark has an incentive that when Max is old enough to read the letter himself and critcally evualte it, he doesn't think his father is an asshole. Legacy is important.
Aren't school boards elected at a local level in the US?
Anyway, you seem to objection is overly general. Yes, the principal-agent problem exists in the government, but unless Zuckerberg is planning to personally oversee each individual grant given to each individual school or teacher, then he is going to hire some bureaucrats to do it, and he the principal-agent problem will occur again, with the difference that elected officials have some accountability to their constituents who substantially overlap with the users of the school system, while Zuckerberg is accountable only to himself.
I think that making public services such as education dependent on the benevolence of rich people with significant political interests is a step towards aristocracy and away from liberal democracy, but whatever floats your boat.
herself
Legacy is warm fuzzies. And politicians seek it too, in fact even more than billionaires, since they lack billion dollars to leave to their children.
I don't see how that's supposed to argument for the department of education being well-funded. The department of education does happen to be a federal agency.
I think that sentence illustrates a core bias of the current system. The current system will try to fund schools or teachers while bringing the field forward might also need a lot of investment into elearning.
I'm not saying that there should be no government spending in eduction. I'm advocating plurality. Some spending by the government and some by private hands.
Politicians also seek legacy but they are heavily constrained by realpolitik. Mark can give out money to optimize for leaving a legacy in a way that politicians can't.
Masters in education have been shown to be worthless when it comes to teacher performance. Performance metrics on the other hand seem to work.
Currently due to the power of teachers unions people with a masters in eduction get unfairly payed more money. Most schools don't pay well performing teacher more. If you leave it to the department of education that likely won't change. When Mark however gives out grants he's quite free to finance performance-based teacher pay.
No, they don't. They only have an incentive not to screw up so greatly as to get fired. You overestimate the influence that elected officials have over civil servants.
More importantly, you can just look at the outcomes. They are... not great.
Legacy.
And if by "users of the school system" you mean the kids or the parents, no one is accountable to them. Their only effective choice of influencing the system is Exit.
Why would people hired by Mark Zuckerberg to fix the school system do any better? It's not like they are making him any money.
Their incentive is just to spend the money allocated to them while pretending to be doing something useful. Civil servants have similar incentives, but at least civil servants need to please elected official who in turn answer to the populace, while Zuckerberg's employees only need to please their employer who answers to no one.
As opposed to the outcomes of charity-funded school systems?
Aren't school boards elective in the US?
Because he, presumably, would select them by different criteria and because he can fire them much much easier than a politician can fire a union-entrenched educrat.
This is precisely what creates an opportunity for him to be effective.
So do tell, what do you think is the problem?