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Interesting idea. Presumably one would have to be an accredited investor to do so?
Yes, I think so. Something I won't be able to do as a non-US investor.
In response to
Contrarian LW views and their economic implications
Invest in Quixey when they go in for the next round of funding, perhaps.
In response to
A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity
This is a good idea, though not a new one. Others have abandoned the idea of a formal system for this on the grounds that:
1) It may be illegal 2) Quite a few people think it is illegal or morally dubious (whether or not it is actually illegal or immoral)
It would be insane to proceed with this without confirming (1). If illegal, it would open you up to criminal prosecution, and more importantly, seriously hurt the movements you are trying to help. I think that whether or not it turns out to be illegal, (2) is sufficient reason to not pursue it. It may cause serious reputational damage to the movement which I'd expect to easily outweigh the financial benefits.
I also think that the 10% to 20% boost is extremely optimistic. That would only be achieved if almost everyone was using it and they all wanted to spend most of their money funding charities that don't operate in their countries. I'd expect something more like a boost of a few percent.
Note that there are also very good alternatives. One example is a large effort to encourage people to informally do this in a non-matched way by donating to the subset of effective charities that are tax deductable in their country. This could get most of the benefits for none of the costs.
Thanks, Toby. I expected that the legal risks would be quite an issue. Point noted. I had not expected this to be a new idea as well, after all it seemed too simple. I guess a more informal means is good for now. Hope the EA forum has such a place to make this discussion.
In response to
A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity
Do you have some examples where this situation exists (two charities with different government acceptance in two jurisdictions that have US-style tax incentives for charities and a reasonably large donor base of wealthy individuals)?
I suspect it's rare. Further, I suspect most giving is of the feel-good rather than informed altruism form, and tax effects are unlikely to be sufficiently motivating to the donors to go through this contortion.
I'd also expect to be harassed by officials on both sides who take this "transparent attempt at bypassing our regulations" pretty seriously.
I think most charities are tax deductible only in their own countries. Oxford's cross country deductiblity is more the exception than the rule. To be specific, I'll not get a tax deduction in India if I contributed to fhi. But if I swap with an englishman who wanted to contribute to the ramakrishna mission or child relief and you (indian charities) then we both benefit.
I agree on potential regulatory issues. That's why I wanted more opinions.
A possible tax efficient swap mechanism for charity
I had an idea a while ago, which sounded simple to me, but searching with certain keywords did not yield appropriate results, so am presenting it for discussion to LW . Please inform me if something like this is already in existence. Please inform if I need to cross post it on effective altruism forum also, or they share enough users with LW and it need not be repeated.
Introduction
Two persons A, B living in different tax jurisdictions I and J respectively, want to contribute to organizations M and N qualifying for tax exemption in the other person's jurisdiction. i.e. M qualifies in J and N qualifies in I. For the purpose of this demo, lets consider they intend to contribute the same amounts.
They "swap" their charities and produce receipts to the effect from the respective organizations.i.e. A contributes to N and B contributes to M.
This helps them gain 10% to 20% more money when compared to contributing to their preferred charities which do not qualify.
So, the idea is to create a website where people can post such an intent, to contribute to cross-national charities and can reliably present receipts that will be acceptable to all concerned.
The main uses i envisage for such swaps would be science supporters in the developing world wanting to contribute to research happening in the developed world swapping with EA's wanting to gain a bigger bang for their buck in the developing world. This potentially reduces the need for a lot of charities to seek out tax exemption in multiple jurisdictions.
Avenues for further research
Question on the basic idea
- Do both charities have to be acceptable to both donors or are neutral and maybe even "hostile" swaps possible? How much does that complicate matters
- A certain cut of the proceeds seems to be the simplest for the website to operate, but will it be acceptable to the users?
- Might this be construed as being illegal in certain jurisdictions, after all, it is a tax avoidance scheme, to be honest.
Logistics questions
- The 1:1:1:1 case for person to jurisdictions to causes to "the time of swap" is the simplest. There are many possible complications which can allow more charity to be funneled, but require the website hosts to be exposed to non-trivial amounts of risk. Example in one exchange, more dollars are offered for charity than euro-equivalents while in another swap, more euro-equivalents are offered compared to dollars. This can balance, but it is more complicated.
- Do the accounts need to "balance"? Will a non 1:1 ratio be acceptable for certain supporters of causes?
- Foreign exchange fluctuations affect amounts of money donated and may cause some unnecessary heartburn in some cases.
- Times of feeling charitable may wary and may prevent markets from clearing. Christians may feel more charitable near Christmas or Easter and Muslims during Ramadan.
- Might this require all charities to get themselves a digital signature? What are the other avenues to getting a reliable receipt from charities?
- If both payments are routed through the website/entity, then might unnecessary forex changes remove a lot of value? Could crypto-currency style atomic swaps help or would they introduce unnecessary complexity that people would rather not be bothered with.
- Might it complicate the relationship of donors with charities to the extent that the gain is lost in extra cost to reach out?
Conclusion
If such an institution is not already there, then after legal considerations, I think supporting such a website could be a high value investment for effective altruists as it would lead to a 10% to 20% boost to the charity kitty.
[EDIT : edited a little for clarity and grammar. added one more doubt]
In response to
The Great Filter is early, or AI is hard
I'd like to repeat the comment I had made at "outside in" for the same topic, the great filter.
I think our knowledge of all levels – physics, chemistry, biology, praxeology, sociology is nowhere near the level where we should be worrying too much about the fermi paradox.
Our physics has openly acknowledged broad gaps in our knowledge by postulating dark matter, dark energy, and a bunch of stuff that is filler for – "I don’t know". We don't have physics theories that explain the smallest to the largest.
Coming to chemistry and biology, we’ve still not demonstrated abiogenesis. We have not created any new base of life other than the twisty strands mother nature already prepared and gave us everywhere. We don't know the causes of our mutations to predict them to any extent. We simply don’t know enough to fill in these gaps.
Coming to basic sustenance, we don’t know what are the minimum requirements for a self-contained multi generational habitat. The biosphere experiments were not complete in any manner.
We don’t know the code for intelligence. We don’t know the code for preventing our own bodily degradation.
We don’t know how to balance new knowledge acquisition and sustainability run a society. Our best centres of knowledge acquisition are IQ shredders (a term meant to highlight the fact that the most successful cities attract the highest IQ people and reduce their fertility compared to if they had remained back in small towns/rural areas) and not sustainable environmentally either. Patriarchy and castes work great in in static societies. We don’t know their equivalent in a growing knowledge society.
There are still many known ways in which we can screw up. Lets get all these basics right, repeatedly right and then wonder with our new found knowledge, according to these calculations, there is a X% chance that we should have been contacted. Why are we apparently alone in the universe?
The "Mayan apocalypse" isn't an ancient prophecy.
From Wikipedia:
Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar was the basis for a popular belief that a cataclysm would take place on December 21, 2012. December 21, 2012 was simply the day that the calendar went to the next b'ak'tun, at Long Count 13.0.0.0.0. The date on which the calendar will go to the next piktun (a complete series of 20 b'ak'tuns), at Long Count 1.0.0.0.0.0, will be on October 13, 4772.
Sandra Noble, executive director of the Mesoamerican research organization Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), notes that "for the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle". She considers the portrayal of December 2012 as a doomsday or cosmic-shift event to be "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."
If a storm like the one described in the link had actually hit, then would people really be concerned with these fine differences?
In response to
Open thread, July 21-27, 2014
This just showed up on my google reader.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/electricity-solarstorms-kemp-idINL6N0PZ5D120140725
My immediate thought was about this storm actually hitting in 2012. The mayan apocalypse was predicted on that year. The civilizational challenge to rebuild would have been substantial. But even more, the epistemic state of the civilization that recovered would almost have been permanently compromised. It would appear to most people that an ancient prophecy of a civilization that was brutally crushed was actually true.
What would we be thinking then? How would the rationalists in our adjacent universe be updating their priors? How much thought and effort would be put into reading and understanding ancient prophecies? Could you dismiss modern seers and prophets? Who would you trust?
Gave 3 small $10 donations over the last 3 hrs.
Weird question - why is MIRI classified as a > 2M$ charity. Did it actually pull in that much last year? I'm , for some reason, not able to open intelligence.org and check it myself..
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Hi David,
This is a worthwhile initiative. All the very best to you.
I would advise that this data be maintained on a blockchain like data structure. It will be highly redundant and very difficult to corrupt, which I think is one of the primary concerns here.
http://storj.io, http://metadisk.org/