I see the conversation has gotten ahead of me, but the Wytham Abbey purchase is absolutely an example of my concerns. The justification wasn't much more than "I like going to conferences in big posh buildings and some other people I've talked to do as well".
Makes me think of Parkinson's law: "work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion" -- but this time, "money spent expands to match the amount of donations".
I wonder how to design an organization, where people don't do that. Seems it's hard.
Maybe new metrics: Money-not-spent, and Time-we-didn't-need-to-use. But can be easily gamed, hmm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Effective_Altruis...
I see the conversation has gotten ahead of me, but the Wytham Abbey purchase is absolutely an example of my concerns. The justification wasn't much more than "I like going to conferences in big posh buildings and some other people I've talked to do as well".