“Problems with free services for EA projects” by Lizka

EA-motivated specialists sometimes offer free or subsidized versions of normally expensive services to EA projects. I think this is often counterproductive and outline my reasoning in this post. The key problem with free services is that we don’t have market-based information about their quality, so the beneficiaries of a free service might be getting less value than it might appear they are getting. As a result, service providers waste their time providing expensive services to people who wouldn’t pay the full price (instead, providers could charge and donate[1] or spend that time on other impactful work). Additionally, community-level overestimates of the quality of free services are more likely and might lead people who need good services to use the free versions even when they’re worse suited to their needs. If you’re offering, taking, or advertising a free service like this, I think you should believe the situation is an exception to the general heuristic. [...] ---Outline:(03:59) Problems(04:02) It’s harder to evaluate the quality/value of free services, so (1) providers might keep offering free services that are a bad use of their time, and (2) people might use services that are not what they need(08:46) It might be more effective to charge the full cost and donate the profits(10:30) More minor/complicated issues with services that are offered for free(12:04) Situations in which it’s potentially reasonable to offer/advertise free services to EAs(16:30) Other nuances and counterpointsThe original text contained 14 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: August 3rd, 2023 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rPj6Fh4ZTEpRah3uf/problems-with-free-services-for-ea-projects --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.