EA - Problems with free services for EA projects by Lizka

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Problems with free services for EA projects, published by Lizka on August 3, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.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 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. (More on these problems and other issues, as well as exceptions and nuances.)Some services make sense as free services. For instance (see more):Community infrastructure projects or other work where the benefits go through many people (there's not a clear "beneficiary" of the service)Services for which overhead costs are especially highServices that are in large part beneficial to the provider, not the recipients of the serviceNotes & caveats:Scope of the postWhen I talk about "services," I mean costly services that are often provided by specialists (coaching, consulting, etc.). I think more minor services are more often fine, and I'm definitely not talking about friendly support, like helping your officemate with an ughy task or having a call with someone you met at EAG who's interested in getting into your field.Certain types of volunteering don't encounter the issues outlined here, particularly when the volunteer has the option to be paid a specified rate but opts out (so they know more about the "market value" of their free work).The concerns I discuss are also less relevant for services provided by for-profit organizations/groups that provide a free/subsidized version to e.g. nonprofits.I focus on free services here, but the arguments can probably be extended to cover subsidized services.I don't discuss paid services that only serve EA customers, but I also have concerns about these services when it isn't clear that the needs of EA projects covered are unusual. My rough take is that:People advertising infrastructure and support projects in EA spaces (e.g. newsletters) should not give preference to services that only have EA customers unless there's something clearly special about the service that makes it especially useful for EA work.People working on EA projects should find the available service that best suits their needs, which is generally unlikely to be EA-focused; most of the world is not in EA. (Maybe it's easier to identify a good-enough service in EA, but I still think we should be a bit more suspicious of our instinct towards going for EA things.)I'm not speaking for my team or for CEA.I don't know how important the issues I outline here are relative to other issues in EA, but this topic has come up several times, so I decided to write this post.I don't think people who provide free services are ill-meaning or anything like that. Also, I appreciate many people in the EA community for reasons that go beyond "I think they do impactful work." I like to hang out with other people in the EA community for personal reasons. But if I'm thinking about doing something for EA reasons - because I think it's an effective use of resources in order to help the world - I want to focus ...