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Here is the basic idea:
Prep
1.) Students listen to the Hi-Phi Nation podcast episode on "The Wishes of the Dead" (2017). This is the very first episode.
This provides the topic: How to invest endowment money into the future, given that social values can change and a person's values can change over the course of their lives.
2.) Students also (earlier) listened to the Hi-Phi Nation episode on “Effective Altruism and its Critics” (2023). This provides some content for them to draw on, and the debate structure.
In-Class
Some people play the role of the wealthy people looking to donate to a trust. This is not a straightforward donation to a cause, like normal altruistic donations. Instead, it is to a trust that will continue to generate a flow of funding -- managed by directors -- in perpetuity.
The others argue for various causes. There is a lot of flexibility in how you do this: Maybe they pick a cause; maybe you assign them.
The structure resembles the 2023 Hi-Phi episode, but with a twist: Nuanced, future-orientated considerations brought in, from the 2017 episode.
The 2017 episode makes salient the question of whether the philanthropist in the 2023 episode, however well-meaning and well-informed, should have that much influence as an individual.
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