TLDR: Document compiling redteaming on Profit for Good available, with public comments invited and appreciated. This thread further includes two argument headings against Profit for Good to be discussed in the comments.

As one might suspect given that I have started a nonprofit to advance it, I believe Profit for Good, the philanthropic use of businesses with charities in vast majority shareholder position, is an immensely powerful tool. To get a sense of the scale of good that Profit for Good could do, see 14:22 of Cargill’s TED Talk for what 3.5T could do, which would be about 3.5 years of 10% of global net profits. Here is a good place to start regarding why we think it is promising and here is a longer reading list.

However, throughout time, many people have brought up criticisms and red-teaming. It is important to realize that Profit for Good, especially in initial stages, would likely require the use of philanthropic funds for launching, acquiring, and accelerating businesses that counterfactually could be used to directly fund extremely impactful charities that we know can do good. For this reason, it is critical that all of the potential reasons that Profit for Good might not succeed, not be the best use of funds, and/or have unintended negative consequences be considered. For this reason, I am in the process of aggregating red-teaming from wherever I can find it, organizing such redteaming, according to argument heading, verbatim where possible, and doing the same for the responses to such red-teaming. I am in the process of forming my own syntheses of the criticisms and responses. I am also continuing to compile new arguments and formulations/evidence regarding former arguments.

If you are interested in supplying new arguments under existing headings, your own syntheses of existing materials, or new argument headings, you may feel free to add a comment on the existing document or email me at brad@consumerpowerinitiative.org and I will integrate it verbatim into the document (please indicate if you would like such argument to be anonymous for any reason, or I will credit you with the contribution.

I will include in this piece the first two argument headings,...

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