I’ve been thinking that EA should try to elect a president, someone who is empowered but also accountable to the general people in the movement, a schelling person to be the face of EA.
Counterargument, I think there’s enough different streams of EA that this would not be especially helpful.
There exists a president of GiveWell. There exists a president of 80k Hours. There exists a president of Open Philanthropy. Those three organizations seem pretty close to each other, and there’s a lot of others further afield. I think there would be a lot of debating, some of it acrimonious, about who counted as ‘in the movement’ enough to vote on a president of EA, and it would be easy to wind up with a president that nobody with a big mailing list or a pile of money actually had to listen to.
Counterargument, I think there’s enough different streams of EA that this would not be especially helpful.
There exists a president of GiveWell. There exists a president of 80k Hours. There exists a president of Open Philanthropy. Those three organizations seem pretty close to each other, and there’s a lot of others further afield. I think there would be a lot of debating, some of it acrimonious, about who counted as ‘in the movement’ enough to vote on a president of EA, and it would be easy to wind up with a president that nobody with a big mailing list or a pile of money actually had to listen to.