I think that social ties are useful, yet having a sprawling global community is not. I think that you’re attacking a bit of a straw man, one which claims that we should have no relationships or community whatsoever.
I also think that there is an unfair binary you’re assuming, where on one side you have “unpaid, ad-hoc community organising” and on the other you have the current abundance of funding for community building. Especially in EA hubs like London, the Bay Area, and DC, the local community can certainly afford to pay for events and event managers without needing central funding, and I’d be happy for CEA to continue to do community building—albeit with the expectation that communities do their own thing and pay for events, which would be a very significant change from the current environment. Oh, and I also don’t live in an EA hub, and have never attended an EAG—but I do travel occasionally, and have significant social interaction with both EAs and non-EAs working in pandemic preparedness, remotely. The central support might be useful, but it’s far from the only way to have EA continue.
I think that social ties are useful, yet having a sprawling global community is not. I think that you’re attacking a bit of a straw man, one which claims that we should have no relationships or community whatsoever.
I also think that there is an unfair binary you’re assuming, where on one side you have “unpaid, ad-hoc community organising” and on the other you have the current abundance of funding for community building. Especially in EA hubs like London, the Bay Area, and DC, the local community can certainly afford to pay for events and event managers without needing central funding, and I’d be happy for CEA to continue to do community building—albeit with the expectation that communities do their own thing and pay for events, which would be a very significant change from the current environment. Oh, and I also don’t live in an EA hub, and have never attended an EAG—but I do travel occasionally, and have significant social interaction with both EAs and non-EAs working in pandemic preparedness, remotely. The central support might be useful, but it’s far from the only way to have EA continue.
Both of you now seem to be focusing specifically on funding for community building, whereas the original post was much broader:
… maybe if those broader issues were addressed, the question of which community-building to fund would then be easier to work out?