Some thoughts on a few of these. I think that EA social safety nets already exist for many people, but it’s not formal in the way you laid out. It’s more based on specific connections and accomplishments. More or less each individual organization and donor has an implicit reputation system that is based on complex and organization/​donor specific criteria. Some people will end up fitting multiple positive reputation systems which will give them more safety nets than someone who falls into a few or none. The system is of course dynamic so if you did fall into a category but then your reputation lowered (say by not doing anything that impressive over a long period of time) you could lose a safety net. Additional factors that affect how many safety nets you have in EA also relate to cost. It’s easy to provide a $10k safety net than a $100k safety net. You can imagine why donors/​orgs would generally like this system better instead of funding an EA who scores high enough on community agreed on criteria. They could directly fund/​support/​loan etc someone who directly does well on their criteria.
To put this into a more practical perspective, I would expect that an EA with a strong enough reputation would be able to get support for a while doing entrepreneurship without getting insta-VCed. Likewise, the bar would be lower for a low/​no interest loan. I think a case could be made that the system is ineffective or in-groupy and misses people who it should not. However, I think it’s worth acknowledging that informal systems like this definitely exist, so it’s more about the marginal cases who would not get supported by an informal system but would get supported by a formal one. For folks who want to do high risk projects but do not currently have informal connections/​safety nets it seems worth considering just building up your reputation. This can be done with pretty low risk things like volunteering part time for an organization.
I agree with the career trajectory points and know that some but definitely not all EAs take this into consideration when determining salary.
Some thoughts on a few of these. I think that EA social safety nets already exist for many people, but it’s not formal in the way you laid out. It’s more based on specific connections and accomplishments. More or less each individual organization and donor has an implicit reputation system that is based on complex and organization/​donor specific criteria. Some people will end up fitting multiple positive reputation systems which will give them more safety nets than someone who falls into a few or none. The system is of course dynamic so if you did fall into a category but then your reputation lowered (say by not doing anything that impressive over a long period of time) you could lose a safety net. Additional factors that affect how many safety nets you have in EA also relate to cost. It’s easy to provide a $10k safety net than a $100k safety net. You can imagine why donors/​orgs would generally like this system better instead of funding an EA who scores high enough on community agreed on criteria. They could directly fund/​support/​loan etc someone who directly does well on their criteria.
To put this into a more practical perspective, I would expect that an EA with a strong enough reputation would be able to get support for a while doing entrepreneurship without getting insta-VCed. Likewise, the bar would be lower for a low/​no interest loan. I think a case could be made that the system is ineffective or in-groupy and misses people who it should not. However, I think it’s worth acknowledging that informal systems like this definitely exist, so it’s more about the marginal cases who would not get supported by an informal system but would get supported by a formal one. For folks who want to do high risk projects but do not currently have informal connections/​safety nets it seems worth considering just building up your reputation. This can be done with pretty low risk things like volunteering part time for an organization.
I agree with the career trajectory points and know that some but definitely not all EAs take this into consideration when determining salary.