Ah. I should probably have flagged I’m pointing to an ideal world. As goes (almost) without saying, all this is easier said than done. You could say that EA’s challenge is that it has only one mega-donor. It seems much better that it has one than none, but having just one creates distinctive governance challenges compared to if there was no mega-donor but lots of small donors; this latter scenario is a bit closer to a democracy in terms of how power is distributed.
But your comment does rather make my point. In a world where there is only one major donor, that is, effectively a monopsony (a market with single buyer) you could say “look, all this talk about good governance is nice, but it’s practically irrelevant; the only question to ask is ‘what does the big funder want?’”.
I don’t think donors can or should be forced to defer to the democratic will. People, qua citizens in their democracy, can be forced to do things, but charity is a necessarily private act. I think it would be good if EVF had some democratic elements and also that someone paid for it to keep going. But, who am I to tell people what they ought to do, a moral philosopher, or something? :)
Ah. I should probably have flagged I’m pointing to an ideal world. As goes (almost) without saying, all this is easier said than done. You could say that EA’s challenge is that it has only one mega-donor. It seems much better that it has one than none, but having just one creates distinctive governance challenges compared to if there was no mega-donor but lots of small donors; this latter scenario is a bit closer to a democracy in terms of how power is distributed.
But your comment does rather make my point. In a world where there is only one major donor, that is, effectively a monopsony (a market with single buyer) you could say “look, all this talk about good governance is nice, but it’s practically irrelevant; the only question to ask is ‘what does the big funder want?’”.
I don’t think donors can or should be forced to defer to the democratic will. People, qua citizens in their democracy, can be forced to do things, but charity is a necessarily private act. I think it would be good if EVF had some democratic elements and also that someone paid for it to keep going. But, who am I to tell people what they ought to do, a moral philosopher, or something? :)
Why so?