I work since 2003 for an automotive company. We manufacture several components for the engine and drivetrain. We also produced and donated some PPEs in the early phases of covid, as other companies in your examples, taking advantage of our advance engineering and industrial capacity.
I don’t think “EA is neglecting physical goods”. I guess EAs think physical goods are provided by the market and don’t see a competitive advantage to take care of the manufacturing. As an example, Against Malaria Foundation considered buying their bed nets locally, coming to the conclusions published here: https://www.againstmalaria.com/NewsItem.aspx?newsitem=Where-do-we-buy-our-nets-from
This is for the regular provision of goods in standard market conditions. If you are worried specifically in pandemic preparedness or other existential risks which may require an extremely fast escalation of production, I also see this as an area of concern. But the intervention to get better prepared should be advocacy, so the governments and companies proactively take these scenarios into account and invest in flexible equipment that let them quickly adapt the existing production capacity to PPEs or whatever might be needed. I don’t really see the value of having a few dozen/hundred of individual EAs with manufacturing skills when we will require billions of masks. They will be valuable if they are very well positioned in the chain of command of existing industrial companies and can influence their upfront decisions. A kind of earning to give and influence approach, by taking roles of high responsibility not only to donate but also to influence the decisions of companies to become more aligned to EA values. But this more of a management career path than a hands-on career path.
I’m not sure if I understood properly your exact proposal.
I work since 2003 for an automotive company. We manufacture several components for the engine and drivetrain. We also produced and donated some PPEs in the early phases of covid, as other companies in your examples, taking advantage of our advance engineering and industrial capacity.
I don’t think “EA is neglecting physical goods”. I guess EAs think physical goods are provided by the market and don’t see a competitive advantage to take care of the manufacturing. As an example, Against Malaria Foundation considered buying their bed nets locally, coming to the conclusions published here:
https://www.againstmalaria.com/NewsItem.aspx?newsitem=Where-do-we-buy-our-nets-from
This is for the regular provision of goods in standard market conditions. If you are worried specifically in pandemic preparedness or other existential risks which may require an extremely fast escalation of production, I also see this as an area of concern. But the intervention to get better prepared should be advocacy, so the governments and companies proactively take these scenarios into account and invest in flexible equipment that let them quickly adapt the existing production capacity to PPEs or whatever might be needed. I don’t really see the value of having a few dozen/hundred of individual EAs with manufacturing skills when we will require billions of masks. They will be valuable if they are very well positioned in the chain of command of existing industrial companies and can influence their upfront decisions. A kind of earning to give and influence approach, by taking roles of high responsibility not only to donate but also to influence the decisions of companies to become more aligned to EA values. But this more of a management career path than a hands-on career path.
I’m not sure if I understood properly your exact proposal.