If I remember correctly, CEA et al. decided against pursuing this strategy due to risk adversity. Due to the large downsides which may be unique to EA, it’s not clear—to me at least—that our personal strategy should differ from this. I’d be interested in seeing some more thoughts on this.
I agree the situation would be different for a single small organization or if the charity you’re donating to depends sensitively on your donations.
But if you’re just an individual earning to give to relatively big charities (e.g., MIRI, which has a budget >$1m/year), then if you lose, say, ~$20K due to leverage, you can just make it up again with another ~2-3 months of work, and no major harm is done.
If I remember correctly, CEA et al. decided against pursuing this strategy due to risk adversity. Due to the large downsides which may be unique to EA, it’s not clear—to me at least—that our personal strategy should differ from this. I’d be interested in seeing some more thoughts on this.
I agree the situation would be different for a single small organization or if the charity you’re donating to depends sensitively on your donations.
But if you’re just an individual earning to give to relatively big charities (e.g., MIRI, which has a budget >$1m/year), then if you lose, say, ~$20K due to leverage, you can just make it up again with another ~2-3 months of work, and no major harm is done.