People in the EA movement would be a prime target for products created by these organizations, closing the feedback loop and territorializing an entire self-regulating market out of the movement. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, perhaps, but perhaps there is under an EA-certification.
It seems to me that the combination of generating profits to support other EA orgs and having EAs as the target consumers would not be optimal. Because EAs already donate, by profiting off of them, profiting-to-give could, rather than moving more money into the EA movement, just be moving donations from what EAs would choose to what these profiting-to-give orgs would choose. It seems to me, then, that targeting regular consumers would be the best way to maximize the money coming into EA from this strategy.
Edit: it seems to me now that what I described above would only apply if EAs were actually trying to maximize donations through minimizing expenses instead of donating a fixed percentage every year (which I don’t think is usually true).
You make a very good point, and the economic analysis of this is comparable to finding the optimal tax rate. It’s certainly not an easy problem and fraught with politicization.
It seems to me that the combination of generating profits to support other EA orgs and having EAs as the target consumers would not be optimal. Because EAs already donate, by profiting off of them, profiting-to-give could, rather than moving more money into the EA movement, just be moving donations from what EAs would choose to what these profiting-to-give orgs would choose. It seems to me, then, that targeting regular consumers would be the best way to maximize the money coming into EA from this strategy.
Edit: it seems to me now that what I described above would only apply if EAs were actually trying to maximize donations through minimizing expenses instead of donating a fixed percentage every year (which I don’t think is usually true).
You make a very good point, and the economic analysis of this is comparable to finding the optimal tax rate. It’s certainly not an easy problem and fraught with politicization.