Great post - always fun to see Will weighing in on hot-button issues. 🎉
As for where to draw the line on personal spending and frugality, the example of flying business class on an airplane is a perfect illustration: no one needs to fly business class, and the marginal benefits of extra legroom and early boarding are so not worth the 2x or 3x ticket price, imo.
To the concern about value drift and optics, our reputation as a movement would obviously be tarnished if folks like Will and Toby (or any of us) bought yachts and mansions. If we can avoid flagrantly conspicuous consumption, that’d be great. Beyond that, we shouldn’t be eating rice and beans every night. I want a well-balanced diet of kale and quinoa for every EA doing good work out there!
Let’s not forget that SBF cooks his own meals
Also relevant, I once asked Peter Singer why we don’t all walk around in ash and sackcloth in order to donate every spare penny, and his response was “if everyone in a movement you had never heard of before were walking around in ash and sackcloth, would you really want to join?” So even my homeboy Peety acknowledges the importance of optics.
Last point: take the Further Pledge if you’re concerned about individual value drift. I took the pledge in July 2021 (capped my salary at $70k USD) and I can attest that it feels fabulous! It’s definitely increased my overall felicity. ❤️
This is really great to see. Obviously, Open Phil and EA Infra have funded awesome projects, but it’s true that having so many important decisions made by a small number of grant makers at those orgs can lead to group biases and echo chambers that may lead them to neglect other high-potential opportunities. I’d be curious to to see how a more decentralized group of less committed (in terms of time) grant makers fairs against a few full-time grant makers, but of course it’s not a competition. Ultimately, we’re all winners here, and more diversity and extra perspectives is almost universally a good thing.