Thanks for this! I oversee the Macroeconomic Stabilization grant portfolio at Open Phil. We very much appreciate the thoughtful critique, and the reactions here. We don’t do detailed reactions by default, but wanted to flag that we’d seen and appreciate you sharing.
The risks you describe here are certainly worth considering, and we’ve tried to consider them whenever we make grants in this area. Historically, we didn’t think they outweighed the benefits of more expansionary macro policy. But we’ve been reevaluating this issue area in light of the current macroeconomic conditions and policy landscape—we might have more to say on that in the coming months.
If I were you, I’d try to reach out to people like the former Tory whip you quoted, and say, “We’ve got some money and some energized people, what are the other ingredients to make a difference on this? Who should we talk to, how do we plug into some existing infrastructure, etc.”