Jonas Becker 🔸

• Jonas Becker 🔸 26 Feb 2024 19:54 UTC

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: How we started our own EA char­ity (and why we de­cided to wrap up)

  Thanks for putting this out here, being so transparent and vulnerable!

• Jonas Becker 🔸 10 Nov 2023 11:44 UTC

  4 points

  2 ∶ 0

  on: Clean Water—the in­cred­ible 30% mor­tal­ity re­ducer we can’t explain

  Thanks, interesting and easy to read! Hot take from an outsider: clean water may actually have more “holistic” effects than just reducing disease prevalence. I’d be curious about the effects on gut microbiome development which could affect general strength of the immune system. Diarrhea is on the worst extreme of the spectrum but there may be a lot more on their that’s harder to differentiate but has lots of potential.

• Jonas Becker 🔸 16 Aug 2023 17:24 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Price-, Taste-, and Con­ve­nience-Com­pet­i­tive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Cur­rently Re­place Meat

  Thank you, interesting. My takeaway is that the issue of protein choice is more complicated and less evidenced than sometimes presented—although I still believe PCT parity will make the transition way easier. It also updates me towards increased necessity of “cultural work”, i.e. behavioral change advocacy even in a possible scenario where we can reach PTC parity within the next years. For the movement, that could e.g. mean to test many different strategies to influence a variety of non-vegan consumer target groups to reduce or replace some of their diet.

• Jonas Becker 🔸 1 Aug 2023 14:11 UTC

  20 points

  7 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jason’s comment on: [JOB] Op­por­tu­nity to found Char­ity En­trepreneur­ship NGO (out­side of the in­cu­ba­tion pro­gram): Tobacco tax­a­tion advocacy

  Thanks for spelling that out, makes it clearer to me. I am ambivalent here because that might scare off many people that could actually afford going lower for 1-3 years but are just very anchored on their market rate.

  I feel many people have never questioned how much they would compromise their salary for the chance of 10-100x their impact in the world—until they get a real opportunity to do so. I feel assumptions like “I’m OK with my market rate-30 to 50%” are quite common even though the threshold for living a comfortable life for them might be much lower.

  I only found out how much salary I was willing to sacrifice after engaging more deeply with the idea of founding. Thus, based on my experience I find it fair to discuss salary expectations as a part of the co-founder matching process, not upfront. On a sidenote, I see an important psychological difference to make an active founder choice of setting your own starting salary low, in contrast to “being offered only minimum wage”.

  All in all, maybe I am a bit disappointed that 90% of the discussion here so far has focused on salary, while impact potential and cost-effectiveness are more important matters to cover.

• Jonas Becker 🔸 1 Aug 2023 7:20 UTC

  15 points

  7 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: [JOB] Op­por­tu­nity to found Char­ity En­trepreneur­ship NGO (out­side of the in­cu­ba­tion pro­gram): Tobacco tax­a­tion advocacy

  I do not think it reasonable to expect a Lightcone-like salary (150k+) from a co-founder position of an experimental new organisation aiming for high cost-effectiveness in the current EA non-longtermist funding structure.

  The article mentions that a typical CE charities seed funding budget is between 110-190k and that is the reality high impact cofounders have to deal with, and looking at the track record of CE-incubated charities, quite successfully.

  However, I agree that its prohibitive for some demographics, especially the US and UK. And of course it would be great if we could change that! If Readers think this to be a big enough problem, I suggest them to earn-to-give and join the CE funding circles—and consider this a cost-effective alternative to taking a potentially overpaying EA job with a less clear roadmap to impact.

• Jonas Becker 🔸 31 May 2023 22:19 UTC

  25 points

  9 ∶ 0

  on: Tax­ing Tobacco: the in­ter­ven­tion that got away (happy World No Tobacco Day)

  It might seem daunting for Global Health people to confront a big lobby while there are seemingly easier interventions with less resistance around.

  From the vantage point of an animal activists it’s not that daunting though. I am relatively certain that it’s easier than e.g. to go against the factory farming lobby. At least it’s so much common sense that it should be possible to convince the rational parts of government—increasing both public health and tax returns. Concerns arise around corruption but if you encounter too much of that you could simply switch intervention countries.

  Looking at scale and neglectedness, tobacco taxation seems just too important to shy away from the challenge.

• Jonas Becker 🔸 7 Mar 2023 9:41 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing the Launch of the In­sect Institute

  Excited you are working on this! I have been thinking about this topic from a corporate campaigns angle. Will be in touch to talk about it.