Diego Caleiro · 2014-12-27 · EA Forum
I'll soon edit my profile with my EA plan.
My living costs are much closer to 25k a year than to 50k actually. Additional donations, far from my current funding, would go into other things that can be found described in my Patreon account. I believe my Patreon account maps better into what you think people should be doing on Gratipay. I posted recently about shifting to Patreon while costs are low on the EA facebook group, and some people agreed that was a good idea.
Regardless, there is a much more important issue from my point of view: donating to individuals is much cheaper than to institutions, or universities, because individuals don't have many of the fixed costs and bureocratic costs those institutions bear. Even if it were the case that a donee wanted to receive 50k for their living expenses, this is still less than the overal cost of employing an individual in most of the EA organizations to which most people make donations. Young EAs cost their institutions (and thus their donors) up to 90k per year, which is enough money to sustain three EAs even if they live in the most expensive areas of the planet. The math is simple and clear. People however are wary of donating to individuals at the moment. I suspect over time this will be much more common among EAs, since many of the donees already have, or will build, a track record of doing good work and and being accountable and reliable in a timely manner. I'm trying to spearhead this shift in part because I'm one of those who currently can, since I still have some funding for the next months, and I've been sponsoring myself as an EA for years. Most people can't afford to participate in this Beta test, which is why I invite everyone who wants to work as an EA and can still sustain themselves for a few months to join Patreon or Gratipay and help incrase the flow of EA to EA direct money on the receiving end, not just the donation end.
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